The Importance Of Email
It’s the 21st century and there are tons of ways to promote your business on the Internet, but none are as reliable as email marketing. The importance of email marketing is often questioned though. “Email?” some say, “Isn’t that outdated?” Not at all! With simple email marketing software you can integrate databases and implement segmentation techniques in order to narrow your focus to your most promising customers.
Today's blog article is a guest post from Michael Turley of Technected.com on how to attract and convert customers for your e-commerce business.
A little ingenuity and a good email marketing campaign can help you: Build relationships with loyal customers Add depth to your marketing Bring about repeat sales Keep in touch with the customer Let's consider each of these factors in turn.
AUDIENCE:
Facebook may boast a half billion users, but the number of people using e-mail easily doubles that. Grandmothers who have not yet launched their Twitter profile still keep in touch with electronic mail, so in terms of potential audience email is king. Additionally, the popularity of smartphones ensures that many people are not just reading email at their computers, but also when they are out and about. Mobile phones are essentially email inboxes that people carry with them all day, and there is more access to email not than ever before. With the right targeting methods, you have a potential audience of hundreds of millions.
DEPTH:
Email offers an opportunity for companies to engage with consumers in a more than cursory way. Provided you are emailing the right (interested, or capable of being interested) people and have the right hook in the subject line, your email will catch the reader’s eye. The body of the e-mail acts as a showcase for the services that your company can render. Many marketing techniques involve flashing ads at people as they surf the web, drive by in a car or do other activities, but this can sometimes be annoying. E-mail marketing allows the consumer to read a bit about and engage directly with the product/service if they are interested.
REPEAT SALES:
The cost of acquiring new customers includes advertising, teaching the customer about the product and then actually selling it to them. This process can be expensive and result in you making little or no money on the first sale to some customers. These customers can still become very profitable though if you can find ways to sell them additional products and services after you have spent the initial resources to acquire them. The best way to generate these repeat sales is by keeping in contact with past customers via regularly scheduled outgoing emails. This can be done multiple ways such as sending special offer emails or new product announcements to existing customers. Really any excuse to send an existing customer an email is a great idea as you may get additional sales from the message. There just has to be value in the message for the customer or they will stop reading you messages.
KEEPING IN TOUCH:
Weekly messages that detail what your company is doing and offer good news such as discounts or promotions can result in more repeat sales and revenue. Most software will allow you to send automated messages responding to past items purchased with related items. For example, if your brother just bought a television off of an electronics website and gave out his email, that store can later send e-mails about videogames or movies that he can get for discounted prices. Keeping in touch helps build a loyal customer base and generate those crucial repeat sales. The biggest reason to use email marketing is that it works. Email promotions drive direct sales, get people into stores (online and offline), spur website traffic and contribute to branding. More companies than ever are investing in email marketing in 2011, and once you know the basics, you can get involved, too.
Thank-you to Michael Turley for writing this article for the Profitworks blog. After reading the article I definitely thought this article would be beneficial to my readers to I was very excited to post this blog post. If you are looking for anything related to technology consider checking out Technected.com where Michael on occasions writes articles about various topics.
If you are a business that does not use email marketing I would highly recommend you take a look at Aweber or Constant Contact. Both systems are low cost, easy to learn and very effective to use. I think Aweber also has an offer on right now where you can sign up for $1 for a one month trial. I have found email marketing to be one of the most successful marketing methods for my business. For websites built on Joomla the email marketing program Acymailing is also a great option. If you're looking for more information on how to get started with email marketing check out our FREE guide to starting email marketing.
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My name is Chris R. Keller. I work at Profitworks Small Business Services helping various B2B small businesses in Waterloo and Kitchener Ontario generate new customers. If you are interested in generating new customers for your B2B small businesses enter your email in the box provided below and click the "Send Me Free Updates" button.
I hope this article on the importance of email enlightening. Thanks for reading. If you are interested in being a guest author on this blog like Michael, contact me and I would be happy to discuss further.
