Why Email Marketing Might Be the Golden Ticket for Your Business

• Category: Case Studies, Content, Email Marketing, Marketing
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You may be operating your business for just a few months or even a few years relying solely on mass snail-mail marketing campaigns. Postcards, mailers, and printed newsletter may have proved successful for you to some degree but in light of the economy and the need to streamline any business these days, it may be time to venture into the world of email marketing.

Here’s why:

Bigger Circulation Area

It is a lot of work to create, print, stamp and address thousands of marketing materials being mailed out. With email, all you need is one email address. No stamps, not printing, no wasted hours spent. Set up a form to grab addresses on your website and get the contact information for people you may not reach through print marketing campaigns. By establishing an email mailing list, you already have access to your target audience. There is less of hit-and-miss game of chance taking place.

Easier Access to Your Company

On print marketing materials, you include your name, address, telephone number and email address. All of which are necessary but not necessarily convenient for the potential customer. In an email marketing campaign, you can provide a direct link to your website or product page and all the reader needs to do is click twice to have access to your information. Recipients can also email you back immediately should they have questions.

Trackable Actions

If you use an email application for your email marketing campaign, you will be able to see who is doing what with your information. Different applications allow you to run different reports to see who clicked-through on the links, who opened the email, and more. This information is invaluable for helping you to decide what is working and what doesn’t. You can perfect your advertising campaigns as you go along.

More Acceptable

If you have been relying on cold calls to get the majority of your customers, you may already know many people don’t take too kindly to repetitive calls when they are busy. Sending email information is a less intrusive way to reach your target. Customers often will save the information in an email to come back to at a more convenient time. It will take several email contacts to gain attention but an email will likely be stored while a phone call is quickly forgotten.

Much More Affordable

Email marketing is beneficial especially to start-ups that have little marketing funds in the beginning. The costs of print ads and marketing materials can be tremendous. With email, however, the cost of a monthly service for email contact is reasonable and there is no need for a huge investment initially that may or may not pay off. Email is perhaps the most inexpensive form of marketing your business can use after word of mouth.

Time To Check In With Your Email Marketing Campaigns

• Category: Email Marketing, Marketing
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One reason emailing marketing stops working is because those on your mailing list are getting tired of the same old thing, month after month. If you found your customer/potential customer’s interest going down rather than up, it may be time to revitalizing what you are selling and how you are selling it.

There are several ideas you should consider to pump some life back into your email marketing campaigns and communications. Here are few for you to try right now:

Give Newsletters a Makeover

Customers may be used to you regular format for electronic newsletters but they may also have grown tired of looking at it. Check out the last few month’s worth of newsletters and see how eye-catching they truly are not. Can you say your work demands attention? Even if the newsletters are indeed informative, you might need to jazz them up a bit. Change colors and fonts. Add a color photo or graphic to catch people’s attention. Check out the layout of your materials. Are people finding it easy to find what they are looking for? Is your information quality and update? There are many simple upgrades you can make that will bring a world of difference to your marketing efforts.

Find New Angles

While the topic for your newsletters and email campaigns are already something of interest for your readers, why not trying adding a spin on things. Are there ways to find a different approach to material that may be tired? Are you sure you are answering the questions your readers are really asking? If you aren’t sure what is left to write, put out a survey one month in place of a newsletter. Ask readers what they are interested in learning. You may receive feedback that can change the whole angle of your sales pitch. Offer to sponsor a giveaway as part of the survey to keep people interested in responding to the survey. Keep up to date on the happenings in your industry so you are always finding new and relevant things to share with your readers.

Analyze Your Reports

If you ignore the information in your campaign reports, you may be wasting time and effort on stuff that is just not working. Don’t overlook the valuable information you can glean from these reports. You need to understand how many people are actually clicking on the email, who is going further, and why they are doing so. Even more importantly, you can help deduce the more important answer – why are people not clicking?

Upgrade Your Mailing List

If you have not had new members joining in, you are missing out on a breath of fresh air. Start a small marketing campaign on your website to encourage people to sign up to the mailing list. You can offer a giveaway contest or some other marketing gimmick to help recruit more readers. While you are getting in the mailing list to add new, make sure you also clean out the old and organize a stale mailing list.

Compensate The Loyal

If you have maintained a good, strong customer mailing list and response from email marketing campaigns, do something nice for your readers. If possible, try and set up an open-house of sorts to thank the loyal customers you have. If you business is strictly online, think of other creative ways you can give back to your readers. Free stuff always works!

3 Top Content Marketing Strategies to Build Your Business

• Category: Content, Email Marketing, SEO, Social media
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If you are looking to build your business by having a presence on the web you should look to content marketing as a way to get started. Here are three of the most successful content marketing strategies.

Blog Posting

To begin with you should build and maintain your own high quality blog. This is a great way to start getting your name out as well as a means to show your expertise in your niche. It is one of the best way to convey to current and potential customers how and what you do. It is also a great way for search engines to pick you up.

It will be important to keep you blog updated regularly with quality content. Weekly at the very minimum but is better to post a few times a week, if you can. The longer the blog posts, the less often you will need to post.

Always make sure that you are accurately presenting your company in your blog posts and do not be afraid to show your expertise. Make sure the tone of your posts matches the business you are promoting.

After you have your own blog up and running it is also a good idea to do guest blogs on other sites. This expands your internet voice and allows you to reach even more potential customers.

Podcast and Video Blogging

Podcast and video marketing is up and coming and proving to be very successful. It allows you to target customers who do not like to read but would prefer to watch or listen to what you have to say. It is a more time consuming content marketing strategy, but generally worth the effort. Once you get used to making the podcasts they will come easier and be less time consuming. It is important to note that you do not need to update podcast and videos as often as written blogs. Updates once a month, especially at the beginning, are fine. As you get used to doing them you may want to update more often.

Email Newsletter

Email newsletters are one of the oldest forms of internet content marketing, but are still a viable means to maintain customers and obtain new ones. It is a great way to keep in touch with current customers, letting them know new products you may be offering and different promotions.

Build your email contact list by obtaining emails from all of your current customers and having a link on your blog where potential customers can sign up for it. As you are preparing your email newsletter make sure that it has good quality content. A great marketing strategy is to offer some type of promotion or discount with the newsletter. Email your newsletter out to all the customers in your email data base and consider posting it on your blog as well.

With all three content marketing strategies make sure that customers have a place to post or send feedback and comments. This can be a great way to learn what content customers like and want more of and what they just simply may not be interested in at all.

Five Steps to Build Your Email List

• Category: Email Marketing, Marketing
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Internet marketing depends on having a quality email list of targeted people who are interested in your product niche. You’ve probably heard the phrase “the money is in the list,” but what exactly does that mean? It typically refers to the size and the quality of your email list. But how do you build a large, qualified list? After all, it doesn’t do much good to have 10,000 email addresses on your list if only 25 of them ever buy anything from you. Here are five of the top techniques for building your list and making sure those prospects are potential buyers.

1. When people do buy from you, make sure you add them to your list. You need permission to add someone to your email list, so all you need to do is add the request right to your payment process. Create a check box that asks the buyer if you can email them occasionally with other products that may be of interest to them. Chances are a buyer will give their permission readily.

2. Have a sign-up form on every page of your website. Make it easy for people to sign up for your email list by posting the sign-up in a prominent position on every page of your site. Offer people something of value in exchange for giving you their email address like a special report, an ebook or another product that provides true value to the subscriber.

3. Participate in a joint-venture giveaway with other Internet marketers in your niche. Joint venture giveaways are a great way to build your list. You offer a free product to giveaway attendees in exchange for their email address. Many times a giveaway that is promoted extensively by big name marketers can result in thousands of email addresses for your list. Of course, a large number of those names may unsubscribe after they receive your free product, but the odds are good you will retain many subscribers as well.

4. Write articles about your products and submit them to article directories like EzineArticles.com or GoArticles.com. People who are looking for content for their websites or blogs and people who are simply looking for information will read your articles, which will include a link to your website in the resource box. If your sign-up form is listed on every page of your website, you will gain new subscribers.

5. Offer a newsletter on your website. This is a great way to gain names for your email list, especially if your website contains good information. If people who visit your site read intelligent, accurate, useful information on your site and you offer them a free newsletter that promises more of the same, they will be encouraged to sign up for that newsletter. This is a legitimate, ethical way to add them to your email list and then occasionally send them an email offering products for sale.

One of the most important keys to building a high-quality, large email list is to provide value to your subscribers. Don’t email them several times a day or even once a day. Instead, email once or twice a week and always provide valuable content in those emails. Make sure you are not constantly pushing for a sale or your numbers will fall rapidly. Instead, build a relationship with your subscribers so they come to like and trust you before you hit them up for cash. Then, continue to foster the relationship, always giving away plenty of quality content free. That way, when you do request a sale, people are far more likely to reach for their credit card than if you present yourself as a pushy marketer who is constantly trying to make a sale.