6 Best Ways to Market with Email Marketing

Six Effective Ways To Market With Email

By targeting your market you bring in willing buyers. With an attention to delivering value, you remove barriers that hinder sales. Through repetition you’re able to demand recognition, and with performance tracking you are able to market with the greatest impact. Now you can market with gusto! Here are six very effective methods:

1. Start an Opt-In Mailing List

This is a favored method of many email marketers, since those who opt-in to your list have already shown an interest and are ripe to receive your messages. Provide useful and free information people can really use, and at the same time offer services or products which cater to their needs.

2. Offer an Email Course
There are a couple of ways this can work. The first is to offer a free email course from your site. Over the period of a week or two you set up an autoresponder to deliver your course by email. Make sure your e-course provides information, which has real value to your visitor.

Alternately, you could offer a valuable freebie that requires your visitor to leave their email address before claiming it. The delivery of your e-course becomes a condition of claiming the freebie.

With tactful and casual grace, you can then introduce your subscriber to your products and services within the context of the e-course. Just make sure you are enhancing the information they first sought. Overall, the idea is to create a relationship with people—a bond built on your expert status and ability to deliver truly useful information.

3. Self-Submit Ads to Ezines
You can save some money and place ads in your own handpicked e-zines. There are literally thousands of e-zines looking for advertisers, and if you’ve got the time to browse directories such as EzineAdAuction.com or EzineLocater.com, you’re bound to find many e-zines that target your market. Placing classifieds is very cost effective and if you choose well, you can see fantastic results.

4. Advertise in Email Newsletter Networks
These services let you advertise in newsletters within their network. The amount of time you’ll save is worthwhile in itself, but the real value comes from being able to profile your ad for specific target groups.

5. Rent-a-List
You can promote your business with a rented list. Reputable companies providing this service maintain only the email addresses of people who have agreed to receive commercial email. Renting a list can be quite expensive since you’ll pay as much as 25 cents per address, however you can get some great results with a highly targeted list. Safe list sources include BulletMail.com, HTMail.com, PostMasterDirect.com, and HipLists.com.

6. Write Articles and Get Published
Many e-zine publishers and site developers are hungry for good content. Getting published in just one high-profile e-zine can give you exposure to thousands of potential buyers. In conclusion, email is without a doubt a very potent marketing tool. It should be an integral component of your marketing plan if your goal is spectacular results. And what business doesn’t want that?

Email List Promotion Resources

Don’t solely rely on your web site to generate new subscribers for your opt-in list. Register your list in the search engines, ezine directories, and ezine announcement lists. A top resource to help you with this is http://List-Universe.com/ The Email List Owner and Ezine Publisher Resource Network.

Also, look to cultivate free ad swap with related publishers. Distribute your articles to related publishers – this can be an excellent source of free advertising and new subscribers. I use the Directory of Ezines to identify article submission and ad swap opportunities.

How to Mail To Your Opt-In Email List

Every time you mail to your list, you have an opportunity to establish and maintain trust and credibility with your subscribers. Therefore, ensure that each mailing contains content that your subscribers will find useful. Don’t overload your message with ads unless you are an ads ezine.

Your list provides you with the opportunity to develop the image of your business. Don’t send out a message that does not live up to the image that you are trying to cultivate. One bad issue can destroy a lot of the good work you have been doing.

The frequency of mailing to your list should be determined by what will not overload your subscribers and by the amount of time you have available to do the job well. When starting out, concentrate on quality rather than quantity. As you develop, you can increase the frequency if it is necessary.

Each issue needs to contain basic information such as links back to your site, how to unsubscribe, and a recommendation that the subscriber forward the issue to their friends and colleagues. Subject to the aims of your list, you can also include guest articles provided that they provide useful information to your subscribers.

Measuring List Performance

A key measure of your list performance is the levels of unsubscribe requests. This statistic is a strong indicator of how well you are doing. People unsubscribe for a variety of reasons. However, high levels of unsubscribe requests can indicate that you are failing to provide the content that the subscriber was expecting or that you are inadequately targeting the acquisition of new subscribers.

Try to find out the reasons people unsubscribe if the level is of concern to you. Then act on the information you have discovered so you can improve your ezine and retain the people still on your list.

How To Promote Your Business Using An Opt-In Email List

By Kevin Sinclair, CPA

Most marketing experts agree that the development of an opt-in email list is a key factor of business success.

Benefits Of Opt-In Email Lists

It is unusual for first time visitors to your web site to purchase your products and services. Normally, your visitors need to develop trust in you and what you are offering. An opt-in email list allows you to stay in front of your prospects and customers encouraging repeat visits to your site that will result in sales.

People receiving your message will not regard it as spam as they have opted to join your mailing list. They have given you permission to send them flyers, newsletters and messages. You have the opportunity to develop trust and to demonstrate your expertise, credibility and how you can benefit them.

Your list may become the most valuable asset that your business owns. Not only does it allow you to reach people cost effectively who are interested in your products and services, but also it can be a source of advertising revenue and future profits for your business.

The larger the list you are able to develop of qualified prospects and customers, the better off you will be. Ensure that you offer subscription details in a prominent position on your main web pages. Entice people to join the list by explaining the benefits they will receive.

To avoid misunderstandings and high unsubscribe rates, ensure that your potential subscribers know what they will be getting. Tell them how often they will be receiving email from you. If you publish ads between issues, tell them and give them the opportunity to choose the newsletter and ads or just the newsletter.

A key way to let potential subscribers know what to expect is through a privacy statement. Most people are concerned about what you will be doing with their email address. Reassure them that you will only be using it for your newsletter and not letting others have access to their details. To help you develop your privacy statement, you can use these online privacy statement generators:
http://www.truste.org/wizard/
http://www.the-dma.org/topframe/index7.html

Make subscription management easy for your subscribers. Always make it clear how they can unsubscribe. When you receive unsubscribe requests, act on these promptly. To do otherwise will not enhance your online reputation or credibility.

Don’t be too aggressive in obtaining email addresses as this can often backfire. For example, I was visiting a site recently to download a free e-book. Before I could download, I had to enter my email address. No indication was given as to what my email address would be used for. I chose not to give my address and not to download the e-book. That site missed out on an opportunity because they did not provide me with confidence as to how my email address would be used.

Another technique used is to add addresses obtained from people requesting information via your autoresponders. In my opinion, it is better to have a series of autoresponder follow up messages rather than adding the names to an opt-in list. The ethical approach is only to add those people who have specifically given permission to join your list.