Evaluating Your Email Marketing

Email marketing can be a very effective way to reach a target audience around the world. However, your marketing efforts may not reach their full potential unless you invest some time, energy and money into evaluating your email marketing strategy.

Evaluation

Evaluation

During this evaluation, you may determine whether or not the email marketing is helping you to reach your goals. Likewise you can determine if the email marketing is having an adverse affect on your business. This article will discuss the importance of evaluating your email marketing and will also offer some useful advice on how to do this.

1) Regular Evaluation

To say that evaluating your email marketing strategy on a regular basis is important is a tremendous understatement. Regularly evaluating your email marketing is not only important it is critical to the success of your business. Failure to evaluate your email marketing strategies can have adverse effects ranging from not producing results to causing you to lose customers to your competitors.

2) Target the Right Audience

Consider an email marketing campaign which is not effective because it does not reach the members of the target audience. Some business owners make the fatal mistake of not taking care to ensure their email distribution list features recipients who are extremely interested in the products or services you offer.

a) Avoid Mass Sending

Business owners who take shortcuts by purchasing large email lists, often find their shortcut did not pay off because the recipients of their marketing emails are simply not interested in the products or services you offer. In this scenario the email marketing is likely to generate very few sales or website visits. However, reevaluating the email distribution list to include recipients who are interested in your products or services will likely result in significantly more sales and website visits.

b) Avoid Spaming

Now consider a situation in which your email marketing is being construed as spam by the recipients. If you have taken precautions to ensure your emails are reaching members of your target audience but your emails seem like over the top sales pitches, the members of your email distribution list may view your emails as spam and not take your advertisements seriously. When this happens the member of your email distribution list may be more likely to seek out a competitor when they are in need of products or services rather than making a purchase from you.

3) Formal or Informal Evaluation

Evaluating your email marketing efforts may be formal or informal in nature.

a) Meet Specific Business Goals?

If you have specific business goals in mind you might want to consider using whether or not you are on the way to meet this goal as an indication of whether or not the email marketing is working. 

b) Casual Feedback From Customers

Alternatively, you can evaluate your email marketing efforts by soliciting customer feedback. Asking customers for their opinions about the email marketing campaign and whether or not they were compelled to make a purchase because of the content, the advertising or some other element.

Based on this information you should have a good indication of whether or not the email marketing is effective. If it is not effective you should consider making changes to create more interest in your products or services. The changes you make should reflect the feedback you receive though to ensure you are not making changes which will cause even less interest from the members of the target audience. 

Click on the link for a series of video presentations to learn how to start an email marketing campaign with AWeber.

Understanding Email Marketing

Do you understand email marketing? If you do not, you do not have to worry just yet. This is because the concept of email marketing is relatively easy to learn and simple to utilize. While not having a great deal of knowledge about email marketing is not an immediate threat to your business, you should start learning about this concept to ensure it does not become a problem for you later as more and more competitors in your niche are beginning to take advantage of the concept of email marketing. This article will provide information on email marketing which should be useful to business owners who do not have experience with the subject matter.

Email Marketing Options

Business owners should first understand the options available to them in terms of email marketing. The most common options include sending out mass emails with promotional materials, publishing and distributing e-newsletters and offering correspondence courses via email. The advantage to all of these marketing strategies is the ability to reach a worldwide audience. Unlike traditional methods of marketing such as television and radio ads or print media ads which only reach an audience in a limited area, anyone with access to the Internet can benefit from your email marketing techniques.

Mass Emails


Mass Emails

Mass emails are the most popular form of email marketing. This includes emails which are sent to hundreds, thousands or even millions of recipients at once. The problem with this type of marketing is the potential for having your emails viewed as spam. This is likely to occur if you send your emails to recipients who have no interest in your products or services and have not expressed interest in receiving emails from you.

E-newsletters

Reading E-newsletters

Text and Graphic Presentations

E-newsletters are also becoming increasingly popular as a form of email marketing. E-newsletters can be a simple or as complex as you prefer and may include text, graphics, advertisements, links or any combination of these elements. One of the first decisions you will have to make is whether you wish to make your e-newsletter strictly text or include graphics in the e-newsletter.

If you are on a tight budget, it may be worthwhile to only include text to avoid the need to hire a graphic artist. You may be able to incorporate graphics yourself but your articles will not look nearly as professional as the graphics provided by a professional. Likewise you can certainly write your own copy for your e-newsletter but you will likely create a much better impression if you hire a qualified professional writer to create the content for you instead.

Hiring Graphic Artist and Professional Writer

Hiring a professional graphic artist and a professional writer may seem like an extraneous expense but it is actually quite important. Your e-newsletter may be the first impression many potential customers get of you and your work so it is important to make sure everything is of the highest quality.

Correspondence Courses

Correspondence Courses

Free or offered for a Fee

Correspondence courses offered via email is the final email marketing strategy to be discussed here. These courses may be either offered for a fee and turned into a source of income or they may be made available for free.

The theory behind offering these courses for free is that they often contain subtle advertising urging visitors to invest in the products and services offered by your business. Whether you charge for your email correspondences courses or offer them for free, care should be taken to ensure the information contained in these courses is completely accurate.

True Content 

This is critical because potential customers who receive these email courses will be judging your business based on the quality and accuracy of these email courses. If they are filled with errors the potential customer may doubt the quality of your work and seek out the products and services offered by others including your direct competitors.

Evaluate your Email Marketing Campaigns.

Email Marketing - Reaching Your Target Audience

In theory, email marketing is not any different than other types of marketing. This means the basic principles of marketing apply to your email marketing efforts as well. One of these most important principles is the importance of reaching your target audience. The ability to reach your target audience and convince them to make a purchase cannot be underestimated. This article will provide some insight into how Internet marketers can effectively reach their target audience.

Reaching Your Target Audience

1) Sending Emails to Target Group

Target Audience

The simplest way to reach your target audience is to allow existing customers as well as potential customers to register on your website and decide whether or not they want to receive emails with additional information and advertisements. When the users register they should be required to enter an email address. This registration process will allow you to compile a list of email addresses from each potential customer who expressed an interest in receiving additional information.

Sending your email marketing materials to the members of this distribution list is much more effective than sending out a mass email to recipients whose email addresses you purchased. This is because the group of email addresses you compiled all have an interest in the products or services you offer while there is no information on the other set of email addresses to indicate whether or not the members will even have an interest in the products or services you offer.

2) Communication Style

Another tip for reaching your target audience is to do adequate research to determine how to communicate with the members of your target audience. This may include changing the language of your emails to suit the preferences of your target audience members, designing the layout and colors of the email to be appealing to the target audience and tailoring the emails to include content which is of interest to the members of the target audience. This type of research can really pay off because it will make your emails significantly more effective.

3) Simple Messages

Still another tip for reaching your target audience when email marketing is to keep your message simple. Being subtle is important so your email does not seem like a blatant sales pitch but it is also important to present your message in a clear and concise manner which will be easily understood by the members of your target audience. If you have any doubts your target audience will be able to understand your message, you can certainly leave information for the email recipients to contact you with your questions. This interaction can prove to be extremely useful. Through these communications you can learn about the needs of your target audience and how you can tailor your email marketing strategy to meet these needs.

4) Seeking Feedback
 

Seeking Feedback


Finally, it is important to solicit feedback from the members of your target audience to ensure you are meeting their needs with your email marketing campaign. This should be done on a continual basis as the needs of your target audience may change over time. When you solicit feedback from your target audience you should be sure to ask specific questions which require answers which can be interpreted easily. This is important because ability to interpret these answers will greatly impact your ability to further refine your email marketing efforts to conform to the expectations of your target audience members.

Click on the link to have a better understanding on email marketing.

Email Marketing Strategies

Email Marketing

Email marketing is becoming extremely popular but this does not mean all business owners know how to run an effective email marketing campaign. However, those who are well versed in the subject of email marketing and have experiencing using popular strategies effectively are likely to gain a huge advantage over their competitors who do not have these skills.

This article will provide useful information for business owners who are hoping to improve their sales or website traffic through effective email marketing.

1) Hire Assistance from Marketing Firm

If you do not have a great deal of information about email marketing and do not fully understand the principles involved one of the best ways to orchestrate a truly effective email marketing campaign is to hire a consulting firm with a proven track record in promoting business through email marketing to assist you in your endeavor. Similarly to traditional marketing such as radio, television and print media, the popular strategies governing email marketing are changing constantly. As a business owner you likely already have enough to deal with trying to stay up to date on business practices that you do not have the time, energy or finances to also stay up to date on the latest changes in email marketing.

For this reason it is certainly worthwhile to hire a professional in the email marketing industry who can devote himself full time to keeping up to date with the most effective email marketing strategies and designing an email marketing campaign for our business to help you achieve your business related goals. However, selecting a consultant from the many options available can be downright overwhelming. In general you should look for a consultant who has a great deal of experience, a proven track record, listens to your questions carefully, explains concepts simply and makes your project a priority.

2) Offer Email Correspondence Course

Another popular strategy for email marketing is to offer an email correspondence course on a subject closely related to your website or the products or services you offer. These correspondence courses should include a number of short segments, provide useful information, be of interest to your intended audience and should also help to promote your business in some way. The simplest way to promote your business without having your correspondence course deemed to be spam is to use a soft sell approach to subtly urge readers to make a purchase or visit your website for more information.

3) Publish e-Newsletters

E-Newsletters

Publishing and distributing period e-newsletters is another example of an email marketing strategy which can be highly effective. An e-newsletter is very similar to a newsletter which is printed and distributed by conventional methods such as mail delivery. The bulk of an e-newsletter should be quality content in the form of featured articles, short articles containing useful tips or product reviews.

The e-newsletter may also contain graphical elements. These elements may simply be graphic designs or they may be graphics which also serve as links. The links may direct traffic to your website or to other websites. Finally, your e-newsletters should contain some type of soft sell sales approach. It is important to not make the sales pitch blatant as this may result in the e-newsletter being considered spam. Finally, the e-newsletter should contain a call to action urging the readers to either make a purchase or visit your website for more information.

Evaluate Your Email Marketing Strategies

Regardless of the method of email marketing you opt to utilize, one of the most important strategies is to evaluate the effectiveness of your email marketing on a regular basis. This is critical because elements of your email marketing campaign which are not working should be weeded out. Likewise elements of your marketing campaign which are enjoying a high degree of success should be utilized more often. For example if you notice there is a spike in sales or website traffic each time you issue an e-newsletter, it might be worthwhile to begin issuing e-newsletters more often. This type of evaluation and feedback can turn a moderate success into a huge success.

Read how to reach your target audience in your email marketing campaigns.

Effective Email Marketing

Email Marketing

Email marketing is quickly becoming one of the most popular forms of Internet advertising. This is because there are many distinct advantages to the concept of email marketing. However, email marketing does have some disadvantages as well. Now let's examine the advantages and disadvantages of email marketing and will also provide some insight into how to plan and execute an effective email marketing campaign.

Advantages and Disadvantages

Advantages

1) Global Reach

Email marketing certainly has a set of unique advantages over other types of marketing both online and offline. Perhaps one of the most significant advantages to email marketing is the ability to reach a worldwide audience with minimal effort. It is certainly possible to reach a worldwide audience with other types of advertising but traditional types of advertising such as television, radio and the print media are not nearly as effective for reaching potential customers around the world all at once.

2) Affordable

Another major advantage to email marketing is it is extremely affordable. This is significant because there are many other types of marketing, including Internet marketing, which are significantly more expensive than email marketing. The costs associated with email marketing are minimal. Ideally you will already have a list of email recipients who are interested in your products and services so there is no cost associated with obtaining a list of email addresses. Additionally the cost to send out emails is minimal and can be considered part of your regular operating costs. All of these factors already make email marketing extremely cost effective.

Disadvantages

1) Advertising and Writing Cost

However, there is some cost involved in email marketing. Primarily this is the costs associated with writing the advertisements and creating any graphics which will accompany the email advertisements. This will require hiring a writer to write the copy for the advertisement and a designer to create and implements the graphics (optional). The cost of these services will vary pretty widely but in general you will pay more for writers and designers with more experience. This is because these writers and designers are expected to be able to produce a higher quality of work than those with less experience could produce.

2) Spam e-Mails

The most obvious disadvantage to email marketing is the possibility of having your email marketing viewed as spam. This is a very important problem because it could prove to be quite costly in terms of the profit margin for your business. As such, it is important to find a provider such as Aweber that is able to deliver your emails to your recipients' inbox for maximum effect.

Each day Internet users are bombarded with unsolicited emails serving as advertisements. This problem has reached epic proportions and the abundance of spam infiltrating the email boxes of innocent Internet users has to be cautious and suspicious about any email they receive which is unsolicited and appears to be promoting a particular product or service.

Emails which contain subject lines or content which appear to be similar to spam may be automatically transferred to a spam email folder by the email system. Emails which are not automatically deleted may be deleted without being opened simply because the recipient does not recognize the sender of the email. Both of these problems can result in essentially wasted time for the business owner because the recipients are not even viewing the emails advertising the products and services offered by the business. Additionally, they may result in complaints being lodged against the company for being a purveyor of spam.

Things to Look Out for When Sending Your Emails

1) Distribution List

Now that you understand the advantages and disadvantages of email marketing, you might wonder how you can maximize the advantages to use email marketing to your advantage. The most important factor to consider is your email distribution list. This should consist of former customers who have expressed a desire to receive emails with information and advertisements as well as potential customers who have also expressed interest in more information.

2) Useful Content

The content of the emails should also be carefully considered. They should certainly highlight the products and services you offer but should do so without appearing to be a hard sales pitch. A writer with experience in writing this type of copy should be able to assist you in providing insightful and accurate copy which also entices the reader to find out more about your products and services. Finally your emails should provide the readers with a call to action. This should be a statement urging the reader to take a specific action such as making a purchase or researching a product.

Learn the useful email marketing strategies.

Why Do Websites Need Email Marketing?

Email Marketing

Websites provide a great medium for publishing content and creating a virtual storefront for any business.

As search engines continue to replace traditional print directories such as the Yellow Pages as the way consumers seek out information, simply having a website with relevant information about your business is an excellent first step to an effective online presence.

But it is only the first step, because ...

Websites can't do it all!

A website is only part of the online marketing equation.  Here's why:

Websites are built on a passive technology. Whether most first-time visitors come from search engines, links from other sites, or finding an address elsewhere, they have taken some type of initiative of their own to seek out information. Since websites cannot "push" content to people at a later point, first-time visitors will then often remain as one-time visitors, never returning to the website they found.

Effective marketing often requires more time and information than a single website visit allows for. Any business owner would love for their product to sell itself instantly to their prospects. But we all know that marketing is usually a process, not an incident, and most prospects don't buy the first time they visit. Websites can facilitate impulse buys, but what about all of those other prospects who need facts over time to decide on a purchase when they're ready?

Interaction over the web is mostly anonymous with no opportunity for one-on-one communication. To visitors, websites often appear as brochures or virtual storefronts where information is collected and stored for viewing. Meanwhile, to website owners, if they are tracked at all, visitors appear as statistics. There is very little room for the kind of personal touch that often affects purchasing decisions offline, "in the real world".

Here's How Email Marketing Can Help

Email Concept

Email newsletters are an important component to effective online marketing because:

Email pro-actively sends information to prospects. While websites alone rely on visitors to return, an email newsletter allows a website owner to "push" valuable marketing to prospects, allowing them to build a much longer lasting business relationship than the one that ends with a single visit with no return.

Email can provide content over a period of time in consumable pieces. Trust takes time, and email newsletters provide that dimension to online marketing campaigns.  Once a visitor requests email from a website, that initial interest can be built upon and turned into a profitable relationship.

Content can then be strategically placed in front of subscribers in the form of well planned campaign, with information broken up into smaller pieces, allowing website owners to prospect more effectively to more prospects.

Email provides a more personal medium than the web. People are well-acquainted with email as a way to communicate one-on-one with friends and associates, and in every email, there is a distinct sender and recipient, unlike the web pages containing one-way URL addresses.

By sending email newsletters to leads sourced from their sites, website owners can convert anonymous visitors into engaged subscribers who they can more personally engage with.

Learn how to start your email marketing campaigns using AWeber.