How To Plan An Email Marketing Campaign
July 27th, 2010Email marketing is the most profitable and highest converting direct marketing technique. With the properly laid out strategies and well thought out email marketing campaign, you can not only make repeated sales with existing customers but you can also win many new prospects. You can target your audience with pinpoint accuracy.
For any type of email marketing campaign you will need a landing page which is targeted to the emails content. Your email message must have a great opener, to get the reader to firstly open the email, the email message must be strong and captivating to ensure the reader reads the email and obviously clicks through and completes the action you require, and the landing page should match the email content.
So for an effective email marketing campaign you must consider the following
Email value proposition
It is important to build a strong email value proposition. The receivers do not have the time and patience to read every mail they get so your proposition should convey your purpose straight away. It should be informative, pleasing and persuasive. It should be targeted to the reader and it should be an offer they would want to receive.
Customer profiling
Not every customer has the same requirements. So when you send out the data or create a mailing list, separate the groups sharing similar interests in terms of information they would like to receive. Send the mail having that information only to that group. This customer profiling helps you in providing right information to the right people. It saves time and keeps your message receivers happy.
Special offers
Visitors look for incentives when they sign up with you. You can start by giving them some membership or points for free when they sign up. Later on, providing them with exclusive offers, special discounts, lucky draws, next month’s exclusive previews, and advance sale alerts can keep them enticed and interested in your mails and products.
A successful email marketing campaign keeps in mind the needs of the people who are buying your products and services and caters accordingly. So spend time and research what you need, your desired outcome and how you will reach this.
What Email Marketing Strategies To Use?
July 22nd, 2010More than half of the people on the internet believe that the best form of communication for them is email. The same applies for business solicitation as well. This is the main reason why email marketing is so popular and result oriented in today’s times. Whether it is a fortune 500 company or a small entrepreneur, everyone is making use of this powerful marketing tool.
There are many strategies that go hand in hand with email marketing strategies to ensure you establish yourself as an authority and also ensure your email marketing works effectively. Obviously getting this right will increase customers, which will only ever increase your profits!
Social media
Social media tops this list for rapport building. Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn are some of the most influential platforms where you can develop strong relationships with your prospects and customers along with generating a loyal fan following. You can be part of discussion forums, communities and actively participate in them. Establishing yourself as an authority can be very easy and effective through these mediums.
Regular fresh content on your webpage
An important strategy for retention of your list and customers, and also for attracting new members is having regular fresh content and also entertaining and informative content. This will also be where your opt-in form is located. New articles, blogs and general content with fresh and unique perspective attract people and keep them hooked for longer.
Seeking permission
Unsolicited mail is often met with frustration and the receiver deletes it without giving a second thought (or even worse hits the SPAM button!) So to increase the reach of your products, use opt-in or permission base email marketing strategies only so that only interested people receive the message and do not consider it as a spam.
Professional and persuasive newsletters
Your newsletter should reflect the corporate image of your organization. It should be appealing, organized and easy to comprehend. The content should be persuasive, informative and compelling.
Customer relations within the email
Your email is an opportunity for you to develop strong bond with your customers. Do not use it for advertising purposes only. Your emails should be a mode of providing answers to customer’s queries, and giving them the kind of information they are looking for. This approach will help you win over your customers.
Email marketing as a part of your overall marketing effort improves the branding and positioning of your business. These top email marketing strategies will help you understand what to focus on to earn new customers and how to interact effectively online with your customers.
What Is The Best Email Marketing Campaign For My Business?
July 17th, 2010Email marketing is an integral part of promotion of any online business. No tool can match the effectiveness and personal connect that email provides. With the right approach and proper tracking tools, it is one of the most profitable mediums to get in touch with your prospects and customers.
But not every business can follow the same approach. There are different campaigns for different businesses and you have to ensure you engage in the best email marketing campaign for your business. Let’s have a look at the types of campaigns and how they can be beneficial for your business.
Opt-in emails
Opt-in email marketing is what works for every online business provided the approach is right. In this type of campaign permission is obtained from receivers before sending any emails. This makes sure that only interested people receive it and your email is not considered as spam. The one thing that matters most in opt-in email marketing is the quality of the email lists and that can be achieved by creating highly targeted landing pages and offers.
Bulk email marketing
One of the best email marketing campaigns, bulk email marketing is adopted when the same message needs to be sent out to a large number of people. Email blast software is used to achieve this result. But it requires lots of hard work to determine the list of recipients otherwise your message can be spam for many people and you will struck out of their list of trustworthy. Use this campaign only when you are sure that the receivers will actually be interested in the content of your message.
Newsletter marketing
It is more of a public approach to reach your target audience. You can either publish it on the web where it is visible to all or make it personalized by offering a subscription. Only the people who are interested in the kind of products or services you offer will sign up for your newsletter so your message will reach a targeted audience.
Whatever your business type or domain, the key lies in adopting the right attitude and approach towards the whole campaign. The best email marketing campaign is the one that touches the right chord with your readers and that can happen with sincere efforts and perseverance.
How Do I Know What Email Marketing Companies To Choose
July 12th, 2010More than 80% of the online businesses today use email marketing. Some develop an in-house campaign whereas others like to hire qualified email marketing companies to handle this part of advertising. Developing a campaign on your own is possible but it is time consuming and requires alot of research. With the help of email service providers, you can have a highly focused campaign with targeted opt-in email lists leading to an amazing response rate.
With so many options available on the internet, the question many businesses ask is, “how do we know what email marketing company to choose?” There are certain features that email marketing companies must offer for an effective outcome.
Delivery rate
The most important feature for any email marketing company is its delivery rate. The emails should be compliant to anti-spamming laws and should be delivered to the customer’s inbox without any hitches. The company you choose should have high deliverability. Ask for the stats.
Permission
The best companies go for double opt-in so that the email lists so prepared are highly targeted. This helps in refining the available customer base and hence your message reaches just the right people.
Customized and targeted campaigns
Any good email marketing solution provider believes in researching the targeted market and develops a customized campaign based on the results. Right from segmentation to list creation and branding, unique and specifically designed strategies should be used.
Tracking
The success of an email marketing campaign widely depends on the tracking of results. A good email marketing company offers lots of tracking options so that proper statistical analysis can be done and modifications can be performed at the right time.
Support
Even if a company has a great planned approach towards marketing, the lack of proper customer support can completely ruin the experience. So the provider you plan to choose should focus on providing full customer service.
The one name that stands out as a reputable email marketing company is UM Direct. With 100% double opt-in, spam compliant, non incentivized lists, targeted campaigns, fully trackable results, and remarkable support, they have everything that the top provider should offer to its customers. The highly affordable and customized campaigns are performance based making them customer friendly. Check out for yourself HERE.
Utilising an Email Marketing List
July 5th, 2010An Email marketing list is a ready-made list of email addresses. As long as the person has consented to be in that email list and they are aware that they have signed up to the email marketing list - you can then send promotional emails, and notifications and keep them informed of your company and products. An email marketing list is particularly useful for small and medium size business owners, who have limited budgets for advertising, marketing, and promotion. Email marketing lists can be created, bought, or both for effective advertising and promotion campaigns.
Buying email marketing lists
Buying email marketing lists is a legal and approved practice in online marketing. A small business can buy email listings for a fee from professional email marketing list companies. This is also called renting lists and the lists are typically segregated by groups / industry / topics. Renting lists and buying lists is a more renown practice in the UK or America.
Of course, there are traps in using these already built email lists for example CD-ROM lists are dubious as they might contain emails of people who have not agreed to receive promotional offers from companies. If your ISP receives complaints about you, your account could be blacklisted and banned.
If you are going to buy a list ensure you buy a trusted list. It must contain names and addresses of people who have agreed to receive promotional offers from various sites. The company offering the rental lists should be able to disclose their techniques of getting email addresses and respective names.
Conducting Email Sends from a pre-established list
Conducting email sends to a pre-established list that is used to receiving offers, discounts and emails that are relevant to them, is a more regular practice within Australia. This is where UM Direct come into action. We have established email marketing lists where we can direct appropriate traffic to your website. Every subscriber we have on our lists has subscribed to receive emails from us and consented to receive offers.
Creating your own email marketing lists
This is probably the most effective way to get your message across. It is slow but a great way to get good results. The lists can be generated through referrals from your customers, visitors to your websites, and those who visit your business shops and franchises.
An email marketing list is the most cost effective and targeted strategy to grown your business and promote your products. . You can gather data, run surveys, promote your goods and / or services, get more sales and build great relationships. Don’t miss out on this market ! Contact the experts in the field today.
How to choose the ‘right’ List Broker
June 30th, 2010Every business need a growing business. A business that is not growing is stagnant. To grow anything you need to promote its growth. Without advertising, people wouldn’t know companies exist. List brokers can be the answer to your prayers!
If you know you need to promote your business, and you know your end goal, then you need to find yourself a decent list broker. A list broker will find you the best list to promote your services too and for the best price.
List brokers act as the middle man and as the negotiator for business owners who want to conduct direct selling promotions through email, telemarketing and even direct mail. They will present you with a solution via their contacts of names and previous experiences with those contacts. Business owners will need to know what they want to promote and why for the list broker to work with them effectively. For example the list broker can then contact list owners who have appropriate lists for the business to promote too. If you have a business opportunity for women who work from home, then they will understand the requirments and the list that will give the best result for this campaign type.
List brokers can offer a variety of lists. You can do an email marketing campaign, a direct mail campaign via post or a telemarketing campaign to reach people via the telephone. Dependent on your objective and end goal a mixture of all three could be used.
So for you to choose your appropriate list broker, you firstly need to do your homework with what exactly you require, your budget and you should then have a list of options provided to you by a list broker of how to achieve those objectives.
Publicity Stunts and Launch Campaigns
June 25th, 2010Publicity Stunts
Publicity stunts are special events that are held to grab the attention of the general public.
Publicity stunts are used by firms to get media coverage so as to generate leads. Though nothing can give a business more positive media coverage than a well planned and executed publicity stunt, they can also cause irreparable damage to the firm, if gone wrong.
Following are some tips you can use to get the best out of your publicity event:
• Your publicity stunt should be unique, creative and outstanding to grasp public interest.
• Place for the event has to be carefully selected, so that maximum number of people can watch it.
• You can use advertising to let people know about the upcoming event. Remember that your ad must not reveal too much information of the event, as that would spoil the curiosity about the stunt among the people.
• Make sure that your stunt does not put the objective of the campaign away from focus. The core message behind your campaign should be clearly conveyed to the prospective clients.
Publicity stunts can be expensive and hard to organize, but no one can deny the interest and awareness that can be created by this strategy if used correctly.
Launch campaigns:
The launch of a new business or a new product by an existing business is one of the most vital events for any business. Your launch campaign is an opportunity to create brand awareness, generate leads and give your brand and edge over your competitors.
The following suggestions are useful in making your launch campaigns a success:
• Everyone related to launch campaign should be very clear about the main aim of the campaign whether it is to create awareness, lead generation, revitalize sales etc.
• Design your launch campaigns according to your targeted market segment, e.g. children, elderly, high income /low income etc.
• Highlight the core value of your product in your campaign.
• If you are going to introduce a completely new product, make sure that you continue to advertise success of your product immediately after its launch.
• If you aim to establish long term relationship with your customers, refrain from making unrealistic claims in your launch campaign.
• Select a good marketing mix to be used for the campaign, according to targeted customers.
• It is helpful to use sales promotion techniques, such as lower introductory offers, giveaways or discounts on bulk buying to attract consumers.
• Sales staff and marketing team should be adequately trained to handle post launch inquires from interested customers.
Successful launch campaigns will not only boost sales at the introductory stage of your product but it will help throughout the product life cycle.
Offering Free Giveaways for Opting in
June 20th, 2010Opting in refers to a marketing strategy where the potential consumer allows businesses to send e-mails to their e-mail address.
It is good to send e-mail to potential consumers with their permission, as this ensures that the consumer is a qualified lead; plus, sending e-mails without seeking permission is known as spam.
It is said that” there is no such thing as a free lunch”; yet, offering free giveaways for opting in is a very effective marketing technique. All businesses need customers and generating new leads and keeping existing ones is the aim of all marketing teams. One of the easiest ways of doing this is by having your own e-mail list.
Those consumers who are opting in for your e-mail subscription are likely to be better qualified leads as they have shown an interest. Once you have an e-mail list of your own, it becomes very easy and cost effective to market your product, announce new offers or any other relevant news by sending bulk e-mail to your list.
Joint venture giveaways are also gaining popularity. In this technique, a number of firms get together and each firm provides a product for the giveaway. All firms promote this event to attract potential consumers. Visitors to the giveaway website can choose the products they want and marketers get their e-mail addresses in return.
Following points are worth remembering if you want to use free giveaways for opting in.
• The giveaway that you offer should be something your prospective leads are interested in. Choose the giveaway according to the profile of your ideal customer.
• Design your squeeze page in such a way that it is very eye catching and contains just enough information about your offer that will make the reader subscribe to your e-mail list.
• If you are a part of a joint venture giveaway, make sure you have a very visible gift ranking on the web page. You can increase the response to your offer by continuous promotion of the event.
• You will also need to have an efficient auto responder software system in place to manage the subscribers
Though some people argue that you will not get qualified leads but only freebie seekers through giveaway events, once a potential consumer subscribes to your list, you can keep him or her subscribed by using free advice, more free offers, relevant news etc., instead of a continuous sales pitch to maintain the interest of subscribers.
Generating Leads from an Advertising Campaign
June 15th, 2010It is crucial to realize the importance of advertising in the lead generation process. Studies report that the majority of most purchasing decisions are the result of advertising. Also, advertising helps build brand awareness and helps create a niche for your company in the marketplace.
How to Generate Leads from Advertising:
Here are some pointers to keep in mind in your advertising campaign, in order to generate leads for your business:
♣ You can use print or electronic media or a mix of both to get in touch with your prospective leads.
♣ Your advertisement should focus on the uniqueness of your product as compared to your competitors, i.e. highlight the core value of your product. Try to arouse sufficient curiosity in your prospects to make them inquire more about your product.
♣ When you are using advertising for lead generation, it is helpful to calculate advertising cost to compare it with expected return on your investment. This includes cost of designing, production or printing and advertising media.
♣ If you have a small marketing budget, then you can use low cost advertising techniques such as posters, promotional stalls in local markets, local newspapers, leaflets and brochures etc.
♣ With larger advertising budgets, expensive advertising techniques such as TV, CDs, DVDs and online media can be deployed for lead generation.
♣ Pay per click advertising has recently become very popular as a cost effective means of lead generation. In this technique search engines like Google are used to send prospects to a company’s website. You will pay only when a client clicks on your ad and visits your website.
♣ It is crucial to be consistent in using logos, mission statements etc. to set a particular brand image in the minds of your prospective leads.
♣ If you are using an advertising agency, be very clear and specific in explaining your advertising goals to them.
♣ The language and tone of advertising should be designed keeping the profile of your prospective client in mind e.g. age group, income, life style etc.
♣ Do not forget to give the prospect ways of responding to your ad, e.g. by phone or your websites.
♣ It is very important to check the effectiveness of your advertising campaign by measuring how many leads have been actually generated. Commonly used indicators in this regard are advertising to be cost per thousand, cost per response, and percentage response etc.
As your advertising campaign aims at generating leads, if it fails to produce results, you need to review your strategy. Ensure that you use the most cost effective form of advertising that yields maximum leads.
Generating Leads from Arranging a Seminar
June 10th, 2010Businesses are always looking for ways to generate leads. One way that is immensely effective is to arrange seminars to get people interested in your business.
Advantages of Arranging a Seminar:
Here’s why seminars are such a good way to generate leads:
• They give your business immense credibility.
• They satisfy information needs of your target market.
• They help your target market associate your business mentally with knowledge and expertise, and hence, being your clients would make them feel that they are in safe hands.
How to Go About Arranging a Seminar:
Consider these key factors in arranging a seminar, to get maximum leads out of it:
• Planning:
This is very important that you plan your seminar based on what particular objectives you have set for a particular event. Seminars should be used for lead generation only when you are sure that this is the best way to generate qualified leads for your organization. It is important to set a budget for a particular event based on the scale and scope of the event.
• Selecting Attendees:
Select your audience for the seminar according to the nature of your business. It’s easier to generate leads when your audience is more targeted. Demographics of your audience may also help you in determining whether an in-person event or a webinar is more appropriate. For example if your targeted audience is spread over a large geographical area, it would be better to use a webinar. Webinar can be recorded and reused on your website or for future campaigns as well.
• Promotion:
The first step in determining the promotional strategy is to understand the communication preferences of your targeted audience. One of the easiest ways to promote a seminar is through email. Invitation should be a concise, action oriented email that highlights the benefits of attending the event. You can advertise your events on popular blogs such as like LinkedIn or Face book. PR, direct mail or telemarketing can be used for this purpose as well.
• Content:
When you are using seminars for lead generation, this should be for sharing of information and providing answers to the attendee’s questions and must not look like sales pitch.
• Follow-up:
It is critical to ensure that you have been successful in generating leads after the seminar. As the purpose of the seminar is lead generation you must estimate the number and quality of the leads generated after the event. You can start follow up with the people who indicated interest immediately after the event by sending e-mails and phone calls. You can keep in touch with those prospects that may become leads later by sending an informational white paper about your product.
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