Does Email Marketing Work?

Today I received an email from someone asking me if email marketing really works. Email marketing is probably one of the most effective marketing tools that you can use for your business, if you do it right. I do not believe in cold lists (email addresses that you do not personally know). For a successful email marketing campaign you need a few things:

• Right target (email addresses)
• Right time
• Right Email Subject
• Right content/message
• Right software

You must have the right target and right email addresses if you want your email marketing to succeed. For example, if I am only interested in dress shoes and you send me an email about sport shoes and sneakers, you cannot really expect sales from that.

The emails must be submitted at the right time. [It doesn't matter when you are ready to sell, what matter is if you are ready to sell when your customers are ready to buy.] I can't remember the author of this quote but I always have this in mind every time I am marketing something. Your presence is very important so is the timing. You have to be present when customers need your product or services.

The title/subject of the email has to be interesting enough for people to open the email and read it. If the title it is not interesting or is not relevant to the message inside the email, it will most definitely get deleted.

The content and the message of your email must be very interesting to and it needs to have a goal. The whole message needs to be about the goal and needs to direct people to doing something. An ACTION! This action could be buying something from you, visiting your website, a particular product, giving you feedback about something or etc.

Having the right software also helps to convey the message better and track your success. Some applications give you a full detail report of your email receivers’ behaviors towards your email. They often show you how many people opened your email, clicked on certain links, downloaded the attachments and etc.

For Email Marketing software, I would recommend Constant Contact, iContact, GoDaddy's Express Email Marketing. They are all fairly cheap and work very well and tons of people use them. They are also very easy to work with.

Try email marketing if you haven't already tried it yet and start collecting valuable email addresses. Place a sign up form on your website or blog and start collecting email addresses. You can often get people to sign up if you offer them something of a value. For example give prizes or special privilege to people who sign up for your newsletter. Give them a free E-Book or a coupon. Most email marketing applications provides you with the html code to place on your website to have a Sign Up form.

Email marketing works really well if you do it right!

Ashkan
www.ITchair.com
(310) 927-2588
info@itchair.com