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Posts Tagged ‘e-mail’
Thursday, October 13th, 2011
Can you send out too many e-mails? Is there ever a point at which you’ve gone too far in your e-mail marketing?
I think there is, but you can probably get away with e-mailing your subscriber list to death if you let them know right up front how often you send out your e-mails.
For a business, weekly is probably enough. Monthly might be better in some cases, but the problem with monthly e-mails is that you aren’t in the minds of your prospects often enough. That’s why I prefer weekly. However, many businesses can find profit in sending out e-mails daily. It’s a case where you have to know your audience. But what about multiple times daily?
You have to set your e-mail marketing schedule according to your audience and their expectations. If you can get away with short e-mail messages throughout the day, then by all means make it work for you. But be up front about your intentions.
You’ll get a lot more receptivity from your list if you tell them on the opt-in form that you send out multiple e-mails per day. You’ll see fewer unsubscribes and more opens. That said, for most small businesses, again, weekly is often enough.
Tags: e-mail, e-mail marketing
Posted in E-mail Marketing for Small Business | 2 Comments »
Wednesday, October 5th, 2011
The holiday season is just around the corner and will be upon us quicker than we can say “Holiday Greeting Cards!”
Living in a world filled with technology, do you still mail out your cards via the USPS or do you send out e-cards? If you’re sending out e-cards, do they convey the same depth of emotion which a hand picked, hand written card is thought to expresses?
According to the Greeting Card Association (GCA), approximately 7 billion greeting cards are purchased annually in the U.S., generating $7.5 billion in retail sales. Half of those cards are Seasonal Cards, with Christmas cards being the most popular in the seasonal category. Only 500 million e-cards are sent each year in the world for all occasions.
E-cards often supplement traditional card sending and are frequently sent to make quick casual contact, or for an occasion that seems too informal for a traditional card. Consumers rarely send an e-greeting to replace a traditional card.
The top objective as listed on their website is “To celebrate, promote and preserve the tradition of sending greeting cards.”
Hallmark claims over the Christmas holiday 1.5 billion cards are sent, which includes boxed and individual cards. Hallmark says about e-cards:
E-cards provide ways to help people connect at times when they might not choose a paper card but still want to reach out to friends or family.
Regardless of what these two greeting card companies may say, as early as December 2007, The New York Times claimed sending e-cards was gaining ground with businesses. Journalist Maria Aspan asserted in the article:
Many companies are embracing electronic greetings, which are cheaper, greener and more versatile than traditional cards and often look more sophisticated to pixel-trained eyes. Now that people have grown more nimble with online video, point-and-click holiday greetings have become a new palette for creativity, while static paper cards may induce a wince rather than a joyful noise.
An article in the LA Times by Sandra M. Jones, printed December 9, 2010, declares “Holiday cards’ future isn’t merry or bright”. The article says
While Christmas remains the holiday that sparks the most greeting card sales, fewer people send cards each year, according to Unity Marketing. The percentage of consumers buying greeting cards for Christmas fell from 77% in 2005 to 73% in 2007 and to 62% in 2009, according to the Stevens, Pa., market research firm’s 2010 report on greeting cards and stationery.
Pamela Danziger, president of Unity Marketing says
Compared to these instant forms of communication, addressing a preprinted card and sending it via snail mail seems like an antiquated waste of time.
In “The Greeting Card, Stationery, Gift Wrap & Party Goods and Paper Crafting Report 2010,” Unity Marketing stated:
The market for greeting cards is a tough one in today’s environment with consumers having so much faster, easier and in may cases cheaper ways to send a greeting.
Which side of the ‘mailed vs e-card’ debate will you fall on this year?
Tags: e-cards, e-mail, greet cards, Holiday greetings
Posted in Small Business Internet Marketing | 4 Comments »
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 »
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 »
Tuesday, December 21st, 2010
 E-mail scams are nothing new. They’ve been around as long as e-mail marketing itself. And you can bet that if there is a website that is popular, then e-mail scammers will use its reputation to snooker people. It’s happened to eBay users, Amazon users, Google users, MySpace users, and now it’s happening to Facebook users.
The image to the right is a screenshot of a Facebook e-mail scam I recently received (and almost fell for). Click the image to see a larger copy of it.
Notice how suave this is. It’s an imitation to participate in a Facebook survey. Harmless, right? You’d think so, and the people behind this are hoping you’ll think so. But the reality is once you take the survey you have given someone else permission to spam you to death. You’ve basically agreed to receive marketing materials from them – for life! So don’t fall for it.
One reason this works so well (and I’m sure there will be people who take the survey) is because the e-mail scammers went through a lot of trouble to ensure their e-mail looks like it came from Facebook. Upon closer scrutiny, I discovered the e-mail came from a .cz.cc domain name. The .cz extension represents the Czech Republic and .cc is Coco Islands. Since Facebook isn’t headquartered in either of those, this is obviously a scam.
When you click the link to take the survey, you’ll see this:
Here’s the disclaimer at the bottom of the e-mail:
If you get this Facebook e-mail scam sent to you, delete it. Don’t respond!
I didn’t see any evidence of malware or anything nasty attached to this, but if you respond you’ll receive a lot of spam e-mail from its creators. Some of those could contain viruses or malware. Just don’t risk it!
Tags: e-mail, e-mail marketing, facebook, scam
Posted in E-mail Marketing for Small Business | 3 Comments »
Saturday, November 13th, 2010
It appears that Facebook has been holding a secret – they’re going to start offering e-mail services. That explains the recent tizzy Google got into about Facebook’s non-reciprocal data sharing policies.
What this move really does is make Facebook and Google more direct competitors. Since Facebook hasn’t actually rolled out its e-mail client yet we have nothing to go on in terms of what to expect. I’m sure that there will be those users who opt for Facebook’s product and then the Google loyalists. We’ll likely have pretty clear lines of demarcation and it will likely happen fast.
Frank Reed has already made his preference known. He’s a Google man. In fact, he’s got some pretty harsh words about Facebook and, I hate to admit it but, he’s making a good point. Should Facebook be trusted with your data?
It’s possible, I guess, that Facebook could roll out an e-mail client that does have a privacy feature and that the company will go through great measures to protect your privacy, but based on past actions Frank is saying it isn’t likely that Facebook will respect users’ privacy. Is he right? What do you think?
Can Facebook compete with Gmail on e-mail services? Will it be useful in other ways? Will Facebook’s e-mail client have natural social features that Gmail has tried to incorporate unsuccessfully? Tell us what you think.
Tags: e-mail, facebook, google
Posted in E-mail Marketing for Small Business | 1 Comment »
Monday, August 17th, 2009
An autoresponder is a cool software package that will automatically send an e-mail to any e-mail address that signs up or opts in to a mailing list. It is most often used to follow up with subscribers to an e-mail newsletter or other e-mail list. You can send one follow e-mail through an autoresponder or several. It’s up to you. But it’s a good tool to have.
When you set up an autoresponder you need to think about what its use will be: Who will receive it, when they’ll receive it, how often they’ll receive your mail, and why. Standard information, right?
Of course, an autoresponder message need not always be a sales message, though it can be. The main advantage is you can set your messages to send and then forget about it. Once you turn the autoresponder on then anyone who triggers the response will automatically receive your messages. So you have to put some real thought into what your messages will say and how many you’ll send out to follow up with a list.
Let’s say you invite people to sign up for a newsletter. After they opt in, or subscribe, you send an automatic message thanking them for their subscription. A few days later you can have the autoresponder, pre-programmed, send a follow up message offering an upgrade to your paid newsletter. A few days later you can send a similar message. Maybe every third message you want to see an offer for a free gift. What you send is up to you. Get creative. There are no hard and fast rules. The main idea is to save yourself time by programming the autoresponder to send messages to people based on their level of interest. It’s an essential tool for anyone doing business online.
Tags: autoresponder, e-mail, e-mail marketing, newsletter
Posted in E-mail Marketing for Small Business | 3 Comments »
Monday, May 12th, 2008
Small business marketing is my passion. If you read my blog every day then you know that. Recently, I was honored to be interviewed by Chris Witting, host of the Internet Radio Talk Show “The Power Of Small Business.” Chris hosts a great radio show through TalkZone, an online radio syndication tool and he interviewed me recently regarding small business marketing tactics and blogging.
I encourage to listen to the interview. I talk about the importance of having a website, how to market your website to the search engines through SEO and the use of keywords and inbound links. You’ll also get valuable information on how to use e-mail and blogs to market your company online.
The link to the radio show where you can hear Chris interview me is right here. Head on over for a great interview with Chris Witting and catch the value!
Tags: blogging, e-mail, radio talk show, small business marketing
Posted in Small Business Internet Marketing | 1 Comment »
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