Email marketing is beneficial for most businesses and allows the sender to promote their products and services to a huge audience of potential customers and clients. Email marketing can help you to promote new products, seek out and establish relationships with new or existing customers, up-sell the customers who visit your website, and strengthen your brand's reputation. Used correctly, email marketing can allow you to make a small investment with a big return. Let's look at the top ten email marketing "do's" that can make your email marketing efforts a huge success.
Email Marketing "Do" #1 - Know Your Target Market
Many email marketers make the mistake of appearing desperate by sending out emails to subscribers who have no known interest in what they are offering. This type of action never gets a good response rate, and can cause you to get in trouble for spam. Ask each and every visitor to your site to opt-in to your email list - and only send them relevant emails that they can use.
Email Marketing "Do" #2 - Send at the Right Time
There are a wide variety of opinions on what the perfect time is to send out your marketing emails. Some swear by sending just before the weekend begins, and others claim that mid-week is best. Some research says that the middle of the night is the best time to send an email; others claim that emails sent during the lunch hour receive more response. With so much conflicting advice out there, what is a marketer to do? The best advice is to do your own market research by looking at trends from previous campaigns that you have sent out.
Email Marketing "Do" #3 - Provide Engaging Content
Don't fill your emails with junk or send out irrelevant emails. Your email must be engaging, entertaining, and useful in order to be well-received.
Email Marketing "Do" #4 - Keep it Short and Sweet
Your email should be brief and to the point. No one wants to read an exhaustively lengthy email. Time is money - not just for you but for the recipients of your email, too. Your recipient may have dozens of other emails to sort through so don't give them a reason to send yours to the trash.
Email Marketing "Do" #5 - Choose Joint Venture Partners with Care
While joint venture emails are lucrative and can be profitable, choose your partners with care. Promote only products and services that you would use or have used. Your reputation is still on the line even with joint ventures.
Email Marketing "Do" #6 - Work Hardest on the Subject Line
Your "key" to getting the recipient of your email to actually open it is to write effective subject lines that cause them to be curious about the content of your email. Work hardest on your subject line - even more so than you do on the contents of the email.
Email Marketing "Do" #7 - Take Note of Holidays
Holidays mean one thing to the email marketer: recipients are home from work and many of them are at the computer. Use that edge to target some of your email efforts around the holidays - whether it's Father's Day, Halloween, or Christmas - holidays present a great time for you to get a good response.
Email Marketing "Do" #8 - Subscribe to Your Own List
Testing your email campaigns is important, and there is no better way to do so than becoming your own subscriber. Create accounts with all of the "big" email clients, like Yahoo, Hotmail, and G-Mail. Each of them work in a different fashion. Receiving emails from yourself as a subscriber can provide you with a valuable tool for revamping your campaign as needed.
Email Marketing "Do" #9 - Instill Trust in the Recipient
Your emails should be delivered with the message that privacy and confidentiality of your recipient's contact information is a big concern of yours. Clearly state that you will not sell the recipients information to other parties.
Email Marketing "Do" #10 - Be Familiar with Spam Laws
Familiarizing yourself with the spam laws that are in effect is important to keep you on the right track with best practices for your campaign. Your online business can be adversely affected if you or your company gets blacklisted.
