Sales & Marketing Consultant, Bestselling Author & Sales Conference Speaker

You may be familiar with email marketing in that you get plenty of emails in your inbox. A lot of people are shying away from that type of marketing but in fact it can be very effective if used correctly. You should not put away a great tool like your email because it can help your company thrive. There are ways in which this type of marketing is still growing and getting more business than ever before so make sure to pay attention to the trends of marketing so that you can use this type of technique in a way that will help you grow.

Target Audience

By far the most effective way to use email marketing is to target the audience. If you already have visitors to your website, you should be offering the option of sending them offers or information from your company. Newsletters or promotions should be on top of the list when it comes to marketing through email. You can give your customers the option by signing up through a “contact us” form or if they make a purchase, you can also give them the option to get emails in the future regarding your company and any promotions that you may have.

For New Companies

If your company is relatively new, it is important that you get new customers or visitors to your website and one of the best ways to do that is through email marketing. There are companies that can help you with email leads which they have collected over time as people who may be interested in what you have to say or sell. By using these leads you will be targeting customers who may want to hear from you. This technique is not as effective as targeted email contacts with people who have previously done business with you but it is still effective.

Happy Marketing!

Sean

Sean McPheat

http://www.seanmcpheat.com

(Image by Bodya Grinovetskiy at FreeDigitalPhotos.net)

With the emphasis on social media the new marketing trends being of such key focus recently, you may be tempted to leave everything else aside and jump all-in to the social media marketing pool. However, whilst it is a very good thing to go with the flow and keep up the pace with the times, you should not leave behind a good old friend in the form of email marketing.

Not everybody spends every waking moment on Facebook and Twitter to see what is new. There are many people that prefer staying in touch with their favorite businesses through the old fashioned email. As long as you are not too insistent and you do not spam your customers’ with useless information, they will be happy to hear from you from time to time.

The email is a powerful tool in the hands of the right marketer, as it is a great way of highlighting important information about your business. The more people you have subscribed to your newsletter, the more potential customers you have in your database. It is also a good reference point, as it lets you know how many people are actually interested in what you have to offer.

Email Marketing is still a great way to keep your customers informed on your latest deals and promotions. This is the type of information they want to see in their inbox. People everywhere are interested in saving money and getting their hands on a bargain, so this is what you need to offer them when you send out an email marketing campaign. Give them a reason to respond and offer them something that they will really see the value in.

Happy Marketing!

Sean

Sean McPheat

http://www.seanmcpheat.com

(Image by J S Creationzs at FreeDigitalPhotos.net)

Developing an email marketing list enables business to make frequent efforts to reach out to customers and clients. You can send them exclusive offers or coupons not available to the public at large and potentially gain loyal sources of profit. Building such a list, however, requires persistence and patience on your part.

One tactic for helping you attract a following is to create opt-in forms in strategic places on your website, prompting visitors to fill in easy-to-use forms and offering them benefits for doing so. An opt-in form should have five elements:

1. An attention-grabbing headline
2. A brief explanation of the benefits
3. An explicit call to action
4. The form itself
5. Proof of why it’s a good idea, such as a quote from a testimonial or media mention

It’s a good idea to offer visitors some kind of incentive for signing up, such as a free report or access to a subscriber-only webinar. Your description of the benefits of subscribing and your call to action should be brief and to the point, but you should also give enough information about yourself so as to attract your target audience.

The less information you require in your opt-in form, the more likely it is that visitors will sign up. An opt-in form that requires only an email address will generate more sign-ups than one that also requires people to submit their names. If your ultimate goal is also to obtain addresses and phone numbers, consider offering an additional incentive later via email for submitting that information to you directly.

Now that you have an idea of what goes into an opt-in form, where should you put it on your site?

1. The home page: The home page is one of the most common places to position an opt-in form. In order to attract the most subscribers through your home page, your opt-in form should be located above the fold, where people will see it immediately without having to scroll down.
2. The shopping cart: Many sites include opt-in options with the checkout process. Often this is a box that customers click on to receive special offers from you. Given that the consumer is already investing their money in your product or service, this is a logical place to extend an offer.
3. Pop-up windows I know, I know. Pop-up windows can be irritating. Yet their continuing use points to their effectiveness as a marketing tool. I don’t suggest you include a pop-up window on your landing page, but you can put them in other locations on your site and test them to gauge their effect. If you find that they are prompting a high bounce rate from your site, you can discontinue using them. But for some retailers, they can be very useful.

Building an effective email marketing list will require that you test different strategies to see what works best for you. Tweaking headlines, calls to action, and button colors can all make a difference in who signs up. Be patient and trust the process.

Happy Marketing!
Sean
Sean McPheat

http://www.seanmcpheat.com

Everybody knows that there is an optimal email level somewhere out there; a magical line that you need to be careful not to cross for fear of people opting out and all your hard lead-generation work going straight down the drain.

If you’re interested in taking your email marketing to the next level this year, consider these simple tests before you hit the send button.

Apply the Scientific Method

Treat your explorations in email marketing like scientific experiments. Apply the scientific method, so that you can be sure that you’re learning from everything you do. Do this by establishing a meaningful hypothesis, taking test samples, and taking accurate measurements.

If you can remember back to junior high school, a hypothesis is an educated guess of what you expect will happen. For instance, you could hypothesise that doubling the frequency of your email will drive your click-through rates from 20% to 50%. Or you could hypothesise that doubling your email frequency would cut 20% from your subscriber list over 2 weeks (in this case, you shouldn’t complete the experiment).

Test samples are a crucial part of the email marketing process. When you want to implement a slightly new strategy, you should never be sending it to your entire subscriber list at the same time. Instead, take a small sample, one who you think will be most receptive to the change, and send it only to them. Based on their response, you can then implement whatever changes in frequency or content you’ve made to your whole list.

Lastly, make sure that every change you’re making to your email marketing campaign is being measured for optimisation. This means that if you make a change in the frequency that you’re sending out emails, then you should be measuring the effects on click-through rates (hopefully higher) as well as the effect on subscriber rates (if too many people are un-subscribing based on a change you made, you may want to think about changing it back).

Add Value

The golden rule of marketing is doubly true over email. Only send your readers something if it is of value to them. And don’t forget the corollary to that rule – don’t send anything to you subscribers if it doesn’t have specific value to them.

The readers of your website, and the people who gave you their email addresses and asked you to send them information did so because they are interested in you, your information, and the products and services that you provide. Take that information and use it wisely. They want to be sold to, but only if you have something of value.

Happy marketing!

Sean

Sean McPheat

http://www.seanmcpheat.com