If you’re not sending your current, past and potential customers e-mails, you’re missing a great opportunity to create lasting and rewarding relationships with them.
Why should you do e-mail marketing? Let us count the ways:
1) E-mail marketing brings new clients and sales
2) You’ll find that you’ll be building your company’s brand
3) Your business soon enough will have many raving, loyal fans
Below are seven tips to help you in your e-mail marketing campaign:
1) Use text instead of HTML. Readers prefer to read text rather than clicking on images, so embed your links into your text rather than offering buttons, etc..
2) Never, ever, ever send a message with a generic greeting. Unless you absolutely, positively do not know the first name of your recipient, always use his or her first name when you start your message. Many e-mail marketing software packages or online services are able to generate first name salutations easily (similar to mail merge). If you don’t have a first name, don’t even have a greeting. Just start your message.
3) Believe it or not, Tuesdays and Wednesdays are the best days to send e-mails. Mondays are, well, Mondays. Thursdays are getting close to the end of the week and Fridays are the end of the work week, so people are more focused on their weekend than reading e-mails. Tuesdays and Wednesdays historically are the days you’ll find people more amenable to reading your e-mail.
4) A third-party autoresponder service can make your life — and the lives of your e-mail list — much simpler. For one thing, an auto responder makes it easy for your e-mail recipients to “opt out” of receiving your missives (and you must give them an out). The set up and sending of the e-mails also is much simpler for you: just a few clicks of your mouse for your part —
5) Never send just one and think you’re done. Consistence is key. Send an e-mail at least monthly. Try twice a month and see how your recipients respond.
6) Give them “something” for opening and reading your e-mail. Entice them to click on the subject line with an offer of some kind: “Free widget to the first 10 people who respond to this offer.” “My top 5 tips for creating the perfect Romantic getaway” (a bed and breakfast owner). You get the idea.
7) To get people to sign up for your e-mail, give them something in return. Don’t say “sign up and you have a chance to win a fabulous prize!” Give something to everyone who signs up. You don’t have to give an expensive “fabulous prize” — a discount coupon or a free e-book or report is fine.
