Wednesday, June 13, 2012

Turning Email Marketing Into Sales

Be an Email Marketing Champ, not a chump
Email has become a part of our everyday interaction. You send a quick note out to friends, make sure that you send reminders about meetings and even communicate with people who are thousands of miles away. And although email has become the norm, that doesn’t mean we can forget about the power it has with generating leads for new customers. But if you’re going to use email effectively, you’ll need to go beyond your everyday email habits. Here are some ways you can go from a simple email to generating more leads for your company.

Honing your List

So you might have a solid emailing list put together already, but try honing that list or creating sub-groups to market specific products to different demographics. If you're having trouble managing all of your email contacts (too many spreadsheets!!) you can always move to a Customer Relationship Manager. Some popular web solutions are Zoho CRM, Sugar CRM, and iContact.

Know the Basics

Like any marketing endeavor, you need to know the goal of your efforts. Once you understand the purpose of your marketing email then you can determine your target audience. Now, jump in and create your content, including your subject line and call to action. Don’t forget to set a goal for your campaign and how you’re going to measure effectiveness. An easy way to see if prospects are responding to your email is through landing pages on your website so you can determine click through rates. Most email marketing programs also provide email open rates.

Subject to Creativity

Creating a good subject line to entice customers to open may be one of the more difficult aspects of an effective email campaign. And thanks to spammers, there are several words you’d like to use that you should avoid, such as “free” and “order now.” Some email marketing programs help rate your subject line before you send to check for those pesky spam words. So make sure your recipients see a subject line that lets them know what they’ll get out of opening the email, and be clear that the email is coming from you.

Find Clarity

Now that you have them enticed with an engaging subject line, don’t lose them as soon as they start reading. Quickly get them to a single call to action without droning on about product features. You can give them more detail on the landing page when they click through.

Great design and a clean layout can also help with the clarity of your message. Some of the best email marketing companies (MailChimp, iContact, and Constant Contact) have easy to implement layouts that are good looking to boot.

You can read more print, marketing, and design blogs on our website : Minuteman Press News Archive

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2 comments:

  1. The main purpose of eCommerce drip marketing is to engage with a prospect over a period of time and in doing so, encourage a prospect to buy a product with email vouchers and discounts. Most email software packages can be programmed to automatically send out several emails over a course of time after the introductory email.

    Consulting

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    1. Thanks for the insight Kinneth. We agree that the best method is long term based contact, but initial exposure was the main goal of the post. Trying to target a customer base and then provide introductory incentives to gain a new customer (with a new marketing technique for most) is the best start to an extended customer relationship. But most of the time it comes down to wanting to connect personally with each customer and providing the best deals possible, which comes from knowing your cost/products.

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