How to Do Email Marketing Effectively, Part 2

So you are gaining permission from your fans to market to them through emails. Your list of people who have "opted-in", or signed up, is growing. Now what...? Find an email marketing service.

There are numerous email marketing services that exist now, for a variety of prices, including free. Constant Contact is one of the most well known, and their subscription plans are favorable for small businesses. My favorite is Mail Chimp, which has a "forever free" option, allowing you to send up to 12,000 emails per month (this is a considerable amount for a small business, and it will likely take you a while to grow beyond this number). iContact is another familiar competitor, and the list goes on and on.

Picking one really boils down to usability, dependability, and pricing. You want an email marketing service that will be user-friendly, allowing you to easily create beautifully branded emails. You also want one with decent support in case you have questions or issues, and you want to know your emails are going to be delivered on time to the right people. Whichever service you choose, you will want one that works with your budget.

So why would you go to all this trouble to create an account on one of these platforms, pick a subscription plan, setup the service, etc., when you could just send emails from a regular 'ol email client? There are actually a number of reasons:

• First, and most importantly I think, is that it gives your emails a professional, seamlessly branded appearance. Your messages look like they are legitimate and not mistaken for SPAM. By incorporating brand elements into the messages, you can build brand awareness and recognition for your business's logo, color palette and tagline.
• Second, using the email marketing service helps you follow many of the CAN-SPAM Act Rules. Once you set up the account, much of the information will default to settings that are required for the email campaigns to be in compliance. This isn't something you want to mess around with--the fines are steep, and creating your own emails in a regular email format (such as Gmail, Yahoo! Mail, or AOL) makes it easy to violate the rules. 
• Third, the email marketing services will generate reports showing the success of the campaign. This is invaluable information for evaluating your email strategy. You will be able to easily see who opened the emails, forwarded them, unsubscribed from future communications, and on which links they clicked inside the message. 
• Fourth, well-designed email campaigns encourage engagement and drive traffic to other places on the internet. If you are driving traffic from your emails to your website, blog, or social media sites, this is good for your search engine optimization, the popularity of your sites, and your overall exposure. The longer you can keep people clicking around and hanging out on one of your webpages, the better.

Give an email marketing service a whirl--I think you'll be happy with the results, especially the return on your efforts. If you need help, I'm here and happy to help you get started, or manage your campaigns from start to finish.

How to Do Email Marketing, Effectively - Part 1

Email is not dead. As digital marketing technologies evolve, die off, and reinvent themselves, email remains a steady constant. It's not changed much over the years, with the exception of some minor additions to editing capabilities and formatting style options. It remains a useful medium for communication and information dissemination. It's also a strong method to drive visitors to other places on the internet.

I receive more and more emails from businesses. Some of them ones I have subscribed to (or "opted-in") and some are ones that mysteriously appear in my inbox. As a small business running an email marketing campaign, this is major no-no number one. Do not email anyone who has not opted-in, or agreed/subscribed/signed up in some fashion, to receive communication from your business. Blasting everyone in your address book is a quick way to kill your email marketing efforts. The people who are receiving emails from your business should be receiving them because they are interested, engaged, and willing. They should make the decision, not you.

Think about it--your personal email address is exactly that: personal. Your cell phone number, social security number, email address, snail mail address, etc. are not bits of information you want everyone to have--you guard these close to you and likely prefer the right to choose who and which organizations have them at any given time.

An effective email marketing campaign begins with the opt-in. This means you have to allow people to say, "Yes, I want to receive emails from your business." If they are opting-in, they likely have some familiarity with your business and an interest to learn more. Receiving emails from you out of the blue can be confusing, misleading, and ineffective. For instance, if you were to purchase a list of email addresses and then proceed to market to each of those people through their email addresses, you would be approaching them cold. It is no different than walking up to a stranger on the sidewalk and handing them a stack of literature on your business, bombarding them with information for something they know nothing about. The stranger would likely escape as quickly as possible and dump the literature in the nearest trash receptacle. Give people a change to know you and allow the development of a relationship by respecting their privacy. If they desire more information, let them tell you by giving their permission.

If you are a small business looking for assistance with your email marketing efforts, please feel free to contact me. I am happy to assist in the creation of email marketing strategy, campaign development, or management of campaigns. Don't dive into the deep end without a guide! :)