Activetrail Email Marketing » 2011 » January

Activetrail knows that marketing with email is a terrific way to produce new revenue, market your business, while remaining in touch with prospects and customers. Making use of this powerful tool, you’ll find yourself increasing your sales regularly. Listed below are many essential email marketing tips to help you begin accumulating more income in your product sales.

Emails Need to be Personal


If you are searching for some great marketing ideas to improve your income, consider making your email messages personal. People appreciate it if you use their name. A small store attracts buyers because of their personalized services. When we walk into a neighborhood store, the manager and salespeople know us by name. This same effect can be achieved on the Internet by ensuring that marketing and advertising email messages are created and addressed in a personal way as well. No one wants to receive a message saying “Unknown Recipient”.

Subject Lines Should Reflect your Message


Remember to keep the subject line of your emails accurate. They need to reflect the content of your message. The topic of your subject line needs to catch the interest of your audience, but it must be relevant to your campaign message. If not, you will start to lose the confidence of your respective subscribers. Generally, if the first few sentences don’t connect with the topic, most people will stop reading the message. Make certain that your subject line doesn’t contain spam. There are many words that will automatically trigger the spam filers, and if that happens, you won’t stand a chance. Research what words constitute spam, and make sure you never use them. Remember, most people simply glance at the subject line to decide whether to read the message, trash it, or simply mark the email as spam. Use that small window of opportunity, because you never get a second chance.

Test Your Campaigns


Testing your campaign is unquestionably one of the most important things you can address. Make your own test groups, sending out several modified campaigns to different test groups. Consider the structure of your message in terms of imagery, subject line, call to action, and content.

Always test the hyperlinks inside the email message, ensuring that you have formatted them properly, making sure they are live links and they function correctly, targeting the designated landing page. Broken and outdated links create a bad reflection on your company brand. Testing your campaign messages will determine how successful your message is. Testing your campaigns is the only objective way to discover what works best when aiming to convert the prospects on your list into greater product sales and repeat buys for your company.

With Activetrail software at your side, you can flawlessly test every campaign with live stats, able to adapt and modify what you need, immediately and effortlessly.

You cannot argue with Facts and Stats

It is a known fact that email marketing is a profitable technique for the Internet entrepreneur and off-line business owner, as well. Email marketing is still considered to be the most cost-effective and economical online marketing strategies, when striving to remain in touch with your customers. With over 1 Billion Internet users maintaining an email account, the opportunities are endless.

• Over 60% of users receive opt-in email from online businesses.
• At least 80% of Internet Shoppers have made at least one purchase from an email marketing promotion.
• Over 30% have made an instantaneous purchase online in a direct response to an email marketing campaign.

Employ Email Marketing Strategies that Work


Every online marketer needs to work on developing customer relationships while developing and establishing their credibility with their prospects as well. Giving away free and valuable information such as a white paper on your subject niche, an eBook that shares great tips or a ‘how to” approach of instructions, automatically increases your chances of converting browsers to buyers – converting buyers to lifelong customers. You are marketing to people. Put yourself in their place and ask yourself what would appeal to you? What would bring you a step closer to buying a product or service?

Announcing Specials and Discounts


Opt-in email lists are worth more than gold to an email marketer. Do not use them carelessly. Letting your recipients know they are valuable and are greatly appreciated is another way to engage a consumer. Sending out an announcement periodically, offering specials, closeouts, and discounts can increase your conversion rates.

Use your demographics to benefit your recipients. Send them coupons to stores that are within a reasonable distance from their homes. More than likely, they will use those coupons if the offer is truly a savings and it is not a hardship to redeem the coupon received.

Do not overwhelm your prospects and customers with constant sales. That strategy may backfire causing them to doubt your sincerity and look on your products and services as worthless. Too much of a good thing may create suspicion. Keep your offers fresh.

Respect your Audience – ask for their Opinions


Following up with your recipients after a sale or special offer is sent, will help you discover if your email marketing campaigns are successful in their eyes. Never assume that your positive subjective opinion about your campaign is the truth for your audience. Take the time to send out thoughtfully created customer surveys, asking for their honest opinions and suggestions. Once received, implement the ones you feel are practical.

The team at Activetrail knows that listening to your audience is the highest form of respect and consideration any marketer can show.

Activetrail knows that owning a business is incredibly demanding, especially when you are marketing in an aggressive and competitive industry. It’s irrefutably true that the success of every company depends on the marketing and advertising strategies that are implemented in your email marketing campaigns. Integrating and conducting email marketing tactics is just one of the countless approaches to marketing a business. As powerful as an email marketing campaign is, there are frequent marketing mistakes you will want to know and avoid. By integrating just a few proven tactics, you can have a successful email marketing campaign. Here are some tips that the Activetrail team knows you need to remember before sending out your email marketing campaign.

Permission Based Emails


Whenever you send out emails to individuals who have not opted-in, that can be considered spamming. Bear in mind, email marketing should always be permission-based or else you may find all of your email campaigns landing in your prospect’s spam folder. Always respect your readers. If your email marketing campaigns are not permission based, you may unknowingly cause a negative reaction towards your email campaigns and brand name, which can go viral.

First Name Basis


Using the first name within the subject box, as well as in the email, is proven to produce far more clicks by your subscribers, then when they receive an email generically addressed. Make sure you use your company name that they are familiar with knowing that they have subscribed to your email campaign or enewsletter. Being recognized quickly is the key, especially when you have a small window of opportunity.

Developing an Effective Headline


Most email message headlines that are sent out can be very boring which defeats your purpose almost immediately. Headlines should be highly effective, creating an impact of interest upon the reader. Most Web marketers concentrate on the content in the email, which is important, but neglect to give the headline a true marketing strategy. Produce a heading that draws attention on the specific niche market that you’re in. Make sure it is truly representing your content and call to action, encouraging your readers to want to know more.

Have a Clearly Defined Call-to-Action


Excluding a call-to-action within your emails defeats the objective of your marketing campaign’s primary goals. Having an effective call to action is an essential part of any email communication. A call to action should have an objective and purpose whether it is encouraging its recipients to complete a contact form, signup for a newsletter, or go to a sale or promotion on a website or landing page.

A call to action should:

• Bring focus to a product or service
• Give directions to your readers telling them what they need to do
• Direct your users to a specific target
• Contain a reward for their actions

Dynamic and Relevant Content


Keep in mind, content is king for email marketing. If the content material is focused on you or your business, your audience will not want to read it. In every email that you send out to your subscribers, center on what you’re able to do for them. They want to know what is in it for them. Provide them with solutions and ideas they can use to resolve their problems. Once they see that you are delivering worthwhile and helpful content, they will have confidence in your business and will be much more inclined to work with you. Good Content:

• Shares relevant information based on their demographics
• Avoids heavy promotional language
• Shares ideas in a simple, non-jargon language
• Shows your expertise in your market
• Has an engaging and conversational tone
• Gets to the point – brief and concise
• Creates interest and encourages immediate action

Make it Easy to Unsubscribe


Do not make it difficult for your prospect and customer to view and find the unsubscribe links within your campaign or website. This is not just a frustration to your recipients, but literally conveys a message that you are forcing your clients to receive an email, whether they have opted in or not. Almost everyone naturally rebels against anything or any idea being pushed on them against their free will. Making this a part of your strategy can damage your business’s reputation, making your email campaigns considered to be spam or trash.

Testing for Sending


Testing is an essential ingredient of your email marketing strategy. An effective variation, within your email marketing campaign, could squeeze in a few more added clicks, bringing in more sales and profits. A great way to test your email address lists would be to break down your subscriber list into unique segments, sending every group a different email message. This test called A/B Split testing, will help ascertain the particular message that bought back the higher results.

Your can test for:

• Subject lines
• Calls to action
• Pricing and discounts
• Offering a free gift with a purchase, and one without the free purchase
• Specific products and services
• Free shipping vs. paid shipping

Don’t send out another campaign, without using the Activetrail email marketing campaign software. To be truly competitive, you need the most effective state of the art tools at your fingertips. Don’t enter the Internet Global arena unprepared and unarmed.

In technical writing, we are told to create personas. This helps guide the way we would document and write our procedural manuals, making sure they are meeting the need and are clearly understood by that particular group. For example, you would never write to a group of engineers using the same vocabulary that you would use when writing to administrative staff or clerical personnel. Email marketers need to use that very same precision when creating a persona for their target audience. One type of email marketing campaign does not suit all. A generically created and executed email campaign can never meet everyone’s interests or requirements.

What is a Persona?

A persona is a detailed profile that represents real people, a prototype of the target audience you are trying to reach. Email marketers can use a persona to:

• Set their preferences
• Clarify their goals
• Create meaningful targeted content
• Get a better handle on relevancy and need

Designing campaigns with real people in mind is the only way to measure your campaign’s success. Creating a persona encompassing people with shared common interests and demographics, means your database must be accurate and up-to-date. You need to group just the right people together to receive just the right message.

Understanding the Buyer’s Preferences and Personality

Meeting your buyer’s needs is the goal. It is essential that you understand the desires, interests, and wants of a particular group of people that fit into a specific demographic profile. Once this is clear, you have a good chance of communicating and persuading that audience to take a precise and defined call to action. Remember, your product or service must meet their expectations – you cannot create that want or need, it must be there from the beginning.

Characteristics

Many factors affect a buyer’s preferences and habits, such as:

• Gender
• Income
• Marital Status
• Location
• Education
• Occupation

If you sell to businesses, your personas might include:

• Individual or chain stores
• Number of employees
• Type of Industry
• Levels of Revenue

Building Personas Will Always be a Work in Progress

Maintaining an accurate database with the proper demographics, up-to-date addresses, and an on-going measurement of customer buyer preferences, is a never-ending challenge. The more accurate your data, the better chance you have of segmenting and defining the specific needs and interests of your target market. Creating value and trust, coupled with a persuasion to purchase, is no easy task. That is why this is a process that never ends.

Ask and They Will Tell You

If you want to find out what your prospects and clients are saying about your products and services, simply ask them. Send out periodic customer surveys asking for honest and straightforward responses. Hey, how are you doing? Maybe it’s time to find out. This gives you enough time and opportunity to see if you are meeting their expectations and if they are looking for more than you are supplying. Keeping in constant contact with your audience, through email marketing newsletters, surveys, offers and sales, keeps that door open for communication and repeat buys.

In these hard economic times, your prospects and clients are always looking for cost-effective products and services, which will meet their needs while remaining affordable, fitting into their budgets. So take every opportunity to show your target market their importance to you and your business, by striving to learn what they need, and then meeting that need with value and trust.

Be a savvy and wise marketer. Use your email marketing campaigns as a tool to continue understanding your niche market, as you aim to offer quality products and services, to an ever-increasing global marketplace of opportunities.