While concentrating fully on all that search engine optimization process that seems to be real "rocket science" as well as on social media marketing, sometimes we forget that one of the oldest and most-efficient tools in Internet marketing is sending out emails.
A simple email letter has potential to increase sales rates, to raise brand-awareness, and build a more close connection with your prospects and customers. However, you should follow three core principles in order to implement this marketing strategy successfully.
1. Play It by the Book
Driven by a raging thirst for a quick profit, people can make foolish yet fatal mistakes. One of them is to be seduced by shortcuts. Everyone knows that in order to start an email marketing campaign you have to create a list of subscribers. While buying such a list may seem to save both time and effort, do NOT fall for this. When you send out letters to people who do not know your company and did not voluntarily agree to get anything from you, you harm your professional reputation.
To create an opt-in email list all fair and square, use newsletter sign-up forms on your website. With the right approach, you will manage to convert web-traffic from the site to potential clients. One of the best strategies would be introducing a lead magnet.
A lead magnet is some valuable perk a person gets from you for free in exchange for leaving email address and subscribing to your newsletter. It can be actually anything connected with your company’s domain: a PDF book, a video lesson, free sample of some digital material, a trial period of your software, the list goes on. The more appealing you make the lead magnet, the more customers you will get since they will not only give you official permission to contact them by email, they will be genially interested in your company!
2. Choose the Light Side of the Force
In email marketing, there is the dark side and the light side. The dark side would be buying that list of subscribers from someone and attacking them ruthlessly by dozens of junk emails on a daily basis.
Did you know that spam is actually older than the Internet itself? This ancient evil was crafted back in 1978 when a marketing manager Gary Thuerk used ARPANET to send out the first unsolicited email in order to promote computer products made by the company he worked for.
For more than forty years now, we have been struggling to destroy this maleficence, but to no avail. My Google inbox still gets at least 5 junk emails every day. Spam always finds its way of avoiding all those filters invented by Google and my personal cautiousness in terms of giving away my address doesn't help.
I reckon that the only way to end it is to appeal to all email marketing managers out there not to mistake spamming for email marketing. First of all, no one ever reads those letters so you will get no customers anyway!
Even when a person agrees to get emails from your company, make sure not to abuse their trust and do not load them with letters. A certain protocol of email marketing dictates us that the first (so-called welcome) letter should be sent right after getting the address in the list, the second email should be sent the next day and the third one not sooner than two days after that. The optimal frequency is one email per week.
3. Make Them Trust You
Last but not least, this principle is actually one of the most important factors that will determine the outcome of your marketing campaign. With email marketing for businesses, your ultimate goal is to build up brand trust and establish the image of a reliable company. To do so, pay attention to every single detail.
For instance, many typical newsletters are sent from addresses like “noreply”. That is the wrong approach. People tend to trust companies who communicate with them through real people, so you gain bonuses from your clients when it is clearly stated whom the letter is from.
Also, you should always give customers the possibility to contact you and provide them with all necessary information. To generate and use an email signature would be the perfect choice since footer with comprehensible contact detail gives the receivers a possibility to react. It means that you're stating your accountability for the accuracy of the information in your letter and want to get feedback.
Moreover, it is crucial not to leave any possible reply from your clients unanswered. Be sure to respond promptly, that will increase the level of trust to your company even more!
To sum it up, your way to marketing success requires you to be honest, don’t take any risks hurting your professional reputation, and do not forget to create an email signature.
Thank you for compiling this post!