Every business needs to reach a large audience with their sales pitch, but finding targeted readers can be difficult. Email marketing is an essential tool for getting your message to the masses, at least to those who are interested. Read on to find many great tips to help you launch your campaign.
Minimize traditional email marketing activities during the holidays. Customers are preoccupied with family and friends, and are less likely to be paying attention to business email. Your odds of ending up in the spam box are considerably higher, which could have longer term implications for your bottom line. The major exception to this would be a business directly related to the holiday activities. Otherwise, give yourself a break and enjoy some downtime yourself. Business will be back on track in a day or two.
Before using email marketing, create a test email and send it to a friend or family member. Your loved one can see how the email looks and give you feedback. This way, if any changes need to be made, you can do it before sending the emails out to customers.
Make sure that you get permission from customers or potential customers before sending out your emails. If people do not want to get emails from you, they could mark your emails as spam or even ignore you altogether. There is even a chance that your email service could take you out of their system.
Use as few graphics as possible in your email marketing materials. Many email clients don’t allow images to load, so sending a highly graphic-dependent message is useless, as many of your subscribers will be unable to make sense of it. Also, email programs may send image-heavy emails to your junk mail folder.
You should get in touch with your subscribers at certain intervals and confirm with them that they are still interested in receiving emails from you. Most companies do this every nine months so that they can be sure that they are not being seen as an annoyance. This will also guarantee that the people on your email list have genuine interest and are not just taking up space.
If you want your marketing emails to be effective, give your customers lots of options. This will allow your subscribers to set the parameters as they see fit, leaving only the information they feel at ease about and receiving only the content that matters most to them. You subscribers will be more comfortable if they are in control of the process.
Take every opportunity that comes up to be festive when you send out your emails. When there is a holiday try to tailor your emails to fit the occasion. Subscribers will be very appreciative of this, and they will feel as if you are human and not a robot. Offering holiday discounts is another great idea that ties into the festive theme.
To avoid complications resulting from being identified as a spammer, notify your ISP of your email marketing intentions in advance. If any unhappy reader ever reports you, this will give your ISP the head’s up that your marketing efforts are legitimate. Your ISP may also be able to suggest an upgraded account that eases your email marketing operations.
Make your emails truly personal. Do not just use their names in your emails play to their wants and needs as well. You need to understand your customers and why they opted into your list. When you speak to them personally, they will feel more comfortable doing business with you.
Create a highly targeted sales list. You can accomplish this by encouraging your most loyal customers to convince their friends and contacts to sign up to your mailing list. If you give the impression that the mailing list is exclusive and only for a select few who are interested, your mailing list will be more targeted and your mailings will seem to carry more weight.
Write concise subject lines. By keeping the subject line below 60 characters, you have a better chance of grabbing the attention of a reader. If long subjects simply cannot be avoided, always be sure to include any essential information at the start of the subject line. Doing this will ensure that readers always see it first.
Constantly refine your email list. Keep it well-protected and make sure that every address that is listed is a good one. Just, one bad one can completely sabotage your campaign and possibly your business. Go down your list and question why that address is there and what it means to your campaign. You can get better results from your campaign this way.
Program your email messages to include the recipient’s name in the subject line or body of your message. An email message that includes the recipient’s name will feel much more personal. This sense of connection with the marketing will make them inclined to read the email and more likely to follow links within it.
It is smart to have a double confirmation for newsletter opt-ins. Many times people have typos the initial time they put in an email address. Getting these people to enter in their email address twice assists you in decreasing these mistakes so that your emails are sent to the right address.
Make sure that anyone who opts-in through your website confirms that before you start sending emails. This gives your customers the opportunity to think about whether they really want your marketing emails before they agree to receive them. This might feel redundant, but you will ensure more targeted readers and fewer complaints about spam or email abuse.
As long as you put the tips you’ve read here into use, you will find that your email marketing campaigns will be effective and profitable. You’ll be happy that you’ve put the effort into creating a plan when your sales explode!