Simple Steps to Easy Email Marketing Results
Email marketing is so easy. What a wonderful way to reach out personally to people…but wait. We all know the big problem with email marketing. It’s so easy that everyone is doing it.
Any marketer knows that spam is a bad thing and takes huge steps to avoid being a spammer. Actually if you are into email marketing, you really have to be CAN-SPAM compliant. CAN-SPAM stands for Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing. Since spam accounts for more than 70 percent of all emails now it has become loathed by just about everyone. I bet even the spammers hate spam.
To become CAN-SPAM compliant, one of the best things you can do is use the double opt-in feature when you are building a subscriber list. What this means is that when someone signs up to your mailing list, you have to make sure that you really do have their permission. The typical way of doing this is to send an email to the person and ask them to click on a confirmation link before they are officially added to your mailing list.
A way to ensure that the people you email do not become annoyed with your emails and view them as spam is to offer them an easy way to get off the mailing list.
Also, right up front let people know how often you will be emailing them. Sometimes email marketers will let people know that they will not be emailing them more than once or twice a month but do not mention specific days (second and fourth Tuesdays) or dates (15th and 30th). Others say that they will be emailing once a day for a week and then once a month.
Whatever your email marketing goal is, make a plan, let people know what it is and stick to it. This builds loyalty because people either look forward to your email, are glad to see it coming into their inbox, or lose interest and want to cancel it. If they cancel it, that is fine with you because you only want people on your list who are 100 percent fascinated with your product or service. 100 interested people are better than 500 people who just don’t care about what you have to offer.
The other thing that is very important is that your email be reasonably well structured. A good structure involves having a strong offer that focuses on the reader’s self-interest. Make it personal and write as if you are writing to one person. Explain what needs the reader can satisfy with the simple purchase of this product. Get right to the point. People want the message up front and immediate. They are not going to scroll through a long letter looking for the punch line.
That’s it in a nutshell. Don’t annoy people with emails, make them short, sweet and personal. Make them interesting. Email marketing is ideal if it is done right.
