Email Marketing

Email marketing is sending an advertisement to people using email. It can be used to announce sales, specials, new offerings or coupons. Emails are sent to current customers or website visitors that have opted into them.

Email marketing is similar to newsletters and transactional emails, in that all deal with interactions with customers and prospective customers using email. Newsletters, however, serve other interests like building loyalty or trust, while transactional emails are sent based on one individual’s transaction with a store. Examples of transactions include putting items into a shopping cart, requesting more information or making a purchase.

Start an email ad with an exciting subject line. Subject lines are the first impression a business makes when emails are received. Without a good subject line, the email might not get opened and read. Keep subject lines brief and interesting.

Get right to the sale, special or offer in the body of the email. As people are often busy doing other things while glancing at emails, keep it short. Link to a landing page with more information. This means that when someone clicks on a link in the email, they are taken to a page on your website that affirms the message in the email, expands on it and includes a call to action.

Use images sparingly – images do take time to download and some email software do not handle images well - and design emails such that messages can be read even if images are not displayed in a recipient’s email program. Issues like that can be handled by using an email marketing service.

Build an email marketing list from existing customers and people who visit the website. Make it easy for website visitors to click a link and sign up. Consider rewarding people who sign up for your email list with a special product or service or a discount.

With each email campaign, pay attention to what subject lines and content seems to inspire the best return. Use that information to make your next campaign more effective. In time, you will see excellent return from your email marketing.

Generally a business signs onto a paid service to send emails (which is why this is listed under Internet Marketing), and may hire a web design professional to help:

1. Set up the account
2. Select, adapt or design a template
3. Write copy based on supplied information
4. Review statistics
5. Suggest next steps to create more effective campaigns

Here are reviews of four email marketing services. Two of them offer a free level for smaller mailing lists. Before picking one of those, look at their current offerings, as plans could have changed since this article was prepared. Also: look at what your price and service level will be once your email list out-grows the free level.

Mail Chimp

Mail Chimp offers a lot of features, functions and reports. Enewsletters can rely on one of Mail Chimp’s templates or the design can be custom-coded. Their signup form can be customized to match your website. New subscribers receive thank you emails that confirm they want to be on your mailing list. People with limited technical skills tend to find Mail Chimp easy to use.

It is free provided you have fewer than 2,000 subscribers and send less than 12,000 emails per month. At the free level, the Mail Chimp logo appears on every enewsletter. Support for the free level is minimal.

Your Mailing List Provider

An old line service that has added superb features over time, Your Mailing List Provider or YMLP offers the ability to manually add offline contacts to your mailing list, collect contacts through your website, create and send enewsletters, manage lists and access reports and archives. With YMPL, a business can track how many people open your enewsletters and what they do with your enewsletters.

Their free level allows up to 1,000 contacts, One thousand enewsletters may be sent each month (one mailing to 1,000 people, two mailings to 500 people and so forth). Paid levels start at $3.75 per month.

Constant Contact

As the name indicates, you can stay constantly in contact with your customers – even when they are out of their buying cycle with you – with an enewsletter from Constant Contact. The service offers hundreds of templates, which can be customized. Ability to monitor which emails do not arrive and who has unsubscribed. Opportunity for subscribers to interact with your enewsletters. Customer service is said to be excellent.

Their least expensive plan starts at $15 per month. A free trial is offered.

AWeber

AWeber offers tons of pre-made, customizable enewsletter templates with the ability to have custom templates; tested in all major email clients; personalize enewsletters with subscribers’ names and other information – even plain text newsletters. They make it easy to collect subscribers. They offer a high deliverability rate. Track who opened your newsletters and clicked on links in them. Support is said to be excellent.

At AWeber, there are no set up fees. No contracts on their monthly plans. First month for $1. Advanced pricing plans start at $19 a month.

Note: Don’t send spam. That is, do not send unsolicited emails without permission to people your business has no relationship with. Generally these sorts of emails do not do much good for your business and can be illegal.