The secrets to excellent email marketing

There may not be any magic to email marketing – but there are certainly tricks, along with some things that even experienced professionals may not have thought about before.

Changing your branding won’t guarantee instant results

According to Amanda Kiviaho of MarketingProfs, one of the biggest things a professional needs to reconsider is expecting a miracle to come from a new switch in branding. It generally takes time for a newly created approach to affect the market and for people to get used to the new look. For people in niche industries, creativity can boost the user experience of reading their emails, but it won’t necessarily lead to a jump the business’s ability to attract new customers. Small businesses don’t judge books by their covers. Just like any marketing campaign, products need to be sold, not promotions. If the product isn’t competitive, then no amount of creativity will increase sales.

However, one thing that a creatively made email can do is take a great product and give it a marvelous presentation – one that demonstrates all the good things that you know and love about your company and your team. But even with this approach, it will always take time for a company to begin seeing changes once it switches up its brand and its message. People need to get used to seeing something new.

ROI is not the only thing that should be considered when doing a marketing campaign through email distribution. Remember that a properly conducted email campaign is now more like a conversation than a “blast” sent out to a billion people. For niche industries, it would be a waste of time to try to attract clients by sending emails to many different people. You want to focus your message in laser-sharp emails directed at people who have contacted you with interest in specific products. This makes people aware of what you sell – and with the right software, if they click on certain links in your email, they’ll get an email in the future about those products. This begins a conversation, which is a far better way of doing business than sending emails out to a list of customers that you purchased from someone else.

Create a “permanent campaign” as part of your effective marketing strategies

In a separate story by MarketingProfs, Michael Fisher explained the need for companies to rethink their email marketing strategy, moving away from short-lived campaigns with emails that are sent out regularly and uniformly. Instead, companies must begin thinking of their emails as a permanent fixture of their marketing process.

What this requires, according to Fisher, is to leverage what you have in your current website market research technology, such as call tracking or other ways of following potential clients through a website – looking through their eyes to see what they are focusing their attention on – and then building emails that speak to those specific needs. The best way would be with email software that lets you customize messages for each person, depending on what they saw in the website.

It means you have to start seeing your product the way your customer views it. Ask the right questions, and then use the software you have available to find solutions. After that, hang back and see what happens. If sales don’t go up, then try something new, if they do increase, then try to find out if it was because you were right or for another reason. In other words, try to generate a back and forth with your viewer base.

Email and Internet marketing benefits which can help a company grow

Louise Robinson wrote in BizCommunity that even with major marketing campaigns being conducted by large businesses, a properly performed email campaign can still draw attention. This is particularly true for small companies. These are the businesses that can often slip through the cracks of major campaigns.

When you target smaller companies, you must use a refined approach. Provide content that people want to read and give it to people in easily digestible pieces. Your goal shouldn’t be to appear on television where many people will see you but hardly anyone will be interested in your product, but to appear in the inbox of someone who really wants your product and has asked for more information about it.

According to Robinson, 74 percent of consumers prefer to receive commercial communications via email. But this means you must focus on getting past spam detectors. Try to eliminate as many promotional words as possible, and simply describe your product and present your information in a simple to read, short newsletter. This makes it easy for someone to glance through the titles and look at the information that has been presented. You want to be as convenient as possible.