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Archive for the ‘E-mail Marketing for Small Business’ Category
Monday, October 3rd, 2011
Let something get popular for a few days and someone somewhere is going to ask if something else is dying. Social media was supposed to kill search. It didn’t. Now, it’s supposed to be killing e-mail. But is it?
Mark Evans says “no” and I heartily agree.
It will be a long time before e-mail marketing dies. And it likely won’t be social media that kills it.
Social media is about public interaction. There is also a lot of competition for your content. You have five seconds to grab your prospect’s attention and sell them something. The stream moves on. Now what?
With e-mail, you don’t have any competition for eyes. It’s your prospect and your content. If your content is good and does its job, you will get the sale. No competition.
E-mail is seen as a private space. Your prospect will not give out her e-mail address willy-nilly. You have to earn it. But if you can earn it and get inside that e-mail inbox, then you have your prospect’s attention. If you can keep it, you can turn that attention into dollars.
E-mail is still one of the biggest converting tools in Internet marketing. That won’t change any time soon.
Tags: e-mail, e-mail marketing, Social Media
Posted in E-mail Marketing for Small Business | 3 Comments »
Monday, September 26th, 2011
So you want to increase the number of followers and fans you have on the social media websites you use the most? That’s a good idea. You can use your e-mail list to drive new traffic to your social media profiles and increase your following. Here are three ways to do that.
- Send an invite – Aside from your weekly or monthly newsletter, send out a special e-mail invitation to your subscriber list to invite them to follow you on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and other social media sites. But don’t just invite them to follow you. Tell them why they should follow you. What are you doing on those sites that no one else is doing?
- Present an exclusive offer – Make an offer that is available only to users of a specific social media site. For instance, you could offer a freebie or a discount to people who Like you Facebook, or to people who follow you on Twitter or retweet your content so many times.
- Add social sharing buttons to your e-mail - This one is gold. It takes just a few minutes and the dividend could be huge. Your e-mail subscribers will know that you have a social media presence by the buttons you add to your newsletter. Not only will they share your content, but they’ll friend you too.
In today’s online marketplace, it isn’t enough to have an e-mail subscriber list and a social media presence. You should be syncing them.
Tags: e-mail, e-mail marketing, social following, Social Media, social sharing
Posted in E-mail Marketing for Small Business | 3 Comments »
Wednesday, September 14th, 2011
Are you ready to win some new customers through e-mail? Here are 5 ways that you can use e-mail marketing to help you win new customers and to make your old customers happier.
- Hold A Contest – Send out an e-mail blast with a contest and give away something valuable. It can be a service or a product that your business provides or it can be something like an iPad or a Kindle that is in high demand. Make sure that you explain the contest rules clearly and what you are offering. Make it simple to enter the contest and make sure you are giving away something of value.
- Mail A Coupon – Through a service like Groupon you can send out a coupon for your products or services. People like to save money so give them an opportunity.
- Feature In Your Newsletter – Have a company newsletter? Start a featured client column. People love to see their name and photo in print.
- Celebrity Column – A variation of the “feature in your newsletter” theme is the Celebrity Column theme. Find a celebrity in your niche and ask them to write a column for your e-mail newsletter.
- Special Offers – Special offers are one time deals. Your subscribers won’t see this deal again – ever. The scarcity of something of ultimate value, a one-time deal, could spur your e-mail subscribers to action. It’s at least worth a try.
These 5 e-mail marketing tactics have won new customers for other marketers, they can work for you too.
Tags: coupons, e-mail marketing, newsletter, special offers
Posted in E-mail Marketing for Small Business | 3 Comments »
Saturday, August 20th, 2011
E-mail marketing, after twenty years and counting, is still one of the most powerful and effective means of marketing a small business online. Here are 5 reasons you should be using e-mail for marketing in 2011 and 2012.
- Everyone is using e-mail – Just about everyone has an e-mail address today. Even people who may not be using e-mail have considered it. But if you started sending out frequent e-mail blasts, you’d hit at least 90% of your target market right where they spend the majority of their reading time.
- It is cost effective – There is no form of marketing that is more cost effective than e-mail marketing. You can send out an e-mail blast to 100,000 readers for the same price that you can send one out to 1,000 readers.
- High click-through rates – E-mail still has the highest response rate in town. It’s less expensive than pay-per-click advertising and you are reaching warm leads who gave you permission to contact them.
- You have their permission - And that brings me to my next point. Since you have permission to contact your list, you will get fewer complaints and you’ll find that your reputation is more intact. Use a double opt-in process and your marketing will be ten times more effective.
- You control delivery – With snail mail, you are at the mercy of the post office. With e-mail, you have more control over delivery options. And it’s cheaper.
Start your e-mail marketing today. It’s the most effective online marketing available.
Tags: e-mail marketing, online marketing
Posted in E-mail Marketing for Small Business | 7 Comments »
Monday, July 25th, 2011
For years we’ve been listening to online marketing experts talk about how e-mail marketing is the most effective marketing online. Is it really?
Yes, I’ll have to agree.
For one thing, postage rates are going up. That means the cost of direct mail marketing is getting to be out of reach for a lot of businesses. But you can often get great results – in many cases, better results – from e-mail marketing than you can from direct mail marketing. And at a lesser expense.
If you are a company still tied to the old newsletter model of business, then I encourage you to update your practices. You might be reluctant to do that, but I think there are some real practical reasons to do so. These include:
- E-mail marketing is less expensive
- Most companies who switch realize an equal or greater response than their direct mail response rate
- E-mail is more convenient for most people
- E-mail is at least opt-in and best practices is double opt-in so you’ll get fewer complaints and better responses
- Since it is less expensive, you don’t need the same response rate to realize an ROI
- Tracking results is easier and more accurate
There are lots of reasons to switch from direct mail marketing to e-mail marketing. I highly recommend that you consider doing that now.
Tags: direct mail marketing, e-mail marketing
Posted in E-mail Marketing for Small Business | 7 Comments »
Monday, May 2nd, 2011
After 20 years (give or take), e-mail marketing is still one of the most efficient and effective ways to promote a business or brand. Since online marketing first took of in the mid-1990s, e-mail marketing has been the No. 1 way that serious Internet marketers made their cash. It still is.
Why does e-mail marketing work?
I think there are a number of reasons why e-mail marketing still works. First, it’s a trusted medium. Just take a look at all those e-mails your friends share with you – I’m talking about the urban legends that keep circulating. How many of your friends will not hesitate to copy you on an e-mail that is obviously a fake news story without even bothering to check into its validity at Snopes.com or a similar truth-telling website?
More people use e-mail every day than any other digital tool. Most people who use e-mail have more than one e-mail address and use e-mail as their primary communication tool. They use it multiple times throughout a normal business day.
E-mail marketing prospects are very responsive. If you were to send out a direct marketing piece by snail mail, you could hope to get a 2% response, which would be awesome. But your margins would be lower with a similar response by e-mail since you’d have to pay for printing costs and postage. With e-mail, a much lower response means a higher profit margin. However, successful e-mail campaigns generally produce a higher response rate. Why?
The reason e-mail marketing is so effective is because you have to get permission from people before you send them an e-mail. They have to sign up for your list, which isn’t necessary for snail mail direct marketing.
Once you have a person’s permission, you can send them any number of e-mails you want. They’ll either respond or they won’t. But if you send out quality information by e-mail, then you will get a response. The reason e-mail marketing is so effective is because your clients have asked you to send them information. It’s a warm list.
Tags: direct mail marketing, direct marketing, e-mail, e-mail marketing, snail mail
Posted in E-mail Marketing for Small Business | 1 Comment »
Saturday, April 23rd, 2011
What can a grocer possibly know about e-mail marketing? Everyone needs groceries. It’s not like you have to sell the benefits of eating, right?
While it’s technically true that groceries are something that everyone has to buy, it’s also true that they have plenty of choices in where to get their groceries. They don’t have to get them from one place over another. And that’s why marketing is important. It’s about positioning your company above the competition. E-mail marketing is one strategy for making that happen.
One grocer is using e-mail marketing and getting a 55% open rate on its e-mails. That’s phenomenal!
One particularly telling comment in the Constant Contact interview is the answer to the very last question. I love this answer:
Don’t use it just to sell; use it to inform. Use it to build a relationship. Once you start down the road of a hard sell, that’s when you start losing folks because it’s not information that they want — they want information they can use that will make their lives easier.
That’s clearly the answer of someone who understands e-mail marketing. It’s not about selling you product. It’s about building a relationship with your customers. Give them rock solid information they can use and they will open your e-mails, read them, and call you when they have a need for your services.
Tags: e-mail marketing, marketing
Posted in E-mail Marketing for Small Business | 6 Comments »
Saturday, February 19th, 2011
One of the most frustrating aspects of running an online business is losing a customer during the checkout process. This is often referred to as an abandoned shopping cart and is similar to an offline shopper heading to the checkout, then dumping their basket and leaving the store empty handed. In an offline environment it is relatively easy to analyze why that shopper had left empty handed. But what about the online environment?
Shoppers abandon the online process for a number of reasons. Sometimes they haven’t even abandoned the process, they may have just lost their Internet connection. Other situations include unsuitable payment options, expensive delivery fees, or self doubt. Trust can also be an issue – not so much trust in your business, but a lack of trust when it comes to revealing credit card information.
Ideally, your shopping cart process should request an e-mail contact early in the process. If it does, don’t ignore that information. It could be vital to winning back that customer, and perhaps completing the transaction. Combine your e-mail marketing and customer service skills and make contact with that lost customer. Don’t spam them and don’t add them to your e-mail marketing list. Rather, send a personal e-mail asking for feedback on the checkout process. Your aim should be two-fold – to gain feedback as to why they abandoned the shopping process, and to regain their business.
The first can be gained by simply asking a series of questions. The latter can be achieved by making an offer of some description. You may want to leave the offer to a follow up e-mail – hopefully addressing their issues. E-mail marketing isn’t always about promoting your business aggressively. Sometimes, it be used as a valuable customer service tool.
Tags: checkout process, customer service, shopping carts
Posted in E-mail Marketing for Small Business | 1 Comment »
Monday, February 7th, 2011
The Yellow Pages now have an opt-out website. Really. And that’s a good thing, right?
Not if you listen to Frank Reed.
I guess there’s good reason to be skeptical, but I have a different take on the subject than Frank does. I agree with his five talking points, of course, but I’m not so sure about his cynical conclusion. From the article:
Unfortunately, we live in a society where this kind of thing can be passed off as real action and the result is the ability of the Yellow Page industry to say “Look we are doing our part!” when they know full well that most people won’t even know the option exists.
Welcome to online America, home of the shallow. Where people can look like they are concerned and give any appearance they need to get by.
OK, I suppose it’s possible that the Yellow Pages are using the opt-out website as a smoke and mirrors illusion-creating ruse to make people think they care about the environment. Then what? It won’t change the fact that people are using the Yellow Pages less and less. I don’t see people saying, “Oh, look, the Yellow Pages are going green. Please deliver them to me so I can make fewer online searches this year.” Do you?
Rather, I think it’s probably likely that the folks at the Yellow Pages have seen the writing on the wall. They’re going to lose to online search. Period. You can’t stop the train. So, what better way to collect your e-mail address than to give you a way to opt out of print delivery? Then, they can redirect you to the Online Yellow Pages using the most effective Internet marketing available – e-mail marketing.
That, to me, seems like a much more likely strategy. What do you think?
Tags: e-mail marketing, internet yellow pages, online marketing, yellow pages
Posted in E-mail Marketing for Small Business | 2 Comments »
Sunday, February 6th, 2011
It seems that e-mail marketing is still one of the most efficient and cost effective channels available to businesses – that’s both online and traditional brick and mortar businesses. What may surprise many small business owners is that social media marketing is so far down the list, especially when it comes to two-way communications. At least, that’s according to data reported on WebProNews recently.
The data suggests that 19% of respondents rated promotional e-mails as influencing their visits to websites. This compared to only 8% for search engines and 5% for social media. When it came to communications, 64% preferred promotional e-mails compared to 25% traditional snail mail, 8% social media, and 5% for mobile phone.
Although these statistics make for interesting reading, they only tell half of the story. There are many businesses that are now finding that a mix of the two, that is, social media and e-mail marketing, to be very effective. Social media is being used not to drive traffic to a website, but to promote a brand and to collect e-mail data. That e-mail data is then used to further promote the business.
Where this research does prove helpful is that it does reinforce the view held my many that e-mail marketing does deliver highly targeted traffic. It also supports the theory that e-mail marketing delivers a much higher return than some other forms of marketing. Social media is still young in many ways and because of this, it has been hard to define effective marketing methodology. By combining the two, businesses are getting the best of both worlds – they are promoting a brand through social channels while promoting their products through promotional e-mails. If it helps your business grow, then you’re moving in the right direction, no matter what the statistics say.
Tags: e-mail marketing, promotional e-mails, social media marketing
Posted in E-mail Marketing for Small Business | 16 Comments »
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