Legitimate email marketing is a great way to stay in touch
with your customers and prospects. It's inexpensive, fast,
efficient, and environmentally friendly. Email marketing
allows you to target your customers and prospects by their
particular interests, it allows you quickly announce
special promotions (either planned promotions or impromptu
promotions based on changing conditions). Email is the
perfect way to send a monthly newsletter. Email
marketing's efficiency was underscored in a study by the
Direct Marketing Association which found that in 2005 email
marketing returned an amazing $57.25 in revenue per dollar
spent on it!
How can you get started with email marketing? Start by
collecting your customers' email addresses. Even if you
don't currently do email marketing, gather your customers'
email addresses now so that, when you decide to start
communicating with your customers via email, you'll already
have a good list. Have a sign-up sheet at each of your
checkout counters or at your reception desk. Be sure to
include a sign-up form on your website. Offer an incentive
such as a monthly drawing from the collected email
addresses. Be sure to include a privacy statement on your
forms and sign-up sheets such as, "Privacy notice: We don't
share your information with anyone." (Of course, that means
you can't share that information ever.) Remember, email
addresses are free (or very inexpensive) to gather.
Now, the three secrets to making email marketing a winner
for your business.
Secret number one: Do only "permission-based" email
marketing. In other words, only send email to people who
have requested your email messages and make it easy to
opt-out of future emails. There is a slimy side to email
marketing thanks to spammers. Obviously, you want to be
associated with the reputable side of email marketing. If
a customer, a prospect, or a site visitor willingly
provides their email address, you're not spamming. If you
get it any other way, you're spamming. A commonly used
technique for dealing with subscription requests from your
website is called a "double-opt-in". A double-opt-in
requires the individual to first request your email
marketing, then a confirmation request is sent to their
email address. They must click a link in the confirmation
email or otherwise confirm their desire to receive your
email before they're added to your list. The rule is
simple: If in doubt, don't send it out.
Secret number two: Make your email marketing messages
compelling for the reader. Keep them short and to-the-point
and ensure that the recipient will see the value in
whatever you're saying. Increasingly, people are becoming
distrustful of "hypie" messages that sound like they were
written by an advertising copy writer. Make your message
real, make it personal, and make it deliver a benefit from
the readers' perspective. If there's nothing in it for
them, they'll just delete your message or possibly even
report it as spam.
Secret number three: Be consistent. Whether you choose to
send an email campaign every week, every month, or every
quarter, be consistent. One very successful email marketer
even includes these words at the top of every email he
sends: "Sent the third Tuesday of every month..." Your
consistency in your marketing efforts reflects your
dependability as a company.
What about the mechanics of email marketing? Many very
small businesses just use their regular email accounts.
Such a solution can work, but it doesn't scale well as your
email list and business grow. It also requires you to
manage your new subscribers and unsubscribe requests. A
better solution is to use a commercial email marketing
service. Such companies provide templates to make your
messages look professional. They also provide tracking
information on how many messages were actually opened and
read, automatic opt-out links on your marketing messages,
tutorials, assistance in complying with the CAN-SPAM act,
and more. Costs start at about $10 per month and go up
from there based on various criteria such as the size of
your list and the frequency with which you send messages.
Most such companies provide a free trial period so you can
get familiar with their service. There are many email
marketing companies, but here are three for you to
consider: iContact (www.icontact.com), GetResponse
(www.getresponse.com), and Constant Contact
(www.constantcontact.com).
Make sure you're compliant with the CAN-SPAM act. Of
course, this is not legal advice (I'm no lawyer!), but
compliance means being honest in your subject lines about
the content of the message, including an easy opt-out
method in every message, and including your complete
contact information in every message.
Regardless of how you decide to do your email marketing,
now is the time to start gathering email addresses. Email
marketing, done properly, is flexible, affordable,
efficient, and potentially very profitable for your
business.
----------------------------------------------------
President and chief technologist at Seattle,
Washington-based IT training firm soundtraining.net, Don R.
Crawley is a speaker, writer, and veteran IT guy with over
35 years experience in technology for the workplace. Today,
he delivers keynote speeches and seminars to business
people on how to go digital without going postal. Call him
at 206.988.5858. He's online at http://www.doncrawley.com
and blogs at http://www.digitalnotpostal.com .
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