There are very few strategies that can mean more to your small business than creating an effective customer/prospect email marketing program. Depending on your level of experience in implementing an email program, this process can seem rather daunting. It need not be.
To simplify the construction of a great email marketing program, we need to break the tasks down into three major areas of concern:
1. Collecting email addresses of prospects and customers of the business.
2. Organizing and maintaining a database of your email addresses.
3. Developing a coordinated set of marketing emails and offers.
Ways of Collecting Email Addresses
To be effective, an email marketing program must have the email addresses provided to them by the email recipient. In other words, your prospect or customer should tell you that they wish to receive information from your company! This is really the only process that will work on a ling term basis. To simply send out unsolicited emails to various names on a list is called SPAMMING, is highly ineffective, and your company should never be guilty of such practices.
To collect email addresses of your prospects and customers, there are several approaches that work quite nicely. Many small businesses will ask their visitors to provide their email address whenever they complete a registration form, contest entry form, customer survey, or special offer. A confirmation email is then sent to the prospect to verify their address and their willingness to receive information from your business. You will be amazed at the success that you will receive in such a well constructed campaign.
Likewise, you can promote a URL address (such as www. mycompany.com/signup ) at which you have setup and ‘lead capture page’ on your website to obtain the prospect or customer email address in exchange for something of value, such as a white paper on a topic of interest to your company, or a video download, or even some favorite recipes from your staff. This approach is called an ‘ethical bribe’ and is used quite widely. When you invite the site visitor to provide their email address, you must assure them that you will hold their address in confidence and will not share it with others.
Organizing Your Email Addresses
However you collect the email addresses of your prospects and customers, you must ensure that you have verified their willingness to be on your list, have a way of organizing the email addresses by prospect or customer type or other demographic criteria. Do not attempt to build such a capability yourself! There are many “Autoresponder Services” to choose from which provide a set of very cost effective tools to manage your email database. Check out the systems provided by Aweber.com, 1ShoppingCart.com, or Getresponse.com.
Developing a Coordinated Email Messages and Offers
You can pre-load a set of customer or prospect messages of any number and you can set the internal at which they will be delivered automatically to your specific prospects and customers. Such messages can be used to educate people about your company’s products and services, to inform them of upcoming events in your area and even to entice them to your business through effective offers and coupons.
The time that it takes you to develop and implement an effective email marketing campaign will likely be the most productive time that you spend in your business this year. There is no reason not to take action now!
Resources
Don Seibert is a retired business executive who, as an Expert Author, writes timely articles, books, and blogs on issues concerning using the Internet in a small business. Having retired twice, Don is host of http://www.LocalBizIdeas.com. Visit the site for a complete discussion of how to to your business attract more customers using the power of the Internet
Article Source:
http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Don_Seibert
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Posted under email marketing
This post was written by admin on April 17, 2010
