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Optimize Your Email Marketing Mar 13 2009, 09:15 AM | Written by abacin | Category: Email Marketing Comments: 5 | Views: 534 | Collected by: 0 members Bookmark/Share This Article Tags: email marketing, email campaign, internet marketing Related Articles: 1. Benefits of Email Marketing 2. Choose from 4 megalists, and mail EveryDAY! 3. replica watches 4. replica watches

The following are principles of effective email campaigns.

1. Pay attention to email volume.

It sounds appealing to send as many emails as possible to everybody on your mailing list. After all, email marketing is champ when it comes to making the most of your marketing dollars. However, you should resist temptation to overuse the medium. Sending too many emails can erode email effectiveness. Nowadays, consumers are mostly frustrated and annoyed by the volume of email they receive. When you email too frequently with generic information, your readers might start to ignore your emails, opt out of them, mark you as spam, or even worst, block you from the sender list.

2. Focus on building the relationship.

While marketers should not overstuff consumers with emails, don’t email so infrequently that they do not know who you are. Send regularly to maintain a consistent and ongoing relationship with your subscribers. Email marketing works best when you use it to build sustainable relationships with prospects and customers. So, each time you write an email marketing message, remember that you’re building a relationship in addition to trying to generate a lead or sale. Respect your customers and build a solid relationship will lead to higher response rates in future campaigns.

3. Personalize email campaigns.

Remember that we are communicating with people, not blasting a list. We should personalize our email campaigns. By personalization, do not limit our scope to the technological trick of dropping a first name placeholder in the greeting, like "Dear Ann". Customize it to the content of emails based on geography, loyalty, purchase history and more. For example, you can use trigger emails like welcome letters, receipts or confirmations based on recipients’ schedules and actions.

4. Target your audience.

Not all customers are the same or have the same interests. You should segment lists to best match your customers’ needs and send valuable and timely information and offers to enhance personalized customer communications. Showing your customers you know who they are and what they like builds trust and keeps your messages relevant.

Even you are marketing the same product or service, you may need to select different style and tone appropriate to different audience. For example, if you are making an offer applicable to both of IT professionals and marketing managers, write two versions of your email marketing message. The more you customize your email to specific target groups, the more successful your efforts will be.

5. Set a clear objective.

Email is the wrong media for a diluted marketing message. Your purpose for writing — whether that be to make an offer, or announce a special — should be strong and clear. Rambling, saying too much, introducing extraneous information, or adding complementary offers will drive down response. The reason is, many Internet users receive multiple emails each day and they quickly scan your email message (sometimes only subject title) to determine if it’s worth reading. If it doesn’t come to the point, your prospect will simply delete your message and move on to the next.

6. Use solid design.

Although rich images are tempting, find a nice balance of images and text. Also, half of the email programs out there do not display images by default. You'd better set an alt tag for all of your images as backup plan. Add a description each time you upload an image into your campaign, and don’t forget to test the email and see the alt tags in action.

7. Complement your email campaigns.

Email is only one element of your marketing campaigns. Reinforcing messages across multiple communication channels will boost overall effectiveness. Usually, a hyperlink is embedded in the marketing email for a prospect to click on as a response to your offer. This link takes the customer to a web page. An advertiser should pay as much attention to writing and design of this landing page as the email itself.

Sluggish fulfillment leads to dissatisfied customers. So, make sure you have all the internal resources in place to handle fulfillment of premiums, leads and other responses to your email marketing campaign. You may be surprised at the amount of response you receive from your efforts — often within hours of your emails being transmitted.

8. Keep Improving.

Even if something worked in the past, it is not guaranteed to continue delivering the same results. Measure the success of your campaigns. Take advantage of the reporting mechanism and do an analysis on click-thru rate or unsubscription statistics. Adjust your current plans to make sure your email campaigns continue to yield positive results.

Some email marketing companies help small businesses automate email follow up and newsletter delivery for website visitors. To find out more information about these companies, please refer to Email Marketing in Abacin directory.

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