Email Marketing
What is Email Marketing?
Have you ever gone to a website and signed up for a newsletter or requested to be put on a mailing list? In doing so, you authorized the owner of the website or blog to send you information via email.
Professional email marketers understand the value of being able to stay in touch via email and they respect their prospects by sending information of value.
How It Work?
Marketing experts agree. It takes between 7 and 11 positive encounters before a potential customer is receptive to your offer. Email Marketing allows you to do just that with either a newsletter or an auto-responder.
1. Offer Something Of Value
In order to create an email marketing campaign, you have to start by acquiring an email address. You do this by directing potential buyers to your website and offering them something of value in return for their name and email address.
You can offer discount coupons, mini-courses, white papers, e-books, access to restricted information etc. The more valuable your offer, the more likely your visitor will be to give you their name and email address.
2. Request Name and Email Address
Study after study shows that people are very reluctant to provide personal information to strangers on the Internet. They don’t want their identity stolen and they don’t want to be sent SPAM. In order to overcome their resistance, you must do three things.
1. Make your offer more valuable than their perceived cost of giving you their personal information.
2. Provide an easy to find link to your privacy policy and promise to never sell or trade their information to anyone.
3. Don’t ask for more than their name and email address. If you ask for any third piece of personal information, studies show that compliance drops by 50%.
3. Stay In Positive Contact
The third aspect of email marketing is to stay in positive contact with your prospect. You can do this by sending them valuable information on a regular basis. Don’t over do it and don’t try to sell them with every email you send. Your purpose is to give your prospect the opportunity to get to know, like and trust you. You can do this with a newsletter, or my favorite, an auto-responder.
Should I Invest In Email Marketing?
Yes If your business is based on building a relationship, you should invest in email marketing. The quicker you build a list of potential buyers the sooner you’ll be to building a profitable business.
No If you’re selling a product that people need or want right now, an email marketing program may not be the best investment you can make. For example, if you’re selling roofing material to a homeowner, (a once or twice in a lifetime purchase) there are better ways to market your product.
Resources
There are a few things you will need in order to create an email marketing campaign.
To start, you will need a web page, website or blog for potential customers to read your compelling copy and see your offer.
Then you will need a way to gather name and email addresses along with the ability to easily send newsletter and/or an auto-responder. Here are the services we suggest.
Tags: Email Marketing
How It Works | Bob Sommers | 
February 6, 2009 3:04 pm | 
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