EMAIL MARKETING

E-Mail marketing is a massive and important strategy for online businesses. Used correctly, e-mail is an exceptionally powerful marketing tool, one that no successful online business can do without.

The popularity of e-mail is fuelled by the fact that..

• It's instant!
• It's FREE!
• It's everywhere!

Online business owners have the option of instant and repeated communication with an audience of potential clients and previous customer. E-mail gives the power to contact people again and again, promoting your products, your service, your web site, whatever you like...for FREE!This is impossible offline!

A poorly designed e-mail campaign is a dangerous thing. You can enrage 90% of your e-mail list..you can be bombed, flamed, or even sued by thousands of people (very, very rare though)..you can be accused of spamming and your ISP can cancel your account..and the list goes on!

These Are Key Elements Of A Successful E-mail Marketing Campaign

Three E-mail Marketing Strategies
1) You can e-mail your sales letter directly to your customers, and include a link to you order form.

2) You can use the "two step" approach that involves mailing a letter to your customers containing information that will interest them..and then directing them with a link to your actual sales copy.

3) You can e-mail the businesses online that deal directly with your target market to discuss promoting/selling your product on their sites.

Developing A Successful E-mail Marketing Campaign

Whatever method you choose, there are some key steps that you need to follow if you want your e-mail campaign to be successful:

Step 1: E-Mail a "targeted" list of people interested in your offer.
You'll be waisting your time and energy if you don't. You cannot sell your product to everyone (with some exceptions). Those who have opted-in to your mailing list, your customers and leads, and individuals who have requested information from your autoresponder are all excellent prospects!

Step 2: Personalise Each And Every E-mail.
Personalised -mail increases the response rate quite dramatically, 64% is not uncommon. If you get a bulk email, it feels much less bulky if it greets you with your name. you feel more like yourself, less like a number -- and you're more likely to read the message, maybe risk a click or two.

If at all possible, you should personalize your marketing mails to greet and address recipients individually with their name. Often, you will use the first name only, but for some campaigns the last name will be more appropriate.

Step 3: Your Subject Line Is Key
Good subject lines (and headlines) make the difference between e-mail that automatically hits the trash bin and e-mail that is opened and read. The key here is to emphasise benefits.

consider your product or service from your customers' point of view. How will they benefit from taking the time to read your e-mail? What will they learn? Is your product/service going to save them time? Is it going to save them money? Or is it going to improve their lives in some way? Write subject lines and headlines that emphasise these benefits.

Step 4: Emphasise Entire Sales Pitch Within The First Paragraph
The first paragraph should make reference to to your headline, building further excitement and motivating your potential customer to continue reading. Just because you have convinced them to open their e-mail with a compelling subject line doesn't mean that you're home free..You need to build more excitement and make them curious about what's to come!

Again, the key is benefits!

Step 5: Test your e-mail on small percentage of your opt-in list
This is an important technique, yet few people actually do it. When trying to increase the response to your offer, you want to test the headline or opening paragraph, your offer, and your pricing. Be sure to test these three things one at a time so you can accurately measure the results.

Testing your offer and your sales copy is the cheapest and most efficient way to maximise your revenue. In fact this should be an ongoing part of your business. Instead of sending your latest promotional letter to your entire customer base, try sending it to a small group. Doing a trial run will allow you the opportunity to iron out any kinks, saving you time, money and hassle!

Step 6: Make it easy to read
The formatting you choose can make or break your sales campaign. If the e-mail is difficult to read, then people aren't going to waste their time trying.

Some tips for effective formatting include:

• Keep your e-mail messages simple and neat
• Avoid technical jargon that the recipient won't understand!
• Never compose an entire message using ALL CAPS! It looks like you're yelling, it's hard to read, and it's rude
• Some older e-mail programs don't have "word wrap," so turn the "word wrap" feature off on your machine or manually hit "enter" at the end of each line. in this case a line should be no more than 65 characters.
• When people opt-in to your e-mail list, it's a good idea to offer them choice of receiving your e-mails in either HTML or plain text format

Step 7: Be sure that your e-mail is easy to reply to
If there is an e-mail address listed in your message, make sure you have the "mailto:" prefix before it (i.e. mailto:kiran@kiran.com). You should do this because most e-mail programs have a "hotlink" feature that will allow users to simply double-click on the e-mail address to automatically start a new e-mail.

When an URL is mentioned in an e-mail, it should have the "http://" before it because most e-mail programs have a "hotlink" feature that will automatically load the web browser when the user clicks on the URL.

Step 8: Develop a "killer" signature file (sig file)
An electronic signature..also referred to as a "sig file" ..is a three to six line footer that you can attach to the bottom of your e-mail messages and public forum postings.

It tells the person you're writing to exactly who you are and how they can contact you. You can include your autoresponder address, your e-mail address, your office telephone number, your company name and slogan, etc..whatever you like.

Step 9: Create a Clear Call to Action in Email Marketing Campaign
One of the crucial elements of an email marketing campaign is a clear call to action. Imagine exactly what you want the recipients of your message to do, and design the message to make that path clear for the recipient, and easy to follow.

Don't distract with too many links or offers, and make not only the call to action clear but also what recipients can expect when they click through. This can be as simple as "Click here for a 20% discount on your next weekend trip."

There are many other aspects to e-mail marketing that we have not touched on, however, we hope the above "tips" will aid your campaign.

We can assist you with all aspects of your e-mail marketing campaign, including:

• Building an opt-in e-mail list
• collecting targeted e-mail addresses
• Renting targeted opt-in e-mail lists
• E-mail bombs and flames
• Automating your opt-in lists

Automate Your Email

We cannot emphasise how important it is that you automate your e-mail right from the start. Should you receive between 50 and 100 e-mail per day, do you know how much time and money will be wasted responding to this many e-mail? It could take between 4 and 6 hours to respond to! That's half a day, at a cost of between £17,000 to £25,000 per year!

This is why you need to automate your e-mail from the start. Success and freedom of time will come from the automation of your e-mail!

We recommend "Mailloop" e-mail automating software as this is without doubt the most economical, comprehensive and easy to use tool available. It can handle all your online marketing needs and it's easy to implement.

Learn about mailloop software that can help you automate your entire business. Click here for more information.

For a free initial consultation on all your e-mail marketing needs, contact now