Tuesday, 18 August 2009

Email Marketing: What To Do And Not To Do

By Suzie Ashmore

Promoting your small online business is a challenging mission, particularly if you do not have any ideas about the best methods to use. Amidst the so called "new" marketing techniques that currently swamp the Internet, you will sometimes find yourself confused in trying to decipher which processes work most effectively and which will just waste your valuable time and effort. To be successful with your business promotion online, you need to utilize the most effective marketing tools as much as possible to attract visitors. More importantly, you should concentrate your efforts in mastering the most suitable techniques for your company.

Of course, one can put up banner ads and the like, but there is no guarantee that potential customers will see them. Worse, those buyers who trust your company may not learn of new products when they do come out. Email marketing is the way to go here.

Email marketing is the activity of promoting a company's products or services via electronic messages, or emails, sent to potential buyers or brand-loyal customers. It is not an uncommon practice, but there are many pitfalls to be aware of as a marketer. These failures can be avoided by understanding a few things about how users would like to receive advertising messages in their email inboxes.

No spam, please

Spammers use tools that also spider the web, but save any e-mail address they come across. Your personal web page lists your e-mail address? Spam (the odious practice of sending an email to thousands or even millions of people who have not requested it) is no longer tolerated. Nowadays offenders lose their local internet service provider, their websites, their email addresses, and more.

A trickle, not a flood

Next, email marketing should not be obtrusive or too pushy, in terms of selling a product. People tend to have trust issues towards marketing via electronic means, since they have no real guarantee that what they see is what they will get. Thus, avoid hyping up the products or services too much, or they may think that it is too good to be true and end up not buying at all. Additionally, this applies to the frequency of email updates to subscribers to your marketing service. Once a day is excessive, yet once a month would not be very useful in pushing up the profit line. As a general guideline, once a week or once every two weeks should be good, except if you have a special message on limited offers. Remember not to flood inboxes, and youre good as gold.

Options for trust

Users have the tendency to unsubscribe from your email marketing service. This is often overlooked by marketers, and scares away the more Internet-savvy users. The fact that they can opt out of your informational messages is a good foundation for trust, since they will feel that you are simply offering a service with no strings attached. Building trust in the informational phase will translate into more purchases and of course better profits later on, so take note.

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