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Posts Tagged ‘Email Marketing’
Saturday, January 28th, 2012
Online marketing has, to a certain extent, blinded many business people to some of the simpler rules of business. Analytics is one area where the online world often seems to have different rules than an offline business. What’s the most important metric for a small business. Traffic? Conversions? Search rankings? These are all areas that online businesses concentrate on, and whilst they are important areas to measure, they are not the most important.
For small businesses, the bottom line always has been and always will be profitability. Engaging in a pay-per-click campaign is fine, and measuring traffic and conversions is always going to help with future planning, and perhaps even modifying your current campaigns. At the end of the day, if your pay-per-click is not making a profit, then your business could be on the slide. The same can be said for SEO and social media marketing. If your profitability is being compromised, then you need to either modify your marketing campaign or to look for alternative marketing methods.
Pay-per-click, search engine optimization and social media marketing are not always the best channels for some businesses. Alternatives such as email marketing and banner advertising can achieve better results in terms of profitability – the former, often achieved through data collected offline. You would be surprised at how many brick and mortar businesses now collect email addresses at the checkout and then use those email addresses as very successful email marketing campaigns.
The most important metric for any small business is the return on investment (ROI) that is measured against any campaign. There are times when a marketing campaign – for example, a brand awareness campaign – doesn’t result in short term profits that are easily identified. As a small business owner, you need to make judgements as to whether or not a marketing campaign should be measured or designed more for PR or branding. Analytics are important, however, you need the right data and that data should be measured against a desired goal.
Tags: Email Marketing, Pay Per Click, search engine optimization, small business finance
Posted in Tracking & Analytics | 5 Comments »
Saturday, January 24th, 2009
Email marketing is commonly associated with the bigger or more successful companies in the internet community, but how do you think they got to be successful? That little extra contact with your potential clients will give you an extra boost in business.
How do you become successful in email marketing like the big businesses?
- Get personal. Reveal a bit about yourself in your emails, one detail at a time, to let your readers know you`re human.
- Be useful. Nothing gets deleted faster than an email asking for money, not when that is all it has to offer! Give out some helpful information and you`ll be rewarded with more clickthroughs.
- Don`t waste time. Long-winded emails are a waste of time. As are emails that have nothing to say. Don`t waste people`s time and make sure you only write when you have something to say.
- Keep learning. There`s never a good time to stop learning about email marketing. So keep reading about it, learning and testing the latest techniques and you`ll be good.
Email marketing can be a great boost to your business. Don`t assume it`s only for larger businesses, try it for yourself!
Tags: business, Email Marketing
Posted in E-mail Marketing for Small Business | 2 Comments »
Sunday, January 18th, 2009
Small businesses need every advantage they can get and email marketing is just one of the ways to get ahead. If you have a method of reaching your clients over and over again, you`ll be able to reinforce your sales message and build up your reputation . . . resulting in more sales.
Email marketing is effective.
If you go about it right, you`ll find that email marketing is extremely effective and far more useful than many other methods of marketing your small business.
Email marketing is economical.
Print marketing is simply too costly for many small businesses these days, but email marketing can literally cost you $20 a month if you do your own writing. Add a little extra if you are planning on hiring a ghostwriter to do this work for you.
Email marketing is interactive.
People can respond to email, so it`s worth it to continue sending these out. Make sure you invite people to share their thoughts with you and you`ll end up with people who are far more likely to buy from you, since they fell that you are a real person.
Email marketing can be tracked.
You can have a far more successful email marketing campaign if you track the results and alter your messages to fit. This will help you stick to what works.
If you aren`t already using email marketing to help promote your small business, now is the time to get started!
Tags: email, Email Marketing, small business
Posted in E-mail Marketing for Small Business | 3 Comments »
Friday, January 9th, 2009
January is often the time to start new things. If you haven`t begun email marketing for your business yet, then you should certainly think about getting started. It`s an area of promotion that can only help your business if you are careful not to spam.
It isn`t that difficult to get started in email marketing, in fact, you can do it in an afternoon. All you need is an autoresponder like Aweber or GetResponse and a website. The autoresponders let you set everything up and then you can copy and paste the code onto your webpage and presto! you have a form where people can start signing up.
Offering a free ebook or report is a good idea if you want to really encourage people to sign up. A little extra motivation to sign up for your email newsletter or email marketing campaign never hurts.
You don`t even have to write your own email marketing newsletter, if you don`t have the time. There are writers who are more than happy to ghostwrite articles for your newsletters and while this does require a small outlay, it is well worth it to have your email marketing running almost on its own.
Tags: Email Marketing, newsletter
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »
Saturday, December 27th, 2008
The new year is the perfect chance for you to mix up your email marketing strategy a little. While you don`t need to change everything around, it`s a good idea to take a look now at your tracking and analysis.
Figure out what you need to improve and where your weak points are so you can boost your email marketing strategy in the coming year. This is something that can make all the difference in how well things go in 2009. You`ll be able to adjust everything now so that you are able to be more successful going into the next year.
So, what should you be changing? Anything that doesn`t work. Is there a specific email that you find caused more unsubscribes than any other? Learn from the mistakes you`ve made and make sure that you understand what you did wrong or what experiments simply didn`t work out.
Email marketing is a great way to reach clients, but you need to ensure that you are doing your best or you won`t be reaching everyone you could be.
Tags: analysis, Email Marketing, tracking
Posted in E-mail Marketing for Small Business | No Comments »
Wednesday, December 3rd, 2008
If you have tried email marketing before and found that it just isn`t working as well as you`d hoped, there is still more you can do. We can always be improving our marketing campaigns, of course, but I`m going to share a little tip that will make your email marketing more effective.
Be more personal.
Do you pay more attention to someone who writes to your in a formal, educational tone or someone who is writing as a friend? We automatically listen to our friends better, so if you can create that feeling in your email marketing, you`ll find that more and more people will start to pay attention and buy from you.
It`s just a matter of relating to your readers. Say hi at the beginning of the email and include codes that will be replaced with the person`s name. Personalized emails seem far friendlier and will be more likely to get a good response.
That`s it. Be friendly and personal in your email marketing. Your business will benefit.
Tags: email, Email Marketing, friendly, personal
Posted in E-mail Marketing for Small Business | 2 Comments »
Sunday, November 30th, 2008
This is an area where many business owners are divided. There are pros and cons to both types of marketing, but really, there`s no reason not to do both if you are already considering direct mail. Since email marketing costs virtually nothing, it doesn`t add much to the marketing costs and even if you end up with just a few people who take you up on the offers you send out, it will be worth it.
Direct mail is still used by many because of the effectiveness of actually putting information in paper form into the hands of the consumer. However, it is fairly expensive and you will find that you need to have a pretty decent budget if you decide to go with this technique.
Marketing is something that every business needs to do. Whether you are going with email marketing or direct mail, it`s a good idea to consider the possibility of doing both. After all, you can never have too much publicity.
Direct mail may be expensive, but there is a good reason companies continue to use it.
Tags: direct mail, Email Marketing, marketing
Posted in Direct Mail for Small Business | 1 Comment »
Sunday, November 23rd, 2008
Email marketing can be tough, if you`re watching your numbers constantly. Every email that you send out will likely result in some people unsubscribing from your list. While it`s not nice, it does happen to everyone.
Here are a few email marketing tips for keeping your subscribers around a little longer.
- Don`t email too often. Most people don`t want to receive dozens of emails in a week from the same person and will quit your list.
- Keep emails short. Long emails take too much time to read and you`ll lose subscribers.
- Avoid only ads. Unless people have signed up to receive ad-laden email marketing, try to balance the ads with more informative articles.
- Double check everything. A common ploy these days is to mess up accidentally so you can send another email. Unfortunately, this means even legit mistakes are suspect.
Email marketing is a great way to increase business, but you do need to be careful. You won`t be able to avoid all unsubscribes, but you can certainly minimize the damage!
Tags: Email Marketing, subscribers, unsubscribe
Posted in E-mail Marketing for Small Business | 1 Comment »
Sunday, November 16th, 2008
If you`re looking to boost your email opt in list, then you might want to try these three hot methods below. Each one is designed to get you more email subscriber fast and they can be put to use very quickly.
- Contest. A contest that is short and sweet can grow your email list rapidly and all you need is a great prize and require email sign up for entry.
- Giveaway. Online giveaways are a great way to boost your email opt ins overnight. You`ll need an info product, preferably an ebook of some type, but this could be written by a ghostwriter. In order for people to download the freebie (which should have a good price on it), they need to sign up for your email list.
- Freebie. Whether you give away an ebook that would normally sell for $19.99 or a 30 min. conference call, you can offer people something special for free just to sign up to receive emails.
Any one of these could work very well for you, but there`s no reason not to try all three. The more people you have on your list, the better your email marketing will go.
Tags: email, Email Marketing, opt-in
Posted in E-mail Marketing for Small Business | No Comments »
Wednesday, October 29th, 2008
There are times when you`ll find that your muse has vanished and there is no news to include in your email marketing. What should you do? Just wait or force something out?
This depends greatly on how you have structured your email marketing. If you`ve been sending out emails on a regular basis, say weekly, then you`ll need to keep up with that schedule. On the other hand, if you have no set schedule and only send out something when there is news, you can probably wait a little longer. A good rule of thumb is to have some type of contact with your subscribers at least once a month.
With email marketing, if you can`t think of something to say, you don`t want to send out junk since this will cause people to unsubscribe. Instead, why not try one of the following:
- List tips for using your product
- Offer a review of a site or product
- Answer a reader question
- Reprint an article from a long time ago, over a year, preferably
Email marketing can be a bit of a challenge when you lack inspiration, but if you keep a few extra articles on hand, you can buy yourself time to find your muse again.
Tags: content, Email Marketing, muse
Posted in E-mail Marketing for Small Business | 1 Comment »
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