Now that you have created your website and WoMB, your next rung on this ladder of successful marketing strategies is e-mail marketing. With steps one and two you provide yourself with a solid foundation and with email marketing you begin to construct your success.
To start your email venture you must first create your email address from which all of your email will be sent. Ideally it would be You@yourbusiness.com, and this is generally easy to achieve. Depending on how you set up your website, you can either ask you designers to do this for you or you can do it yourself. If you must do it yourself Google offers this through their “Gmail” service.
From there you must decide what your email marketing will do for you. Do you want to attract new customers? Do you want to keep veteran customers coming back? Do you want to create a newsletter the visitors of your website will sign up for? Do you want to accomplish all of this? If you answered yes to any of these questions I ask you to pay close attention to the rest of this article.
Attracting new customers is one of the biggest functions of email marketing. This is a basic process, where you can obtain email addresses from companies that specialize in the merchandising of bulk lists of e-mail addresses. These may come off as 'Spam' email, and some people will see it as such, but others will see it as a business reaching out to them. This is the risk/reward of it. Be shunned, or be visited. Being shunned should not be a big fear, it's not like these people are making you money at the moment anyway. These emails will allow you to reach a demographic which may otherwise have never heard of your website. Deciding on whether this is worth being blocked by the occasional 'spam' filter is up to you.
In order to keep your customers coming back you must offer incentives. Offering lower prices for people who sign up for a “membership” in which they provide you with their contact information (usually just an email address) is a good place to start. Once you have them signed up, start sending them reminders about your great product(s), low prices, and/or coupons which they would not receive elsewhere.
Keeping with the theme of returning veteran customers to your website, it is often advisable to offer some sort of referral program, so that if a loyal customer were to sign up, then talk a friend into doing the same they would receive some sort of special compensation, such as free shipping on their next order. Whatever it takes to keep them coming back!
A third strategy for email marketing is to create a newsletter; a newsletter being a regular article (Weekly, bi-weekly, monthly or bi-monthly) in which you outline new products or services on your website. Make sure not to give too much away, as you want the newsletter to bring potential customers to your website, not to let them be contented in reading your newsletter alone. Even if they want to buy your product, they may lose interest in the time it takes to find the product on your site. Linking them from the shiny new promo on your email newsletter directly to the checkout page (With whatever new item you're demonstrating) with a one-time, negligible discount is a prime idea.
Now that you've decided what your email marketing strategy is to entail, you must discover how to implement it.
Finding New Customers
● Web services all over offer lists of email addresses to market to. Sometimes they even offer specific demographics. The PROBLEM is that some of these websites entertain shady business practices. I implore you to be certain of your particular company before you make a transaction that could come back to haunt you.
● That being said, the websites that are most likely operating below board are also likely the cheapest of the bunch. It is not my job to force my morality on you, so if you don't mind and are just scraping by, by all means do what you think is right.
● Once you have your target market acquired, design your email. It should be interesting but avoid making it overly busy or cluttered with images. This is a two-edged blade, as it could be a turn off to some people and overloading with images is one of the main ways spam blockers remove suspicious email.
● You can design your own email or use an advertising agency to do it. Ad agencies can be pricey; however, so I do not advocate their use.
● Creating your own email ad should be professional looking as it can be, but a home-grown feel does appeal to people in certain markets. If this is what your ad will be, make your weaknesses your strengths and play into it as hard as you can.
Veteran Customer emails/Newsletters
● The only difference in a veteran customer target market and one you would buy from an internet company is the way you acquire the addresses.
● Creating a membership setup (Either a section for your customers to visit or a list of preferred customers) isn't that difficult, and any good website design firm can make you one. I don't suggest making this yourself, as it requires understanding of PHP and SQL databases, and can take much of your now valuable time (You successful person you).
● Using your database, send out the emails outlined earlier in the article, sit back, and watch your customers come back.
● As far as newsletters go, unless you are a skilled writer it is probably best if you contract the work out. You can either have it 'Ghostwritten' in which someone writes it for you and you take credit, or you can just have someone write the articles and mention them on your website as your web-publication specialist.
● Last but not least, if you set up a schedule, stick to it. Tardy newsletters will definitively turn off your customers, especially if they are expecting the new coupons/discounts you are going to offer this time.
Deena McMahon is an author and entrepreneur for America’s Premier Certified Media Placement Specialist, a continuing education and business development company showing people how to build business success. Get No Obligation Free Tips and Training at http://www.americasmediaspecialist.com/
Find out if you qualify to be trained in having your own business at 1-800-719-8268 extension 34978.
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