If you have been following the news on Christmas and January sales, the figures paint a gloomy picture. But hold on, if you look a little closely, most businesses report that whilst traditional sales have fallen, online sales have increased year on year. This demonstrates a new trend in shopping. You can search for and buy your chosen products or services with the click of a mouse and from the comfort of your own home! Along with a well designed website a well planned e-mail marketing campaign can boost sales. Compared to traditional direct marketing strategies, e-mail marketing is instantaneous and cost-effective. It is also more flexible as information can be updated more quickly and easily ? brilliant when you want to promote special offers. It all starts with a good customer database. By encouraging customers to ?opt ?in?, a mailing list can be generated and the information used to build the customer database. This should be kept updated with valid information. It should be remembered that in the U.K. storing and use of customer information should comply with laws such as the Data Protection Act of 1998. It is wise to use a good U.K. Internet marketing consultant to guide you through the process of your e-mail marketing campaign. Once a mailing list is available, existing as well as potential customers can be kept informed on latest news of your business via e-mail. A few things need to be kept in mind when deciding on the content of the e-mail. Keep the language simple and clear and keep the message brief. E-mail recipients are less likely to read a lengthy e-mail. Secondly, have something new to say which is likely to be of interest to the recipient. You could also customise the e-mail. For example you could promote a new offer or inform the customer of a new sales outlet in their locality. The company logo and contact details could be included in the e-mail along with links to the website. You could also encourage the customer to forward the e-mail to others who may be interested in the offer. In this way you could potentially widen your customer base. Many search engine marketing firms also offer a complete e-mail marketing solution by including a monitoring programme to follow up on results of the campaign. This also helps to improve future e-mail marketing campaigns. Finally, do be prepared for the response generated from the e-mail marketing campaign, and deliver on promises!
One of your objectives as an internet business owner will be to generate an opt-in e-mail list of subscribers. Once you have built a subscriber list, you will have a target audience that you can contact anytime you want. E-mail marketing is a powerful and cost effective method of driving more traffic to your website and getting more sales. E-mail marketing has a distinct advantage that other marketing methods do not possess.
It allows for multiple contacts to a targeted group of people who have given you permission to contact them and have an interest in what you have to say. They would not have signed up to be included in your opt-in list if they were not interested. You have the opportunity to build trust and relationships with these people. Since e-mail messages are being utilized, the amount of effort required to reach these people is minimal.
It is also inexpensive and timely. If you have a message to send to your subscribers, you do so in a matter of minutes. Compare the time and effort required to send an e-mail to mailing thousands of postcards (expensive) or placing and ad in the newspaper (not targeted). Sure you have to create the content for the e-mail, but you would need to do that for all other marketing methods also.
A major problem involved with e-mail marketing is the issue of SPAM. SPAM is illegal and is really a practice used by disrespectable people. Since SPAM messages have totally inundated everyone's inboxes, a variety of SPAM filters have been designed to keep suspicious e-mail from reaching your subscribers. Many times perfectly legitimate messages will not ever reach a subscriber's inbox. The best thing to do to remedy this is to give your subscriber instructions on what they should do to ensure your messages reach their inbox such as including your e-mail address in their safe list.
Regarding the content of your messages, make sure the e-mail provides something of value to the subscriber first, you can then mention what you are promoting afterwards. You can send them useful articles, newsletters, e-courses, special reports or anything else of value. Each e-mail will allow the subscriber to trust you more and more. Do not insult your subscriber by sending them an advertisement or sales pitch. They will opt-out of your e-mail list as fast as they opted-in!
For your e-mail campaign to work with the least effort and maximum potential you must use an autoresponder. The major cost associated with e-mail marketing would be due to using an autoresponder to assist you with automating your e-mail marketing efforts. However, this money is well spent and amounts to $20/mth or less. This amount is very minimal compared the increased sales you will be getting. The autoresponder will manage your campaign by automatically sending follow-up e-mails to your subscribers. Once again, these are people who already gave you permission to contact them. So get started on your e-mail marketing campaign today.
Both Stanleydegeorgio & Nina Greene are contributors for EditorialToday. The above articles have been edited for relevancy and timeliness. All write-ups, reviews, tips and guides published by EditorialToday.com and its partners or affiliates are for informational purposes only. They should not be used for any legal or any other type of advice. We do not endorse any author, contributor, writer or article posted by our team.
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