Traffic Techniques – TP Javeton WebNet

How-to: Market via email

Many business owners do not invest a great deal of time, energy or money into orchestrating an email marketing campaign because they mistakenly believe all email marketing is viewed as spam; but email marketing can actually be much more effective than these business owners, and some other Internet users, think because the view that email marketing is spam has absolutely no merit. It’s just not true! Ask those business owners who have discovered how to market via email successfully, and are enjoying a great deal of success, how they feel about this type of marketing. You will certainly get a starkly different perspective!

This article will discuss how email marketing can be successful and will provide some insight into how to determine the reception of your email marketing by both actual and potential customers, as well as regulatory agencies (FTC [CAN-SPAM Act enforcer], Consumers Affairs, etc.); but before we can discuss how to determine the reaction to your email marketing campaign, it is important for business owners to understand how to plan and execute a successful email marketing campaign. Perhaps one of the most important elements of such a campaign is to ensure your marketing efforts are not viewed by the recipients as similar to, or mistake it for, spam.

Making the distinction

One way to distinguish your email marketing campaigns from spam is to carefully develop your email distribution list; because although you may be able to reach a tremendous audience by sending out your email marketing materials to a large email list, this is not the most effective method of email marketing, especially in view of the fact that you know little, or nothing, about the list members (or subscribers); and you probably know even less about whether or not these subscribers will even be interested in your products or services. The point therefore is that, reaching a huge audience is not more important than reaching a highly targeted audience.

Focusing your email marketing efforts on millions of recipients who do not have a specific interest in your products or services is not nearly as effective as focusing your email marketing efforts on only hundreds of email recipients who are likely to be very interested in your content and your brand, as well as the products or services you provide. This is because you are much more likely to generate sales from a small, targeted group than you are from a large group without a specific focus.

Measuring effectiveness

Now that you know a little more about email marketing than perhaps you knew before, and how it can be effective, you might wonder how you can determine the true effectiveness of your email marketing efforts in the long run. This is important because it is not worthwhile to invest a great deal of time, energy and money into an email marketing campaign if your efforts are not generating positive and measurable results.

Likewise, if your email marketing campaign is wildy successful, you might want to consider organizing additional marketing efforts to further your success. One of the most important tools you will need, if you don’t already have one, is an autoresponder which can be obtained through a service that specializes in autoresponders.

Surveys and website traffic

That having been said, customer surveys have been proven to be one of the best ways to evaluate reaction to your email marketing campaign. Asking customers to fill out simple surveys when they make a purchase can provide a great deal of insight depending on the questions you ask. Questions such as where the customer learned about your products/services may seem rather innocuous but this information can actually be rather useful to the business owner.

Getting feedback related to where a customer learned about the products and/or services you offer provides excellent information about which of your marketing efforts are generating the most interest. If you receive a great deal of responses stating that customers learned about your products/services through emails, this is a good indication that your email marketing campaign is effective.

Another very popular way to evaluate the reaction to your email marketing efforts is to closely monitor your rate of sales, as well as your website traffic immediately after you issue a new email to members of your subscriber list. This can be helpful because an increase in sales or website traffic after an email was sent out is a strong indication that the email was well received and encouraged recipients to visit the website and make purchases.

Avoid simultaneous campaigns

However, there is one caveat to this method of evaluation. It can be quite difficult to determine whether or not the emails caused the increase in website traffic and sales if more than one marketing effort was made at the same time; so try to avoid starting an email marketing campaign at the same time as you launch a banner ad, otherwise you will not be able to determine which one is more effective and is therefore driving the increase in sales and traffic.

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A competitive edge

Are you a business person who recently incorporated an email marketing campaign with your Web marketing objectives? If so, a self-congratulatory sentiment is in order, because you’ve embraced what is widely considered one of the most effective types of online marketing for your business. And while many business owners tend to shy away from email marketing campaigns based on a belief – erroneous as it may be – that such campaigns are always viewed as spam, others realize the importance of this marketing type (which ultimately is another kind of advertising) and are willing to invest a great deal of time, money and effort into organizing email marketing campaigns.

Business owners who have added email marketing campaigns to their overall marketing strategy will likely find that they are able to enjoy an advantage over their competitors who do not take the time required to implement an effective email marketing campaign. So if you are already using email marketing as part of your marketing and advertising strategy you may soon be reaping the rewards of your decision to do so – if, in fact, you have not yet achieved such objectives. However, if you have not yet embraced this type of marketing, you may wish to read on, because in this article will discuss a few of the steps necessary to organize an effective email marketing campaign.

One of the first elements you should consider when making a decision to start an email marketing campaign is the type of information you wish to include in your marketing emails to potential clients. This is very important because the information you provide will help your email recipients to determine whether or not they think your products or services are worthwhile.

EM professionals for hire

What this means is that you can include a variety of techniques in marketing emails which may include, but is not limited to, full length informative articles, short articles enticing readers to visit your website for more information, links to other websites which may be of interest to your readers, links to your own website and even advertisements for your products and/or services, as well as other products or services your customers may appreciate.

Once you determine the type of content and information you wish to incorporate into your email marketing, it is then time to consider how you want to structure your email marketing messages. Two of the most common structures include an informative email with subtle advertising, or an in depth e-newsletter with a wealth of information, which also includes subtle advertising as well as a few images (graphics). Deciding on the format of emails you will be sending out are important because they will dictate the staff you will need to assist you in your email marketing efforts.

You might require the assistance of a professional writer to assist you with the content in either emails or e-newsletters; that is if you are unable to write your own content. But keep in mind that if you opt for an e-newsletter you should also consider hiring a graphic artist to assist you in designing an attractive layout and creating graphics that will most likely be needed to create an appealing layout for your e-newsletter.

Opt-in lists from scratch

Next you should consider how you plan to create an email distribution (or opt-in) list. This is important because simply purchasing an email list is not likely to be effective due to the “hit-and-miss nature of such lists. In other words, when you purchase an email list, you may reach hundreds, thousands or even millions of Internet users by sending emails to all of the members of this email list, but there is no guarantee that any of those recipients will have an interest in your products or services. However, if you build your own email list of previous customers who have specifically requested additional information, as well as potential customer who have also requested additional information you will have a well formulated list which includes mostly members of your target audience.

A targeted list is ideal because you are much more likely to sell products or services to members of your target audience than you are to sell products or services to members of an email subscriber group which does not consist of subscribers who have expressed an interest in your unique content and therefore may have absolutely no interest in the products or services you offer. The underlying reason for creating your own list of opt-in subscribers is because they would have visited your website, blog or Web page and expressed a special interest in your content based on its uniqueness (niche quality), and wish to obtain more information from you on a continuous basis.

Such requests for more information and desire to learn about your company, products or affiliate service lays the foundation for long standing relationships which, in the long term, is most beneficial to your business as well as the subscriber. Once all of these preliminary decisions have been made, you can begin to create the actual emails themselves and can begin to distribute these emails; and after you have sent out your first batch of emails, you can take some time to evaluate the effectiveness of the first email before you send out the second batch.

Evaluation

This will be useful because if you determine the first batch was not very successful you can solicit feedback and make changes to the second batch before sending it out. If the second email is more successful than the first, you can conclude the changes you made were required and, in fact, beneficial.