Online Selling – Page 15 – TP Javeton WebNet

A promotional method

Email marketing can be a very effective promotional method to reach target audiences around the world, despite the fact that in many cases, the marketing efforts of a business owner or promoter may not reach full potential unless s/he invests the necessary time, energy and money into evaluating the email marketing strategy which s/he has put into action.

It is during such an evaluation that a business owner can determine whether or not email marketing is a method that can enable him/her to reach stated marketing objectives. The same evaluation can be used to determine if email marketing as a strategy is having an adverse affect the business productivity.

Useful information

That having been said, there are a few ideas pertaining to the importance of evaluating email marketing that we’d like to discuss in this article, and will also offer what we consider useful information on how to initiate and complete the email marketing evaluation process. To say such a process, done on a regular basis, is important would be an obvious understatement since frequent evaluation of any email marketing strategy is not only important, it is crucial to the success of the business or individual that puts it into effect.

So it follows that one’s failure to evaluate his/her email marketing strategies can have adverse effects on finances and overall business objectives, including failure to produce results and loss of customers to his/her competitors.

Avoid shortcuts

Consider for a moment that an existing email marketing campaign is not effective because it does not reach members of the particular target audience. An evaluation will certainly reveal the reasons for this failure, one of which may very well be that the distribution list to which this campaign is being sent consists of recipients who have little or no interest in the being offered via the emails.

Business owners who take shortcuts by purchasing large email lists, often find their shortcut did not pay off because the recipients of their marketing emails are simply not interested in any product(s) or service(s) they offer. In this scenario the email marketing is likely to generate very few sales or website visits. However, reevaluating the email distribution list to include recipients who are interested in the products or services being offered will likely result in significantly more sales and website visits.

Remove ALL semblances of spam!

Now consider a situation in which your email marketing is being construed as spam by recipients. If you have taken precautions to ensure your emails are reaching members of your target audience, but your emails seem like over the top sales pitches, the members of your email distribution list may view your emails as spam and not take your advertisements seriously. When this happens members of your email distribution list may be more likely to seek out a competitor when they are in need of products or services rather than making a purchase from you.

In fact, one of the subtle ways you could use to remind yourself that any likeness to spam must be avoided at all costs, is getting in the habit of refer to your list as an “opt-in subscriber” list and not a distribution list. Think of this excercise in these terms:

You can buy distribution lists. But you must create, build, and nurture subscriber listscreate, build, and nurture subscriber lists by offering interesting (compelling?), useful (valuable?) and free content on your website to attract and encourage visitors who become repeat readers and, ultimately valued subscribers. get the difference?

Evaluating your email marketing efforts may be formal or informal in nature. If you have specific business goals in mind you might want to consider the path to meet this goal as an indication of whether or not the email marketing is working. If you’re interested in reading more about email marketing take a look at this recently published post – Alternatively, you can evaluate your email marketing efforts by soliciting customer feedback.

Ask for customer feedback

Asking customers for their opinions about your email marketing campaign and whether or not they were compelled to make a purchase because of the content, the advertising or some other element is a simple and straightforward way of getting direct and unvarnished answers from your target audience.

Based on this information you should have a good indication of whether or not the email marketing strategy is effective. If it is not effective you should consider making changes to create more interest in your products or services. The changes you make should reflect any feedback you receive, and ensure you are not making changes that will cause even less interest from the members of your subscriber list.

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Know the distinctions!

Typical Web users receive tons of emails encouraging them to purchase certain products or visit specific websites owned or managed by the email senders or merchants with whom they are affiliated; and while these emails arrive in inboxes of unsuspecting web users each day, most of them pay very little attention to such emails. This is because emails which are blatant advertisements are often viewed as spam, and most Web users have very little tolerance for spam; but it is very important to understand the distinction between these two types of communication.

One distinction is the reaction of recipients, which is to say that reactions to spam tend to range from simply ignoring such emails and having the email addresses blocked from sending future communications, to reporting such emails to their Internet service providers (ISPs) for further investigation. We realize many Web marketers have difficulty keeping their email marketing subtle and, as such, this article will provide some information which we hope will be useful in determining how email marketing can be kept subtle so it is not viewed as spam.

Criteria for subtlety

Among the most important criteria for ensuring your email marketing is done in as subtle a manner as possible and not be viewed as spam is to provide something of quality to your recipients. This thing of quality may consist of insightful articles, interesting quizzes or other useful facts which members of the target audience are likely to find useful, if not valuable.

The simple fact is when email recipients realize that an email they received is offering them something worthwhile such as knowledge or information about a particular niche subject they are much more likely to spend some time reviewing the email and therefore will not likely consider the email to be spam. In addition to using the creation of something qualitative to convince recipients that the email is not spam, business owners can also take advantage of qualitative content to provide subtle advertising which may include product references in the articles or links to his/her website throughout the email.

Avoid outrageous claims

Avoiding language which makes outrageous claims can also help to keep advertising quite subtle since the opposite – using certain superlatives and adjectives of greatness with which to describe specific products – is likely to be viewed as blatant advertising. When such language is used, it is highly unlikely that email recipients will believe there is validity in anything contained within the email because they will believe the entire email is simply one big advertisement for the senders’ products or services.

One method proven to be most effective in keeping advertisements subtle when running email marketing campaigns is to only send your email(s) to those who are likely to be extremely interested in your products and services. This is important because when email recipients receive an email that does not reflect their interests in any manner or form, they are not likely to take the email seriously and may very well view such email(s) as a blatant advertisement or spam.

Blatant advertisement is taboo

However, when emails are sent only to those who share a common interest the email seems more personalized and therefore, those email recipients are not likely to view every product reference as a blatant advertisement since they understand there is sometimes a need to mention products or services in emails of high quality content which are sent legitimately.

Finally email marketing is considered subtle – and remains so – when the content of campaign emails is written as though it is not coming directly from the business owner. In other words, the copy might discuss products and services as though they are being offered by a third party. This method makes the advertising seem more subtle because it does not appear to come directly from the business owner.

Be minful of perceptions

Of course, business owners can help to ensure their email marketing efforts are not viewed as blatant advertisements by keeping reference to their own website to an absolute minimum, while being mindful of the fact that most Web users often view links from one website to another strictly as advertisements. For this reason it might be advisable for business owners who are promoting products/services via an email campaign to keep links to a minimum and to carefully weave these links into even the most quite benign copy.

The links should be provided as though they were only included to provide readers with an opportunity to learn more about certain products/services and not as a way to encourage them to purchase these products/services. It might be worthwhile for business owners to consider hiring a writer with this type of skill and experience to ensure the copy conveys desired message, message formats and message intent which should therefore convey the desired effect to the email recipients.