When it comes to the internet people just love the word ‘new’. That’s the first mistake you can make when using the internet as a tool to run a business. The platform that the internet provides is new, I guess, but there is nothing new about techniques used for selling on the internet. Blogging has been around for centuries in the form of pamphlets – Martin Luther used it to inadvertently create the Protestant church shortly after printing was invented – while press releases have been around as long as the press. Just because you use the internet to deliver your marketing materials doesn’t mean that you should ignore some very established facts.

Cost effective marketing

Email marketing is a very attractive option – especially for small business owners – because of the limited cost in producing email newsletters and communicating with their customers. It can be a highly effective and very cheap tool and some internet based businesses owe the majority of their sales to it. However, getting it right is not so simple. Email marketing is very similar to the stuff that comes through your letterbox that you didn’t ask for. I use it to light fires without taking a second glance at it – oh, with the exception of the stuff with pens in. I do at least open that before adding it to the fire lighting pile. There was one other exception recently – I got a postcard with the phrase “We deal with **it”. It was for a septic tank cleaning service. I didn’t actually need the service at the time but the flyer just grabbed me and made me giggle for long enough to put it to one side and keep it for reference.

Encouraging second glances

While email marketing is much cheaper than fancy flyers, getting the content right is just as crucial. I find marketing emails slightly more annoying than the paper version, simply because they can’t be used for lighting fires. I may not be typical with my delete happy fingers but I have a suspicion that I may well be. Internet users today are pretty savvy. They know when something is being sold at them and don’t get to excited to see emails they haven’t asked for. Most of us are too busy to take much notice of them. So the first rule for email marketing campaigns is to make sure it grabs your audience’s attention.

Tools for the job

Because of the cost effectiveness of email marketing, it shouldn’t be discounted. The advantage it has over my fire lighting pile is simply that you can ask users to opt in. I, like most internet users, am happy to get the newsletters and offers I’ve signed up for and I even read them – not just to see if there’s a free pen going either. While opt in email lists can leave you with a lot of ‘dead weight’ users – those who have lost interest and either don’t take much notice of them or delete them straight away. By keeping your content fresh and engaging you can limit this. You can also benefit from having the right email marketing platform. Good systems will create reports that allow you to not only judge the effectiveness of your campaigns, but can help you manage your lists effectively. Other features of email marketing systems that can give them the edge over the traditional mail shots are that the better systems include various tracking options allowing you to monitor which email campaigns are effective and how subscribers interact with.

Content and delivery

Planning your content and ensuring that newsletters are fresh and inviting creates an effective email marketing campaign. The best campaigns keep users amused and interested and this helps to reduce the numbers of ‘dead weight’ customers.

About: 247EmailData manage your email campaigns with an effective email marketing platform and will also keep your emails out of the virtual fire place.