It can be confusing to decipher the best tools and techniques that can market your business effectively. Marketing with email is a great way to stay in touch with your customers. This article offers several strategies and techniques that can help ensure that your marketing via email campaign will be effective.
One great way to get people to read your direct marketing via email messages and newsletters is to include special offers available only to the recipients. The readers are not only more likely to eagerly read the messages themselves, but they’re also more likely to pass the info on to friends. As a matter of fact, referral programs are great ways to grow your email base at the same time you are growing your customer base.
Keep things consistent. Stay with the same logo and color scheme in your email. Always choose a font that is easy to read, even on a mobile device. People will eventually recognize your layout and know right away that you are the sender. Like most other fields of commerce, e-mail marketing relies heavily on building a bond of familiarity between customer and merchant.
Make your emails content rich. Put some helpful information in emails and don’t just put in information related to sales. Provide your readers with articles that they can’t find on your site. Another idea is to have special offers that are only available via email. Send out greetings on holidays, not just when you want sales from them!
You should have people who would like to receive your emails double opt-in. This will protect you from spam complaints, possibly saving your website from being shut down by your host over reports that you’re sending out unsolicited email.
Limit your marketing email messages to only one each week. Most of your customers probably receive multiple emails each day, and are too busy to constantly open message after message. Sending emails too frequently makes it more likely that your customers will stop reading.
In general, don’t send important marketing with email messages near holiday time frames. Because people tend to be out of their offices and away from their computers, your emails will probably go unnoticed. This is not a hard rule and some holidays will require communications. For example, emails advertising a holiday sale or a Black Friday campaign will attract attention at almost any time.
Remember that more and more people are now using a smartphone or another type of mobile device to view emails. These gadgets have lower resolutions than modern computer monitors, so you won’t have as much space to use. Recognize the constraints of mobile devices and always be sure that your emails can be easily read, regardless of such constraints.
Never send out an email that relies on images to convey critical information. Most email clients that are out these days will filter out images automatically. Your message will become impossible to read if the images are not displayed correctly. Use clear text for your important information and use descriptive alt tags on all of your images in your emails.
Make sure you have a person’s full permission before adding them to your mailing list. Anyone who does not want your email will consider them spam, and your reputation could suffer. Even worse, when your email provider collects so many spam complaints about you, they could cut you off for failing to abide by their spam policies.
Take advantage of the call to action technique in your emails. Your subscribers should know exactly what you want them to do in each email you send out. Make any links obvious, and include instructions on their use. You can repeat these sections by including them in both the top and bottom of your messages.
While in the opt-in process, be sure to ask for the names of your customers, especially their first name. This is good so that when you send out emails you can address it to them, which gives things a more personal touch. When a customer is identified by name, they feel less anonymous and emails are welcome.
Test your marketing messages using thorough tests that show how your email will look on various platforms. Once you are satisfied with your message design, see how it looks in different web browsers, email clients, and all the major operating systems, including Windows, Mac OS, and Linux. An email will look much different when viewed in Gmail than it does in Microsoft Outlook, for example.
Your marketing emails need to stay short. Keep your language as direct as you can. This gives respect to the limited time your customers have. It will also make it more likely for readers to read through your entire message. Keep in mind that you are likely to have important content throughout the entire email which makes this critical to your success.
Customize your messages in any personal manner that is available to you, so you can send messages to subscribers that let them feel like people. If it feels more like a form letter to them, they are more likely to just delete it or block it from receiving any more. Including their first name in emails is simple, but you can get even more personal. Keep track of how people sign up for your newsletter, where they did and why they want to read it. Use this information to customize the message for that person.
Email promoting is a good way to promote your business. The suggestions you have just read should help you in creating interesting and relevant content.