By Tracey Ullom, Designer, CATATILLA Design LLC
The first thing to understand in marketing by email is that email marketing is not “spam”. Spam is indiscriminately sending out unsolicited bulk emails. Email marketing is targeted specifically to your existing and potential client base. Here are a few things to think about as you get started:
Benefits
When approached strategically, email marketing can be a very cost effective way to communicate with existing clients while building up your client base. The goal is to offer your subscribers a variety of useful tools that they will be inspired to keep on hand for an extended period of time. Once a system is thoughtfully set up, the long-term costs are minimal—limited to (1) monthly email web service cost and (2) time spent on developing content.
Imagine you own some type of horticulture related company; landscape designer, yard maintenance, nursery, etc. Would your customers enjoy seasonal plant/lawn care information? Information on how and when to trim the roses? When tree maintenance requires professional assistance? Or how to protect their gardens from frost? Of course they would! You are the expert and by strategically sharing your knowledge, plus coupons, promotions, or product notifications, you will build a captive audience. Subscribers will value your information, pass it to friends, trust you with their horticulture needs and bring you repeat business.
Dangers
Email marketing campaigns should not be entered into lightly or on the spur of a moment. It may seem easy to create an account with an online email marketing service and send out a quick email blast, but the repercussions of a poorly created email can greatly affect any future mailings. Typically, the result is a large portion of your email list (potential clients) will immediately block or unsubscribe from your emails. Once a person has unsubscribed it is very difficult to get them back on a list.
Email can be considered a temporary or disposable message—similar to that of direct mailings or televisions ads. On the other hand, there are eNewsletters that I’ve subscribed to that I file in my email client and refer to again and again.
Powerful Approach
Email is a powerful and widely used tool, and most people have at least one address and check it regularly. Your expertise plus email marketing have enormous potential as a simple piece of marketing that clients can easily forward or share with their friends and colleagues. When you work with CATATILLA Design we will help you navigate through the important questions to construct a system for your email marketing that will carry you and your customers into the future.
Questions we will answer together:
- What is the purpose of the email? What types of email should be sent? How can these emails be meaningful and helpful to clients? How can these emails bring in more and repeat business? Can client information be gathered to better my business?
- How does this email fit into my brand? How does it coordinate with and strengthen web presence? How can the overall design be email friendly and make the content/message shine?
- How can I build a mailing list? How can a website, social networking and/or blog help build readership? How can print marketing and networking build readership? Should there be multiple lists? How does that impact the campaign?
- How do I schedule these emails? When is the target audience likely to be at their computer? Are messages being sent to people across many time zones? Are the emails time-sensitive in some way? How does that impact the schedule?
- How can the campaign be sustained over an extended period of time? Where does the content come from? How can I be cost effective with email marketing?
- How can I build strategic written and visual content? How to structure the messages? How to word the subject line to maximize the number of recipients opening the emails?
- How can I track the emails? How can tracking the email help to evaluate their effectiveness and make smart changes?
Email marketing is awesome stuff. Those were really great points. I wanted to bring up a little CAN-SPAM note, too! Senders should make sure that their mailing list is full of people who WANT to be on that list. If reported for spam to the FTC, violators of CAN-SPAM can be fined up to like, $16,000 per instance of abuse (typically per address).
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