So you want to start an email marketing campaign to build your business? That’s certainly possible, but you need to know the principles of effective email marketing so you won’t waste your time and money on the effort.Here are four great strategies to ensure your email marketing campaign helps your business grow.
1. Use great email marketing software
Your email marketing efforts are only going to be as good as the underlying software you use to send emails to potential clients. You should make sure you evaluate the competing options stringently before selecting the one that’s best for your business.
At a minimum, you’re going to want an application that supports spam detection, automated handling of invalid addresses, and contact imports.
2. Use permission marketing
It may be tempting to blast out your emails to a large swath of the online populace, but you’re endangering your goodwill when you do that. Instead, opt for permission marketing.
This is an approach in which, by some act, your recipients actually request to receive emails from you. Sometimes, you can provide an incentive for people to invite your emails by conducting a contest. In order to be part of the contest, they’ll need to subscribe to your email distribution list.
3. Be persistent
Building customer relationships doesn’t happen overnight. You’ll need to practice email marketing steadily and consistently before you see significant results. Some people think it takes as many as 20 impressions before you finally make a connection.
With that in mind, use your emails to produce a “drip” marketing campaign. Let each email provide just a little bit of information. Use an entire string of emails to paint the whole picture. That strategy will create a longer-lasting effect with your marketing message.
4. Put fabulous content into your email
One of the best ways to ensure that your emails get read is to make sure the content is worth reading. Use the subject line as bait. Put your creative content in the actual body of the email message for the hook that catches them.
Some email marketers have recently expressed concern about the Gmail layout changes. They don’t like the fact that certain emails are being placed in separate folders, away from the recipient’s inbox.
If you produce outstanding content, however, you’ll find that your recipients go out of their way to read your emails, even if that means accessing another folder in Gmail.
