Saturday, September 27, 2008

How Can Email Marketing Benefit Your Business

By Darrel Hawes

At its most basic level, email marketing can be viewed as connecting with your target audience using email. This can be distinguished from the use of postal mail, marketing via telephone, selling in person, websites, radio, and television. It should also be noted that email marketing can be employed along with any or all of these mediums and in practice is often complementary to many of them.

The idea behind email marketing is basically to get your message out to those individuals who have "raised their hand" and expressed an interest in what you have to say. By "raised their hand", we mean that the person has initiated the relationship by clicking on a link that adds their email address to your email list. In the case of a double opt-in list, the recipient also must confirm the email subscription by clicking on a separate link inside an email that is sent specifically to their email address for the purpose of confirming that only those who want to be on the list actually are.

It should be clear that email marketing should not automatically be labeled "spam"; i.e. unwanted commercial email. When email lists are managed as they should be, the recipient requests to be added to the email list, and in addition, every email they receive contains a mechanism for unsubscribing.

What about the content of email marketing communications?

In general, email marketing messages will include:

The latest news important the subject in which you and your readers share a common interest. You might be in the homeschool niche, in which case you would likely want to discuss about legal matters, new tools and curriculum, and similar information. When you offer relevant information and even better, place your own spin on it, this will help you to become an advisor that your readers trust.

Helpful tips and hints. One common use of email marketing is to provide introductory level training. A great example would be sending out a short course via email on how to get started playing the guitar. Or you could merely address one issue that new guitar players often struggle with.

Sales messages. Of course, this is why marketers maintain email lists... to sell something! What exactly you are encouraging your reader to do is going to vary depending on your circumstances. You might not always be asking your reader to part with their money, but you will normally be asking them to move farther down the sales funnel.

Here are some examples:

* Click on link to sales page

* Call a phone number for information package

* Sign up for free teleseminar

Marketing emails may be "broadcast" messages or "sequential" messages. Sequential messages are also known as "autoresponders" due to the fact that procedure for including a reader to your list is automated, and in addition, the email managemet system keeps track of when to send messages to which specific readers.

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