Email Marketing

After a great website, probably the most important part of your online marketing strategy is your email list. Although overall the rate of email opens and clickthrough rates have decreased over the past few years, nonetheless email is still the most direct and personal way to communicate with your customers. When your email marketing campaigns are effective, you will definitely see an increase in your sales.

How to Grow a List

Growing your list begins in your place of business. Whether you own a retail store or offer a professional service, you need to get all the contact information you can from your customers. It is standard business practice these days to request not only an address and a telephone number, but also an email address.

The second way to grow your email list is through your website. Various methods, discussed in our eBook, can be used to entice website users into signing up for your email newsletter. Over time, you’ll see your email list blossom from just a few names that consist mostly of friends and family to hundreds and thousands – even tens of thousands – of addresses of people who have expressed interest in your product or service.

How to Target Your Emails

The best way to increase your open and clickthrough rates is to divide your email list up based upon the interests of your customers. For example, if you own a shoe store and you send out a general email to your list that includes a link to “children’s shoes”, you can create an email report that shows which members of your list clicked on that link. You now know something interesting about this group of people: they have an interest in children’s shoes. The next time you have a sale on kids’ shoes, this group of people should be the first group you target with your sales message.

Your Three Choices

1. You can leave your email list the way it is, using it haphazardly and not getting very much return on your investment.
2. You can hire SMG to help you increase the quantity and quality of your email list, then work with them to create an email strategy and even template for your emails that will be professional and effective.
3. You can learn how to build and use your email list yourself by purchasing SMG’s eBook, which includes an entire chapter on email marketing.