How to build a solid email marketing foundation for greater success

Email marketing is a powerful tool. Getting started with a solid foundation will increase the success of your promotions and ultimately the growth of your business or association.

Below are eleven recommendations for building a solid foundation for your email marketing:

  • Be clear about your email marketing goals. Are you looking to increase awareness? Drive more people to your website? Make sales directly from your email promotions?
  • Identify your target audiences. Determine the industries and individuals that will be interested in hearing from you.
  • Consider how you’re going to rise above your competition. Recognize what makes your business more appealing than your competitors’ and show off those characteristics everywhere you can – including your email marketing.
  • Be consistent with your branding. Once you’ve determined the personality of your business then brand it with attitude. Your choice of color, typeface, page layout, tone of your writing, and the content you provide all work toward that persona.
  • Build a great list. Include in your list only the email addresses of individuals and organizations that have given you permission to email them. Collect email addresses at every point of contact with your customers or members. That includes asking your readers to forward the email to their friends.
  • Find out what your readers want and give it to them. Ask for feedback and suggestions (which also helps build rapport and loyalty).
  • Craft your emails so they are short and easy to read. We’re all busy so make your emails a quick and easy read and people will continue to open them. Make them long and you’ll get less people opening and more people unsubscribing from your list in company email marketing campaign.
  • Keep your emails interesting. Content should be relevant to your business and your reader’s interests. Keeping your content interesting and fun helps get your emails opened.
  • Offer them something extra. Sales, coupons, and special announcements are a great way to keep your customers opening your emails (and patronizing your business).
  • Determine the frequency of your emails. Do not bombard your subscribers with emails. However, you do need to send emails often enough to stay in your reader’s recent experience.
  • Pay attention to your numbers. When using a bulk email service, the links within your emails are tracked and recorded, showing how many people clicked on each link. Improve the results of your emails by using this information to learn the interests and buying habits of your readers. Send more targeted emails based on your findings and watch your results grow.

And of course, if you aren’t already sending email promotions, you need to get started! Do it now. No, your list isn’t too small; there’s no such thing.

Use these eleven tips to build your email marketing foundation and you’ll develop stronger promotions and better results.

As always, good luck with your email endeavors and please feel free to leave a comment below or write me at this address with your questions or to let me know how your email marketing is working. I’d love to hear from you.

NOTE: Each of the topics above will be discussed in further detail in eleven upcoming articles. If you’re eager to read more about a particular topic, feel free to email me and affect the order in which they’ll be published.

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