Many email marketing practitioners, both new and with experience, ask what are the best methods to generates conversions. Specifically, they ask what works now. The answer is surprisingly easy to discover, and it sounds as if it is just a glib answer. However, what has worked in the past for email marketing is likely to work now and for the foreseeable future.

I went on a marketing course. We had a number of guest speakers, normally owners or directors of companies which had succeeded in difficult circumstances. These were not picked for the abilities as facilitators.

A local business with branches across four counties supplied the course with two speakers; one dealing with email marketing, and the other with more traditional forms. They were fascinating. Most of the students agreed they got more out of the pair than all the others put together, and their example of how to influence potential customers was one of the best learning points in the whole course.

Their time is given free to the course, and they issued us with contact numbers and reading material, so much reading material, with the promise that should we have any queries they will be answered by their unit. There was also membership, albeit temporary, of an online course list.

It was a big investment by the particular company. What did they get out of it? In a word: Reciprocity.

We all signed up for their email marketing list. Further, we looked at the online courses they supplied and there was a bit of a rush to sign up for those applicable to our individual requirements. A number of us, probably the majority, used the company’s paid-for facilities once the free period ended. Loyalty insured we didn’t go elsewhere.

I don’t know how much the facilitators cost the company, but by giving their time and expertise – the woman’s email marketing knowledge was encyclopaedic – for free, they got an awful lot in return from a dozen or so people starting to learn about business opportunities. In other words, if you give something away for free you will probably get a lot more back in return.