If you have a small marketing budget, or are looking for an effective yet low cost way or marking your web site, products or services, email marketing is the way to go! Effective utilization of email marketing can be a boon to your online business. Email marketing has been proven to have a response rate of up to 20% vs.. Direct Mail marketing’s response rate of only .5 – 2%. In addition, with Direct Mail, response rates can vary from several weeks to several months. Thus, knowing the effectiveness of your campaign is “iffy” at best. In Email Marketing, you will receive 85% of your responses inside of 48 hours. This allows you to measure the effectiveness of your ad or newsletter quickly and make any needed changes for your next campaign.
When soliciting email addresses, remember to make your visitors comfortable. Make sure your privacy policy is clearly posted and ask only for the information that you need. Most of us treat our email box as “sacred space”. Do not allow your newsletter to look like spam, or it will be deleted and the member will withdraw from your list. Avoid those “fantastic opportunity” type phrases and anything that is considered hype.
Online Newsletters allow you to keep in touch with your clients on a regular basis and share your knowledge and skills with a large array of people. Site Visitors will join your newsletter in an effort to get to know you, see what you have to offer and are typically testing your knowledge before “buying” into your services.
Newsletters are usually 3 – 4 paragraphs long and focus on one or two pertinent ideas. When writing content for your newsletter remember these key points: Content, Clarity, Concise. Your content should be something of “value” to your newsletter membership. You need to be clear in the message that you are trying to convey and you have to keep your newsletters on topic, fairly short and to the point. Remember, in a newsletter, you are not selling but rather sharing your expertise.
Email Promotions are very short, normally touting a special sale, new item or service and contain a strong call to action. The objective of an Email Promotion is to obtain sales. Here is where the true value of Email Promotions come into play – SPEED. Let’s say you decide to have a sale or special promotion on Friday and today is Tuesday. There is no way you can accomplish this via regular mail. Your email promotion can be created and sent out in a matter of hours, and you even have enough time for follow up, and “tweaking” your campaign. Check your web traffic after sending out each promotion so you can measure effectiveness and average response time.