Online marketing doesn’t only include optimizing your website for increased performance in search engine result pages and using pay per click and other paid efforts to target the right market or even display advertising, blogging, social media marketing and the like; managing the contacts and the customers/users you already have can be an extremely efficient, inexpensive and effective way to reach your online marketing goals. The important thing to remember and to be conscience of is how it will impact your customers, especially in an environment that we are in now. Making mistakes can lead to a backlash from users, communities and even mail service providers, so you need to address with caution.
Best practices include operating with a double opt-in, namely, offering the ability to a user to provide their email address to be contacted in future with offers, news or other information (single opt-in). Upon completion of this, the user is sent an email to confirm their address and that they intended to receive said emails (double opt-in). This is not only important to you because it ensures a clean list of people wanting your email, but also helps to keep you off of spam black lists and gets your messages delivered to those who want to hear what you have to say. Reaching your intended listeners is the first step in connecting with your audience.
Quick Tips for Email Success
Subject line
- Similar to page titles in SERPs, it gets your emails opened and it’s your first opportunity to connect.
Offer multiple versions of your email
- HTML is nice, but if your users have it turned off (i.e. mobile), you will need a text version that will connect.
- Like offering your content in RSS and XML, deliver your email in the format that your users want.
Include a call to action
- Let your contacts know what you want them to do.
Provide unique information that has value beyond your offer
- Give them a reason to open your emails in the future.
Connect with your audience
- Speak to your users.
Don’t offer too much
- If you give some people too many options, they might choose none.
Spell check
- Few things can turn off some users more quickly.
Manage expectations
- Fully detail the value of your offer.
Track your success
- Measure through your analytics and remember, your actual offer might not be the only conversion you make.
Test, test, test
- Try new concepts to maximize your impact.
Stay on top of current trends
- Find out what is working and not working from industry experts
- ClickZ, ExactTarget, MailChimp etc.
Not sure? When in doubt, hire an email marketing expert
- ExactTarget, Constant Contact, iContact, MailChimp etc.
Do you have any successful tips to share?
Related Posts >>
- How Do You Measure SEO Success?
- Labor Day 2007
- Google Search within Search – User Assistance or Retailer Handicap?
- SEOpittfall Takes a Break
- Happy World Usability Day!
{ 10 comments… read them below or add one }
I think the most important thing about email marketing is that you need to really be consistent with your efforts. Over time those email subscribers will slowly start to convert.
Newsletters and other media of email marketing have not lost their glory. They have served their purpose very well in the last decade and they are still considered important tools in online marketing.
I myself am experimenting with having a email list. I’ve heard so many times on how much it can pay of if you plan on promoting affiliate products. Im going to have to bookmark this article!
I would also add be kind and try to put yourself in the shoes of your audience. By this I mean that if you are sending mail to someone that doesn´t know about you and what you are doing, don´t progressively and nicely and don´t !”attack” them. Stay clear concise.
One thing to point out about HTML emails – this isn’t a case of designing a normal xhtml webpage, as the HTML needs to support a plethora of email clients. You should use tables, avoid inline css styles like the plague and always include unsubscribe link text at the very top of your email – this prevents your mail being automatically marked as spam by a variety of web email clients like Yahoo mail.
People often underestimate how involved it can be making HTML emails, as it’s a huge subject in iteself – it done properly.
Also, you can use Google Analytics to track your email performance, if you don’t have an all in one, in house software solution (which can be very expensive).
What is the best way to test different “versions” of a newsletter? What I mean I guess is with PPC I rotate different adds to see what has the best conversions.. how can I do the same with email marketing? I am just starting to build my list.. and I’m not sure what to do with it yet
Email marketing is just part of the big picture of turning your site traffic into customers. You need great content to get them there, some compelling content or offer to get them to exchange their email address and then a consistent approach to emailing users to keep building your credibility. With this in place, when they are ready to spend, they will be in touch.
Social media is also factoring now and dependent upon your audience what was once done on email can be done via facebook and twitter but the best approach, like any kind of marketing factors in all the above and hits the target from multiple angles!
A agree, regular email correspondence as well as following up those emails are a reaally cost effective way of keeping in-touch with customers and potential customers.
It may be true that businesses have a wider range of methods of delivering their online messages including the services Facebook and Twitter, but email use is us due to the amount of messages we receive to our inbox.
A lot of these things are common sense, but it takes someone like you to point it out for us to realize.. DUH!!! Great article.