A Blast is From the Past - Engaging Your Customers With Email Marketing

Friday, May 15th, 2009 at 8:06 pm

Email marketing is a great way to generate new business for your company. Email marketing is really an art form, because you must stand apart from the crowd or "noise" to even get noticed without running the risk of "spamming". When using email marketing for your company, you have to be careful with how you employ it.

Email marketing must always be used as a voluntary means of getting people to contact you. In other words, you will continue sending your newsletters and special email announcements until someone on your mailing list decides to voluntarily contact you to do business with you. But, that brings up the question of how you get your email mailing list to start with. You get this with opt-in.

Opt-in is when people are allowed to make their own decision or option of signing up on your website to receive information from you or your partners. They will give you their name and an email address. Use an autoresponder to make sure that every time you send out the newsletter, or have a special offer to brag about that this person will get a copy. They will not reject your newsletter or think that you are spamming them because they have asked that you send them your information.

Email marketing is a brilliant way of keeping your name and business in front of someone. It is said that a person has to be asked to buy, either directly or indirectly, six times by someone before they will take serious action. There will be pleasant exceptions to this, of course, in the form of people who love you right away and buy from you right away. That will not be your experience with most —so keep your name active with them, to remind them of you frequently. People are very busy, after all.

Now, the thing that is great about email marketing is that you are only sending out your emails to qualified leads. These people all came to your website for some reason, and then they all asked you to send them your newsletters for some reason. This means that they are interested in your offer or just want to do business in some way. Some of these leads are, to be sure, hotter than others, but none of them is cold or unqualified.

Now, it’s very important that you make your e-newsletter as chock full of great content as you can without just giving away all that you do for free. Make people look forward to your next issue. Motivate them to start forwarding your newsletters to their friends or associates. Set them up for special offers that come with every other communication. Give them the notion that you are a great person to buy from because you a very smart, entertaining and are willling to give them great information. Blast past your competitors with this method.

Use email marketing strategies like this and your business will eventually take off and soar.