Don’t be fooled; effective email marketing is still very much alive and well. Even though email marketing has been used for some time now, it hasn’t gotten old. New strategies and techniques are constantly being made to make marketing emails effective and fresh. See how the following tips can help you create successful marketing emails.
Do you want to be known as a spammer? Your emails could be flagged as spam if they are sent to customers that didn’t want to receive them. This will ruin your reputation, cause many ISPs to block your emails, and you might even end up on an Internet spam blacklist.
Unsolicited Email
Make every effort to strike a personal tone in your emails. When you are seen as a person, as opposed to a generic email, your customers will respond with their business. You can use their name, mention items they might like based on past purchases, or show them items in their favorite color.
Don’t send unsolicited email marketing messages out. Sending an unsolicited email is a mistake; people might start marking them as spam. This is not only harmful to your reputation, but it can actually cause your ISP to block you or your email service provider to suspend your account.
Know the audience you are targeting. As you increase your readership, encourage your subscribers to have their friends opt-in to receive your emails, too. Remember to have a subscribe link inside your email; hopefully, your customers will pass it to their friends that have similar interests on the products that you offer. Your subscription list will automatically grow as more people who are interested in your business sign up.
When developing an email marketing plan, make sure that every customer on your email list has voluntarily “opted in” to be on that list and provided you with an email address for that specific reason. If you fail to do this, customers who did not agree to receive your emails may report your company for sending spam, and you are more than likely to lose their business.
You should generate one crystal-clear message for every email that you send. This can help to keep your customers from becoming bored or confused by information overload. Keep your messages on topic, of reasonable length, and interesting to read. This will attract more readers which will translate to more customers. People like things to be simple.
Remain consistent at all times. Use your logo and a standard color scheme in each email you send. Choose a font everyone can read easily. Your recipients will be more aware of the appearance of your messages and focus on them. Familiarity is vital to the success of any business, and that also greatly applies to email marketing.
Include special promotions only in your email marketing, like coupons or discount codes. This type of email marketing gives your customers an incentive to participate and they could also have the chance to refer friends. You can promote this even further by creating a referral rewards plan, which will not only increase the number of subscribers to your newsletter, but also your pool of potential buyers.
Ensure that your emails have a lot of solid content. Include information that is helpful in your emails. You should never include simply selling information. Present special articles or information that is unique to the email and not your site. Promote special offers on products and services in your emails that are exclusive to your email customer. Be prepared to offer holiday or birthday greetings, and other special communications, that don’t always appear to be eliciting a purchase.
Generally speaking, it is not a good idea to send out important marketing email messages during major holidays. People do not have time to check their emails as much since they are away from work and have limited access to their computers. Of course, as always there are exceptions to this rule. These might include emails about Black Friday specials or other occasion-specific campaigns.
Resist the urge to send your customers more than a single marketing email each week. Your customers, like you, have busy lives and probably receive many emails each day. If you send too many messages, you will just become part of the clutter. They may begin skipping them, or worse, deleting them without ever reading!
You need to get your customers’ permission in order to send them any correspondence by email. Disregarding this can not only cost you your current customers, but also any future customers who correspond with this one. Spamming activities can also cause your domain or IP to be blacklisted by Internet service providers, which can definitely affect your business.
Make sure you have permission to send emails to your subscribers. Failure to do so can lead to you losing customers’ trust and it will tarnish the reputation of your business. Additionally, some Internet service provides may blacklist you, and that can have tremendously detrimental effects on future business.
The link to unsubscribe from your list should be clearly visible. Make sure that this unsubscribe link is clearly visible and not hidden in text somewhere. Your customers must be made to feel that they are choosing to subscribe, and not that your emails are being forced upon them.
Add a link that allows people to unsubscribe from your list. Avoid not having an unsubscribe link or burying it within your email to the point where it is hard to find. The goal is to give your customers the freedom to choose what they receive, not to force them into something they may not want.
The odds that your email subscribers will be reading your messages on a mobile device, such as a smartphone, are going up every day. Because the screen resolution is lower on these devices, you have a smaller space with which to work. Be wary of the constraints on mobile devices. Make sure your emails are compatible with them.
The best way to avoid sending emails that are spammy is by studying spam emails firsthand. Sign up for a free email account, post your new address around the web, and watch the spam roll in. Make note of why these messages aren’t effective and use that knowledge to make sure you’re not spamming people in the same manner. Taking measures to keep you from spammers can boost your brand’s credibility.
Do not use email messages that require graphical elements in order to present key facts. Many email clients don’t display images to help keep viruses and malware off their users’ computers. Your messages may look strange or be impossible for some people to read if the information depends too heavily on graphics. Always use clear text for your most critical information, and be sure to use descriptive alt tags for any images that you include.
Email Marketing
Use email previewers to your advantage when using preheaders. A preheader consists of the initial line of text in the email that is highlighted in the email previewer. Several popular email clients, including gmail, display this information on the same line as the subject, so it can grab the reader’s attention.
The value of email marketing is alive and well, as you have seen. Take what you’ve learned here to heart and always be ready to implement new and innovative email marketing methods. This strategy will serve you well for years to come.
During the opt-in process, ask for your customers’ names, or at least their first names. Having their name to reference makes any further communication you have with them more personal and more likely to catch their attention. This will help your messages stand out from all of the spam messages that your subscribers may be used to receiving.
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