Email Marketing Is Not Dead!
With the advent of so many new applications, such as we see in the areas of social networking and microblogging, it would be easy to think that email marketing is dead, or at least relegated to the back alleys of internet marketing. Thinking like this could cost you a great deal of money.
While it’s true that these new ways of communicating are great and obviously skirt deliverability and spam issues that have been problematic with email marketing, there will come a time when a Tweet just won’t cut the mustard as far as delivering your marketing message. That’s when your email will come to the rescue, and save the sales.
Email marketing can and does make fortunes for people who know how to effectively build and maintain lists of customers and prospects. The options available with email are many, and they are very easy to use. You can send almost anything via email, and thus craft your marketing message accordingly. Videos, podcasts, html, and more can be transmitted to your lists, and the phrase “the money’s in the list!” has never been more true than it is today.
With a well thought-out email marketing campaign you can target certain prospects with distinct offers, crafted only for them. You can maintain many different lists, the advantage being that each prospect will get offers or mail pertinent only to their particular set of circumstances. Say someone is a customer who’s bought from you in the past. Nothing would be more annoying to them than to get offers for the same products they’ve already purchased from you. It could even lead them to unsubscribe from your list entirely.
Others may be at the beginning of your marketing funnel, and need a certain type of approach. Others who are further down the process a different one, and so on. In short, it’s very easy to create just the kind of emails you need, and keep the lists separate so you can better market them.
Make sure you use a good service to manage your lists. Trying to do it yourself is a nightmare, and you will certainly make mistakes. Two of the more widely known and extremely competent email marketing services would be Aweber and GetResponse. It’s hard to go wrong with either of these, and you’ll be able to manage as many lists as you like nearly effortlessly.
Make sure you use a double opt-in system to ensure that people do indeed wish to receive your emails. You really don’t want to be accused of spamming, as it will kill your efforts dead in their tracks.
Also very important is to track your results, and things like open rates do matter. It helps you decide whether you’ve done well enough with things like your headlines and content, and offer in general.
Email marketing is far from finished. Take the time to learn how to do it well, and your business will thank you for it!
