The one essential in email marketing is an email list. Every part of your marketing strategy should in some way, either directly or indirectly, be designed to obtain more subscribers. Use every trick in the box to get every tick the box possible.
There are some established basic principles of collecting that have stood the test of the short period of time that email marketing has been in existence. Whilst most are obvious it is equally obvious that most people do not tend to follow them.
For the best return on investment chase your current customers. They have already shown they like your product so are susceptible. Further, you have a legitimate reason to approach them. The only concern is not to irritate them.
You will have to pick the right method. Whilst invoices go directly to the company and are perused closely, they tend to stay with accounts and not purchasing. So you need a strategy that will allow you to contact the person who bought the item.
The most common method is a follow-up email. At a period specific to your type of product you send an email to the recipient to ensure that they are happy with their purchase. Make it obvious that the main purpose of the email is to check that there are no problems and that the invitation to join your email lists is made subtly.
Newsletters are often seen as separate to email marketing but not integrating them would be a big mistake. They can be a Trojan Horse. Something for nothing is always attractive and a well produced and informative newsletter can be something of a necessity for newcomers to a specialty. Hints and tips on how to increase return on investment can be interspersed with hints on what they would gain by subscribing to your emails lists.
The information must be seen as the prime function of the newsletter but recipients will accept the ‘cost’ so the advertising for your email marketing list can be quite overt. The conversation rate should be higher as well as the recipients have already shown themselves willing to tick boxes.
The sole purpose of a website is often seen as selling products to casual visitors and there is a certain logic to this. However, you should not forget that subscribing to your email marketing lists can be seen as a sale as well. By search engine optimisation you will be attracting just those potential customers whom you should be targeting for email marketing.
The advantages of joining your emails lists should be included on every page. Examples are always useful as they are so much more powerful than promises. Show them how much they would be saving. You could even offer an incentive, a free gift or similar.
An FAQ page can generate visitors but do not give all the answers away directly. Mention that subscribers to your newsletters and email lists have access to a full technical archive and perhaps, if you think it will benefit your company, offer some form of research facility.
The one truism in email marketing that is never contradicted is that populating an email list is a priority target.
