Archive for Email Marketing

When starting up your own online business it is important to research and acquaint yourself with the many tools and resources available today.  One of the many effective and efficient tools accessible to assist new online business owners is that of MailChimp.

What is MailChimp?

MailChimp is an effective software program, an autoresponder, that will greatly assist you with the marketing of your products and business online.  It is an email marketing software (EMS) that provides its users with a variety of options to use when designing, sending and saving created templates of your business emails.  It is the number one software program for maintaining and actively using mailing lists in an efficient and consistent manner.

Email Marketing with Doodle design style :sending visual emails, promotions, creative designs. Modern style illustration for web banners, brochure and flyers.

Email Marketing

The Benefits of MailChimp

MailChimp allows business owners to create informative newsletters and have the means of sharing those newsletters on social media platforms, such as Facebook and Twitter, resulting in your own personal platform used for the publication of your business newsletters and other writings and communications.  This state of the art product allows business owners to build a list of their target audience with whom they want to share their products or services with and save the created list for repeat use later on down the road.  In addition, you can create customized templates with content and images related to your products and services and save the templates as well so as not to have to rewrite your emails and all their content to your contacts over and over again.

When writing your business newsletter, MailChimp is critical to your overall process in that it allows you to save all your newsletters, drafts, and formatting making it remarkably easy to send out each new newsletter going forward.  Another attractive benefit of MailChimp is its tracking feature that allows you to keep track of all results and responses received from your customers and clients.  This feature enables business owners to make appropriate revisions and changes to their content in order to improve upon positive individual responses to their website, products, and/or services.

Free Software Tool

MailChimnp is available for free for those new business owners “who have a mailing list of less than 2,000 contacts.  MailChimp provides starters with the ultimate option of checking how successful and easy to use the software is. In addition, the convenient pricing plans are extremely accommodating for users with long lists.”

Why Email Marketing is Important to your Business

Simply put, new business owners who do not elect to take advantage of this extraordinary free marketing tool will lose out on an ideal means of consistently staying in touch with their created mailing list of important contacts and potential customers which can, for obvious reasons, be harmful and even detrimental to your overall business and presence.

The success of your new online business is most assuredly dependent upon your customers, both old and new.  Without the capability of staying in constant touch with your clients, they will all eventually lose sight of your business and products and merely forget about them altogether.  How true it is “out of sight, out of mind.”  Don’t let this happen to your new business.  Give MailChimp a try now and see the amazing results yourself.  You’ll be glad you did!!

Categories : Email Marketing
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Email Marketing Strategies

The success of your online business is highly dependent upon your email marketing strategies. It is important to recognize that in order to build your business, you must build your client base and create unique marketing campaigns, and in order to build a client base, you must develop and build meaningful relationships through loyalty, commitment, and consistent interaction.

1. Creating Your Database: In your efforts to implement best practices and create and develop a good email database, you must put a great deal of focus on compiling pertinent information on your potential customers. It is especially useful to create and deliver successful email campaigns to customers, if, in fact, you have a database of regular customers to share with, and a familiarity with your customers’ likes, preferences, desires, and interests. For this very reason, it is critically important to log and keep track of all your customers’ personal information, including their contact information, and all their past purchasing history with your company. In this way, you are able to generate email campaigns to particular customers who have an interest in a specific product or service campaign based upon their own personal preferences, and their purchasing history.

2. Segment and Personalize: It is especially helpful and important to segment your emails allowing for the distribution of more targeted and personally tailored email messages. Let’s be practical. If you are sending out tailored messages to customers who have a specific interest in the product or service targeted in your email campaign, the odds are greater they will open it. Once open they will actually read it and be responsive as well. Utilizing this simple technique affords you the luxury of creating, maintaining, and enhancing special bonds and connections with all your customers.

Email Marketing StrategiesIn addition, personalizing your emails comes in at the top of the importance list for marketing strategies. How true it is today that emails that are distributed to mass recipients without any personalization are 9 out of 10 times simply deleted without ever affording them any attention. By personalizing your emails with a customer’s name, you create not only a special bond but interest and intrigue on the part of the recipient who then feels compelled to open the “personal emails.” Sending along personal emails addressing customers by their name, referring to their personal past purchases, and communicating with a friendly tone about current campaigns and product services, will prove to be more beneficial to your campaign and entice more consistent sales.

3. Engaging and Relevant Content: Engaging the attention of your customers by way of informative content that relates directly to the individual on a personal level, is a sure-fire way of capturing their interest and getting them to actually respond to your call to action within the email. It is helpful to include such marketing gimmicks as coupons, or cash vouchers from time to time that provides the customers with an incentive to want to purchase. Be certain in your communications to not only point out the value of your product or service, and the customers’ benefits but also to present this very information in a compelling style to capture the attention of your audience through this personalized approach.

4. Staying in Touch With Customers: Now that you have created your customer database, have personalized and segmented it, and delivered compelling and interesting content to provoke customers to engage in your call to action, then it only makes sense that you would want to be able to accomplish it over and over again. The best way of increasing your sales and customer commitment is through regular communications. The way to do this is through regular email distribution of newsletters that perhaps contain simple interactive surveys of interest to your customers, or simple updates that introduce new products or re-acquaint customers with already existing products. Keeping in touch with your customers through regular, simplistic email messages will undoubtedly assist in keeping your brand front and center at all times.

computer screen with Inboxr name

 

I have discovered a tool that can provide you with an unfair advantage. It helps you build your list through Facebook.

INBOXR allows you to grab each user’s Facebook email without the user even having to type it – simply have Inboxr ask to send the fan a coupon, a discount, related information, and when the user responds ‘yes’, INBOXR grabs the users email, adds it to your autoresponder and starts the follow-up process.

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Many business owners wonder whether or not it is legal to send mass emails. The proper protocol, and indeed appropriate etiquette for doing so is remarkably simple, as is the answer to this concerning question. Indeed it IS legal to send mass mailings, but the important factor to keep in the forefront when doing so is that you can ONLY send the mass emails to those people who want to receive them, and the information you are offering. Here are some helpful tips to guide you when sending mass emails to your customers and clients:

1. First and foremost, those individuals on your mass email list MUST be opt-in subscribers to your emails. It is absolutely mandatory that this protocol be adhered to. The simple fact behind this is that emails sent to recipients who are not opt-in subscribers are considered to be unsolicited, and we all know that unsolicited emails are vividly classified as spam. Also, keep in mind that subscribers may opt in at one point, but find the need to opt out at a later date, so be sure that all your emails sent include an opt-out feature for recipients. There are many advantages to the opt-in feature including:

– It preserves your professional email marketing reputation;

– Confirms to your customers that you definitely respect their privacy;

– Assists you in emailing only those people who are truly interested in your products or services;

– Helps to build long-term and very trusted relationships with all your customers; and

– Can certainly assist in boosting both your sales and your product visibility. 

2. Do your due diligence and familiarize yourself with the email marketing regulations in effect, the spam guidelines, and certainly all the laws of the countries affected by your mass emails. 

3. Since the subject line of your email is the first “connection” you will make with your subscribers, be cautious to make the subject line very eye-catching, intriguing, and very direct, avoiding commonly used spam triggered words, such as “free” or “cash. In addition, NEVER put your subject line in all CAPS. Studies have proven that email recipients are far more responsive to emails that are direct and truthful at the inception about the email content. Your subject line should afford your email subscriber the knowledge of what is contained in the email before they even open it. 

4. You certainly want your email to be effective, so be certain to include exclusive promotions to entice your readers, as well as a catchy call to action within the email content that is eye-catching and will prompt your email subscriber to take that very action. Repeating your promos and call to action a couple times throughout your email will draw greater attention to both, and is apt to effectively induce the reader to take action. 

mass emailsFollowing these useful tips will surely assist you in producing effective mass emails with attractive results that allow for all parties involved to benefit. However, disregarding these important tips, and choosing to send bulk spam emails may cause both your email and IP address to be blacklisted. The overall disadvantages of sending unsolicited mass emails are: 

– Your email recipients will be completely unresponsive;

– You will waste quality time and money sending along emails to an unresponsive audience;

– You will, without a doubt, ruin your email marketing reputation;

– You will also destroy the reputation of your business or company, and minimize the value of your products or services; and

– You will adversely affect your “open and click-through” rates substantially.

Be smart, be professional, be savvy, and be cautious when sending your mass marketing emails. This tool is highly beneficial to the success of your business, but if used improperly, can certainly be the end of your business too!

Want to learn how to do it right for free?

Check out what my good friend and mastermind partner has to offer with her List-A-Palooza event, but you have to get in now because it’s ending at the end of the month!

 

 

Categories : Email Marketing
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Today there are many components that come into play in the planning, creation, implementation, and launching of a new online business. One important component that contributes to the success of businesses today lies in company marketing strategies. One strategy that is fast becoming a favorite among most business owners is the use of simple email marketing. Here are some useful email marketing tips to help contribute to the success of your business.

1. Make It Easy To Subscribe

email marketing tipsFor many people and businesses today innovative subscription programs are fast becoming one of the most popular marketing gimmicks of choice. Proper implementation of a subscription program provides award winning benefits for both merchants and customers. For the actual business provider, a successful subscription campaign will turn a one-time purchase into a consistent source of revenue while for the subscriber customer there is the overall excitement of getting something extra in return for your loyalty and commitment. However, it is important that email subscription campaigns are incredibly user friendly and mobile friendly as well in this mobile world we live in.

2. Let People Know What to Expect

Whenever you elect to use email marketing techniques it is critical to be concise and clear about what the potential customer is required to do, the timeline to do it in, and what they are to gain by doing so. A simple, direct message, with easy to follow instructions is beneficial to everyone and will contribute to the success of the email campaign. If a recipient is not able to easily comprehend the required actions as well as the rewards for their actions, then 9 times out of 10 they will simply delete the email giving no thought to what they might have gained or earned. So be careful to be direct, simple, and concise with your content and by all means do not be wordy since people tend to completely ignore content that is extreme and lengthy.

3. Have a privacy Policy – Make it Available

It is absolutely critical to include a privacy policy with your email marketing in an effort to show your firm commitment to the potential customer’s privacy and to protecting all the personal information. Advise them that their personal information will never be shared with others. Be clear in explaining to them why and how they are receiving the email, either they opted in or perhaps they registered or purchased from you in the past. In addition, assure them of your use of the most state of the art security features. Finally, be certain to offer them a means of unsubscribing if they choose and provide them with an email address where they can send along any comments or concerns.

4. Think Like a Customer When You Write

email marketing tipsOne simple piece of advice when creating your email is to simply write in a fashion that you, as a customer, would want to receive and read. Lengthy, wordy emails with complicated content that just run on and on are not beneficial to anybody. Remember at one time or another you were a customer yourself. Remember that content which caught your eye and captured your attention and utilize that same style and format with your potential new customers today.

5. Personalize the “From”

Nobody likes to get emails from people they don’t know, however, if a recipient notices an interesting and unique “from” in their email, they are more apt to be curious and remotely interested enough to actually open and read the email. A bland, uninformative “from” is more likely than not to be dismissed or deleted by its recipient. Make it intriguing, interesting, and even playful in an effort to attract attention and keep their interest.

6. Craft Your Email Carefully

As we all know, haste makes waste. Certainly composing and writing your email in a hurry and without proper preliminary thought and structuring is bound to be a complete waste of your time and have little to no positive affect on your recipients. Taking adequate time to collect all your thoughts, know your objectives, familiarize yourself with your audience, and construct content that is both eye and mind appealing, is a sure fire way for your email marketing to be successful. Think before you act!!

7. Be Consistent, It Demonstrates Reliability

Rest assured that consistency is a vital ingredient for success in anything, and surely that applies to your email marketing as well. Most people are oblivious to how important consistency can be. However, it is important to recognize that the more consistent you are, the more people you will reach and the more valuable you and your business become. Your ultimate goal is to connect with as many customers as possible in a given time. It only makes sense that to accomplish that you need to be consistent in your email communications, and be as visible as possible. Your primary objective is to sell your product or service and certainly the use of email marketing can and will help you to achieve that. Clearly, consistent emails are sure to attract the attention of your readers, and if written and presented well, will indeed capture their interest and ultimately result in a happy ending for both you and your new customers.

List-A-Palooza-Post2

My mastermind friend PJ Van Hulle runs a great event every year called List-A-Palooza. It’s a FREE way to grow your own email list. If you’re really serious about building your business you need to take a look. Even if your email subscriber list is already over 10,000 there are great strategies and practice advice to be had with List-A-Palooza, and it’s free. Check it out ==> http://clickherenow.co/listapalooza

 

Categories : Email Marketing
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