Email marketing is a method to follow up with your customers and prospects via email. Email marketing is different from spamming because the prospect has to opt in and request the email newsletter. A spam message, which is illegal under the Can-Spam act is where the company purchases an email list and blasts it out to thousands of people in hopes that someone is interested in the product.
Because true opt in email marketing is permission based, it can have a high return on investment. Most studies put the figure at around 40 to 1 or 4000% ROI.
Email marketing should be done with planning and dedication. You and your marketing partners need to plan out exactly what you are going to say and how you are going to say it.
Some common types of newsletter content that you can send include: thank you emails, announcements, blog posts, company news, industry news, sales pitches, seminar and webinar invitations.
There are a lot of them. Enough for a whole seminar in fact.
The biggest ones are:
Build your list legitimately with people that want to be there
Create quality content
Email your list consistently while providing value
Don't be afraid to ask for the sale, but also don't make everything you send sales focused.
Absolutely, it works. That's why it's being used from anyone from mom and pop shops to the big companies like Amazon. Like anything else, it's not guaranteed. You still need to have quality content and be mailing out to your list consistently.
I've heard this question numerous times both online and in person. They think that just because there's Facebook and texting out there that email marketing is dead.
However, what's the ONE activity that EVERYONE online does every day, typically multiple times a day? Check their email! Until that goes away, email marketing won't be going anywhere.
It really depends on what you are trying to accomplish. You should have one call to action in your emails. The days of sending a monthly newsletter with 10 articles are gone. If you are going to send a long email, it should be a story that gets the user closer to the click.
Having and leveraging an email list can help with your rankings in an indirect way with a couple of factors. First of all, Google looks at the bounce rate and the dwell rate. These are fancy ways of saying "how long your user stayed on your website." Being able to send targeted traffic to your website from your email list will certainly help since these users will typically be the most engaged.
Additionally, Google and other search engines also look at how often your content is shared on social media. Again, by having an email list, it will improve your traffic, which in turn will get you more shares on social media.
There are lots of different methods that you can utilize to build your email list. These include: having a sign up sheet, a form on your website, calling your customers, using pay per click ads and many others. The best way really depends on your particular situation and your resources.
How often can you create value for your list? Most small business owners actually don't send enough email. Like the saying goes "out of sight means out of mind."
If you can create enough valuable content, several times a week, even every day can work. If the content is pitch after pitch with no real value, even once a month will get ignored.
By far the best way to have a good open rate is to have a clean list. Do your prospects know, like and trust you? Are they expecting to hear from you? Are you setting expectations when they sign up?
After that, it comes down to testing. Have a good subject line and body copy.
.... or something else?
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