Image by: Matt Buchanon
By George Lamb
With the explosion of promotion through social media, plain old E-mail marketing may seem nearly obsolete in comparison. While on the surface things may seem this way to the untrained eye, the reality is Email marketing is still very much a highly effective way to get your business out there and generating leads to your site or product. And you know what that equates to, right? More customers!
It has been estimated that nearly half of the population of the entire world has an email account—which makes for about 4 billion users—and unsurprisingly, that number is still increasing at rapid speed. With so many email accounts in existence, it’s a given that if you invest the time and energy into Email Advertising then you will at least come out with a few more customers than you already have. So to make sure your campaign is crisp, clean and lucrative, here are a few ways to get more opens and reads out of your blasts.
#1) Stay Detail Oriented
When email-marketing, focusing on the little things can make the difference between garnering a spontaneous lead or simply being dismissed as spam. We all know you’d hate the idea of all your articulate, well thought out emails being redirected to that trash bin on the bottom left side of the screen. To eliminate, or at least lessen the chances of such an unfortunate occurrence plaguing you, keeping a strong, capturing headline is a necessity.
A headline is much more than just a sentence that explains what your specific offer or product is; it acts at a selling point which should be quick, witty, to the point and exciting enough to make them want to treat themselves to a quick view of your offer. This is important, but also doing things like researching the best time to send emails will give you an edge that may increase your flow of traffic. Even if it’s by just 1 or 2%, when it comes to the internet that can mean thousands of potential customers.
#2) Always Add to Your List
Your list of people on your newsletter may exceed the thousands, but just because you’ve got a big number now shouldn’t mean you should stop seeking more. You might have a bunch now, but what if majority of your people decide to opt out of receiving the emails or cancel their terms? I can imagine you’d still want to keep a nice big crowd to harass about the new advancement on your product.
This is why it is essential to relentlessly add new people to your newsletter. The more people you have signed up, the better the chances of people actually purchasing the goods. I don’t want to say it’s common sense, but…
#3) Exclusive Offers
Yea I know, customers are first and foremost probably going to have to be interested enough to click on your email before noting your offers. But if word of mouth gets around of that free trial download you offer and happy bloggers do some of the promotion work for you then that makes your job that much easier. Of course it’s probably asking a lot to have a stranger dedicate his or her blog to your product, but if you captivate just enough people to by your once in a lifetime offer then who knows, maybe they’ll feel the need to relay that information to their audience.
The key here it, though, is to make the content you’re offering quality content. Some legendary entrepreneurs might even say your free content should be better than others’ paid content. Consumers and entrepreneurs both know the value of free digital downloads. By offering something that is better and cheaper than the competitions, you will be getting a step up on those who are lacking incentive.
People like free things, but if those free things are useless they most likely won’t want to be bothered. But if you’re offering something for free that’s of good value, then people will have no reason not to sign up for your mailing list. They’ve got nothing to lose or worry about. Okay, except maybe an influx of spam emails demanding them to buy your product…
#4) Automation
Having automated campaigns that have the ability to run 24/7 even while you’re asleep or at work is a key advantage of email marketing. Auto service responders like Aweber or Mailchimp are very popular amongst email marketing enthusiasts as these services have millions of users that send billions of emails each month. Pretty large numbers, i know. And the best part is most of these sites are free to start
Being the perfect tool to introduce new customers to the product or service you have to offer, automation saves you one key element that is of vast importance to all entrepreneurs: time. And like the old saying goes–time is money, people, so before you consider manually sending out emails to the sea of humans littering the web, consider taking a more automated approach.
Have you managed to acquire a great deal of traffic from your Email marketing efforts? Congratulations! How about sharing some of the knowledge with your fellow civilians down below in the comments section!