email marketing efforts – Page 3

Aspects of email marketing

Like any type of marketing, email marketing involves a great deal of time and effort to ensure that the marketing campaign is effective; because an ineffective marketing campaign of any kind is a waste of money and resources. Any individual or business that invests a lot of time, energy and money into an email marketing campaign which is not reaching members of a target audience and is not convincing recipients of the emails to make a purchase or visit a product website is really not worthwhile. In this article we will discuss the implementation of an effective email marketing strategy designed to ensure that your business, financial and personal goals are being met.

One of the most important aspects of marketing effectively with email is to make sure that your email marketing efforts are reaching members of your target audience; and one way this can be done is by asking former customers, as well as potential customers, to join your subscriber list. Such a request on your part will help to establish that the majority of your subscriber list members have an actual interest in the products or services you offer. Such interest in your products/services is important because it will be more likely that you’ll generate sales when marketing to this type of an audience than it would be if you were marketing to a much larger audience which has no interest in your products.

Another aspect of marketing effectively via email is to hire an experienced professional writer to draft the content for your emails, e-newsletters, email courses or other methods you are using to email your message to potential customers. Having your content written by a professional content writer can give you a significant edge over the competition if they are drafting their content themselves. And since the quality of your content is a direct reflection on your business, poorly written content that lacks substance will reflect poorly on your business.

Target audience appeal

Effective email marketing should also be written in a manner which will appeal to your target audience; but this may be easier said than done, especially since the best results might only be obtained by conducting market research to determine demographic information for the kind of target audience you wish to attract. Research such as this may also determine preferences the target audience may have as a condition of receiving marketing information from you (or your company). Their preferences may pertain to: type of language used, format of emails, layout of emails and even aesthetic appearance of emails. So paying attention to these details can make your email marketing campaign significantly more effective.

Finally, effective email marketing should be done in a way that it is not viewed as spam; but it can sometimes a difficult process to safeguard your emails from perceptions related to spam. In many cases an email marketing campaign will involve distributing mass emails but care should be taken in these efforts to avoid having these emails construed as spam. The importance of such efforts is based, in part, on the many Internet service providers that include spam filters in their software that apply algorithms to each email account they provide to users. These filters are designed to determine which messages are spam and which email messages are legitimate; and emails which are deemed to be spam often do not reach their intended recipients.

Surviving the spam filters

Emails which survive the spam filters and make it through the recipients’ inboxes may also be automatically deleted if Internet users percieve them to be spam based on their appearance and content. For this reason care should be taken to ensure that all marketing emails provide quality content, advertise only subtly and ideally are only sent to email recipients who have specifically requested information about your products or services. This will give you the best possible opportunity to reach your target audience and have a positive impression on them which, hopefully, will entice them to make a purchase or visit your website.

Help with email marketing

Most savvy business owners understand the importance of email marketing even if they lack the know-how to run an effective email marketing campaign. Simply put, these business owners realize the imperative to run email marketing campaigns to help them meet the needs and expectations of their target audiences, but they might not possess the skills, or have the time required to orchestrate an email marketing campaign that could yield truly effective results.

Fortunately for these business owners, they don’t have to know a great deal about email marketing because there are many Internet-based marketing consultants who can assist them in planning and running an effective email marketing campaign. So in this article, we will provide a few tips for locating a capable consultant to assist business owners and companies of all sizes – including your business, if you lack the time or required skills – in the creation, administration and completion of an email marketing campaign.

One of the most important criteria in any consultant you seek out and hire to assist you with your email marketing campaigns is experience, which must specifically pertain to results and degree of past success s/he can demonstrate (or document). This is important because one of the best indicators of how well a consultant will perform for you is how well s/he has performed in the past; meaning that if a consultant was able to help multiple past clients to attain their company goals through email marketing, that consultant will likely be able to assist you in achieving similar results.

EMC hiring criteria

Another important criterion which should be taken into consideration when hiring a consultant to assist you in your email marketing efforts is the opinions of that consultant’s past clients; so before making a commitment to work with a particular consultant you should request references from past clients, with the understanding and intent to contact each of the past clients provided and question them about their experiences with the consultant. Follow through at this stage is vital in order to to obtain accurate feedback, so you should not just site on these references, you must contact them and get their opinions about the consultant’s work.

An important point to keep in mind is the fact that most consultants will likely only provide references whom s/he is confident will offer positive opinions of services s/he provided. That having been said, you can still learn a great deal about the consultant’s style, personality and techniques through the references you obtain. This is important because the consultant’s personality, as well as his/her skills and abilities are also as important as any other aspect of the of the Email Marketing Consultant (EMC) hiring process.

Keep in mind that – like anything else in life, or any other relationship – there is the possibility that you do not get along with the consultant, or you may have difficulty communicating with him/her, a situation which could make it difficult to work with him/her altogether. On the other hand, if you are not providing the consultant with enough information, or offering feedback which could help him/her to adjust proven email marketing strategies to better meet your expectations it might be hard for you to meet your stated business goals. So a good working relationship (chemistry) with your chosen consultant will also be very important.

Qualified, objective reviews

While it is true that skills, knowledge and experience are all important characteristics of a good email marketing consultant, sometimes none of these factors matter if personality conflicts prevent you and the consultant from communicating adequately. Therefore your personal opinion of the consultant should always be carefully considered before making a hiring decision; and one way to influence your personal opinion is to contact the Better Business Bureau (BBB) to get objective independent reviews of the email marketing consultant you are considering hiring.

The BBB can provide you with a great deal of information regarding the past performance of most email marketing consultants who have been in business for a number of years and does not have any unresolved complaints with the BBB. This additional research will be a good indication the consultant performs adequately and treats clients fairly. Conversely a consultant with a number of unresolved complaints against him/her is not likely to be a good choice.

Drawing conclusions

Similarly a consultant who has a number of independent reviews raving about the quality of services s/he has provided to past clients will likely be a good choice to assist you in your email marketing efforts, while a consultant who has a number of poor reviews on the Internet is not really a good candidate for the job. Obviousdly you can draw your own conclusions based on reviews of the consultant’s historic profile; but if past clients were not happy with the services s/he provided, you will likely also not be happy with these services.

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