How to Manage Email Marketing For Your Business
Email marketing can be an extremely effective means of marketing your products and services. It is used by large and small companies, by non-profits, and every type of organization imaginable. It is so widely used because it works.
Why does it work? Partly because of the following advantages: low cost, speed, viral (messages can easily be transferred to others, without your direct involvement), can direct traffic to an otherwise offline offer, and with certain applications, messages can be customized.
A great example of customization is Amazon.com. Amazon will periodically send recommendations based upon what the customer has purchased in the past. This is a powerful technique! If I receive information about marketing and self-help books, I pay attention. Messages relating to cooking or yoga (extremely popular with some markets) would be ignored by me. And everyone has a similar story: they are interested in some subjects and not other subjects. The more closely email messages or other communications hit the “hot buttons” for that individual, the greater likelihood that conversation will continue.
Through email campaigns, you can easily drive traffic to an offline offer. One way to do this is by sending out coupons. This can be done for either product or services. This model is used with great success by the bookseller Borders, who regularly sends me coupons that I can use in my local store. Service businesses can easily use this method too. If you own a beauty salon and notice several open slots for the next business day, a carefully crafted email with a 10-25% off coupon -good for one day only- could easily fill all your empty slots.
If you don’t yet have the tools to manage an email marketing system, you have two major categories of services and products from which to choose. Your first choice is whether to purchase a program that installs on your own server, or whether to use a “hosted” service. A “hosted” service means the program and your email database are stored on a third-party’s server.
The advantages of using your own program include: more flexible than a hosted service, no ongoing monthly fees, and more opportunities for customization. Popular options are Auto Reponse Plus and Mailloop.
A hosted service is generally going to require little or no upfront cost, but will require a monthly fee because you are paying for a separate service. Advantages of this type of system include: expert third-party help in the event of spam complaints, and no need to set up and maintain a program on your server. Commonly used services include Aweber, GetResponse, 1ShoppingCart, and EmailAces.
Email marketing can, if used properly, easily increase your revenue, help retain your customers, and be an excellent part of your marketing mix.