E-mail marketing is one of the best ways to nurture relationships with customers and potential customers. Although social media is hot, e-mail marketing has an important role to play in online marketing and content distribution.
Why e-mail marketing is important
- Speed: It’s instantaneous.
- Efficiency: Send one e-mail or 1,000 e-mails with one mouse click.
- Management tools: Track who receives your mail, who reads it and what they do next.
- Coverage: Most everyone reads their e-mail.
- History: E-mail is in your inbox, while social media is dynamic. If you miss a Tweet, it's gone.
These factors explain why e-mail marketing is a popular way to reach out to new and existing customers electronically. It’s a way to send word of deals, reward loyalty or simply get your brand message in front of new eyes.
The Direct Marketing Association reports that 23.8 percent of marketing e-mails were opened in the most recent quarter, up 7.1 percent from the previous quarter. E-mail is bringing in $40.56 for every dollar spent on it in 2011, compared to catalogs' ROI of $7.30, according to DMA.
“As we come to the end of 2011, e-mail is not just alive, it's thriving,” said Martin Lieberman, a managing editor with e-mail marketing vendor Constant Contact. “More messages are being sent, [and] people say they prefer e-mail over other communications methods.”
Avoid spam and send quality messages
Even with the best tools in hand, a savvy business owner approaches e-mail marketing with a degree of caution. There’s a fine line between marketing e-mail and spam. No one wants your spam.
While all of these services have special tweaks to help keep your message out of the spam filter, that doesn’t mean it isn’t spam. The heart of the distinction is content. If your mail fulfills a need and desire, if it serves a purpose and adds value for the recipient, it’s legitimate marketing.
Like many other national companies, the Callan Group is committed to personalized service handling all aspects of e-correspondence for the client. Business owners save time and money by outsourcing different aspects of their business...e-newsletters need to be handled in the same way. Other national e-newsletter companies offer small fees, however you have to do everything yourself from uploading email addresses to providing high resolution graphics to guessing the sizes of tables to maintaining opt out options. Do you or your company have the time for that? Contact us!
These few tips help ensure that all of your e-mails are quality messages.
- Know your audience.
- Write to your audience.
- Use great subject lines.
- Don't write too frequently and don't write too infrequently.
- Review your e-mail analytics to learn which topics are most clicked on, and what times of the day are most popular for sending e-mail.
- Keep your content interesting and relevant.
Happy e-mailing!
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