Making Email Marketing Work for your Business
Email has been around for so long now that we all take it for granted – and as a means for growing your business email marketing has probably been forgotten about as the newer, shinier mediums such as social media have come to the fore.
It is, however, still one of the very best ways to maintain and grow a business due to its low cost and nature of being able to get directly in front of customers and potential customers. In fact, for almost every website that we work, getting website visitors to part with their email address is one of, if not the, most important objectives. After all, you’ve worked hard on your SEO/PPC/PR/Social Media (you pick the one(s) that apply!) to get visitors to your site in the first place – wouldn’t it more than careless of you to let them go without at least being able to start a direct relationship with them?
But getting people to part with their email addresses is harder than ever – as people get spammed and their email addresses abused by unscrupulous con artists. So how can you ethically get people’s email addresses? Here are a few ideas you might like to consider:
Ask Them Directly
If you have any sort of business where people are visiting your offline store, you are meeting people at networking events or you have an existing customer base (hopefully that will cover everyone!), then simply ask them if they would like to receive your emails or ezine. Yes, your emails and/or ezine will need to contain something worthwhile/interesting – but of course they do!
Put a Link in Your Email Signature
Everyone sends out regular work emails – so why not take advantage and put a link in the signature section of your emails? It’s very easy done on email clients such as Microsoft Outlook and can be a great way to prompt people to signup with you
Put a Signup Form On Your Website
As I mentioned above, getting hard-earned website visitors email addresses is the least you should be doing! Don’t just use a boring ‘Sign Up For Our Newsletter’ either – make it sound interesting and worthwhile for them. Something like ‘Get Great Monthly Tips and Tricks on [topic]‘ or download our free report ‘The Top 10 Mistakes People Make When Buying [product]‘ is much more likely to get people to give their email address.
Run Competitions
People love to win stuff – especially when it doesn’t cost them anything to try! Well, this isn’t strictly true as they are going to have to give their email address to enter – but it’s still a great way to get email addresses, both on a website and in an offline environment.
Send Out Direct Mail Pieces
If you have a database of customers for whom you have names and physical addresses, but no email addresses, then why not put some sort of mailer together with an offer/competition/survey and direct them to go to your website to get the details (and give their email address).
I hope this has given you a new or renewed interest in email marketing and some ideas on how you can collect email addresses and build your database. If you’re already successfully using email marketing and have other ways of collecting email addresses do let us know – we’d love to hear from you!