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Secrets of Effective Email Marketing
Email marketing is one of the most valuable online marketing tools you can carry in your marketing tool belt. A large subscriber list made up of the right demographic for your products can be an enormous boost to your brand recognition, sales, service requests, and client referrals.
Give Your Email Subscribers Incentives
The secret to building a large email list is to offer something in exchange for signing up. If all you’re doing is sending out marketing messages, few people will want to voluntarily receive them. To get subscribers, offer them something they won’t receive elsewhere. A free ebook or report is often offered to subscribers in exchange for that email address.
Another incentive is special deals that only subscribers get. Coupons codes sent in the marketing email are an easy way to provide an incentive. To personalize the incentive, send subscribers special coupon codes on their birthdays. Offer more specials for certain holidays throughout the year.
Keep Your Emails Short And Topical
With so many people subscribed to your email messages, you may be tempted to throw a lot of information at them. You may even see it as an opportunity to promote two or more businesses and to advertise several products. Emails like this are seen as spammy and annoying by readers. Remember what your readers signed up to receive, and never deliver unwelcome messages that are off topic.
Keep the emails short enough to help your subscribers read them no matter where they are. Remember that many of your subscribers access their emails on their phones and need something that is easy to read on the small screen. Checking email is now the most common activity that smartphone users do with their Internet connection. A short email will load in its entirety on a smartphone. If there is too much scrolling involved, or the message is cut off because of its length, many of your potential customers won’t read your message.
Use Social Networking to Promote Your List
A common practice of marketing-savvy companies is to use sites like Twitter, Facebook and Pinterest to promote their opt-in lists. This often includes tweeting when a new newsletter is imminent, putting a newsletter schedule on Facebook and placing an opt-in page URL on Pinterest. These social networking sites are also used to tell potential subscribers what they stand to gain by opting into the list.
Marketing Email Basics
The email itself must grab attention immediately. Smartphone customers in particular want the pertinent information up front. In the first sentence of the email, offer your subscribers something that makes it worth their time to read the rest of the email.
Open the email with an immediate hook that calls the reader to action. An effective, succinct message will tell readers how they will benefit by acting immediately to take advantage of what you have to offer. With this call to action, you can expect a percentage of your readers to become customers.