E-mail marketing is one of the most effecting ways to promote or market your business, whether it’s offline or online. E-mail marketing makes it easy to build your presence in the minds of prospective clients and customers, as well as allows you to connect and touch base with them. But you can’t start marketing through e-mail if you don’t have a list of email addresses, and for this, you need to learn basic list building.
How to build a list
There are many ways to collect e-mail addresses all over the web, but if you are really serious about e-mail marketing, you need a targeted approach. That’s not to say that you’re going to ignore most e-mail addresses that come your way, it’s just that you need to prioritize farming ones that will be more useful to you in the future, and to collect the remainders last.
First, you need to take the kind of business you have into consideration, and remember the kinds of people that may be interested in what you will be offering. After you have set a direction for your list building, you need to do the actual farming of e-mail addresses, which can be done through several means, including the following:
1. Newsletters and E-zines – create a newsletter that will appeal to your target demographic, and advertise them through your website or an ad service. This is a very powerful means, since every single person who signs up is sure to be a prospective customer, and will be interested in the product or service that you will eventually offer.
2. Offline Methods – Distributing flyers in events or just in public locations, containing a link to your site or newsletter registration form will work wonders, and if you have the time, you can even call random people on the phone (or in the yellow pages) and conduct surveys if they are interested.
3. Other websites and online locations – Visit other websites or forums that may be interesting to your target demographic and collect email addresses from people who chose to show them. You will be surprised to know that people are willing to show their email even if given the option of privacy.
If you already managed to build a list and have yourself a substantial amount of e-mail addresses and contact details, you need to remember that there is a proper way of E-mail marketing. It’s not always about the size of your list, but the quality. You also need to make sure that the mails you send out won’t be ignored by your prospects. Here are the more common DOs and DON’Ts of E-mail marketing:
DO consider the balance between text and image in your mail
What most novice email marketers don’t know is that spam filters usually look at the text-to-image ratio of mails received, and use it to judge whether to let the mail through or mark it as junk. Try to ensure that the mail is not overwhelmingly full of text or image. Balance must be struck.
DO prepare for the eventuality that the images you included will not be seen
Images can be very effective in conveying a message, but not when it appears as a red x due to random browser glitch or because the mail reader prevented images from showing. Always make sure that your mail can still get its message across even if the images are unavailable
DON’T disregard the power of HTML
Using cascading style sheets and javascript has become trendy nowadays due to the sheer control it gives to the author, but keep in mind that almost all of the mail readers nowadays will block both due to security concerns. If you want control over presentation, use HTML.
DON’T forget the CALL to ACTION
A lot of novice email marketers get so excited that they tend to drone on and on about what they are offering, without forgetting the most important part: The Call to Action. If you make your email too long without encouraging the reader to take action, there is a tendency that you will bore and indirectly convince him to ignore your mail. Present your offer concisely and convincingly, then encourage your reader to follow through. Words are your most powerful tools, and you shouldn’t waste them.
Now that you have a substantial amount of contacts, and know how to approach email marketing, there is nothing that will prevent you from succeeding as an e-mail marketer. All you need by this point is determination, patience, and the willingness to take the first step.
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Sincerely,
Steven Yap
Internet Marketing Specialist
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