email marketing tips

We’ve all come to rely on email. It’s one of the ways people keep in touch with each other and it’s become a vital tool in the day to day running of just about every business.

So when it comes to your business, its important to make sure you’re getting the most out of email and using it to its best advantage.

One of the cheapest and easiest ways to use email as a marketing tool is through an email newsletter. Besides being inexpensive, you can get your message out regularly and quickly. That’s a real bonus especially if you have products and services which change on a regular basis and your customers want to hear about it!

Newsletters also allow you to measure your Return on Investment (ROI). You can calculate how much it has cost you to produce your newsletter and how much business it has generated. That way you can track if your newsletter is working for you to create business!

Email newsletters are one of the ways you can reach a large number of customers. It’s also an excellent way of building and maintaining relationships as all business people know, its much easier to keep an existing customer, than to get a new one!

When you stay in touch with your regular customers and email them valuable information, they'll view you as a credible resource who's looking out for their best interests. Then they'll reward you with their loyalty (and continued purchases)!

Make sure your newsletter is truly targeted to your audience and your information is interesting and useful.

Once you’ve decided to embark on email marketing there are a few of things you can do to get started.

1. make sure you know your customer and what it is they will want to hear about
2. decide how often the newsletter is to come out
3. develop a design template reflecting your company’s brand, image and other promotional material such as your website
4. prepare a list of topics and items you wish to include in your newsletter

Once you’ve started sending out your newsletter, it’s a good idea to send it out on a regular basis. Keep a list of ideas for articles or features handy and whenever you have an idea, just add it to the list.

It’s also a good idea to ask your subscribers for feedback or invite them to send ideas for articles or features for inclusion.

Finally, you must comply with the law by getting permission from the recipients to email them (this is why email newsletters are often called “opt in” or “permission-based” email marketing). Remember to make it clear to subscribers that you will respect their privacy (you could include a privacy policy on your website) and that you won’t sell or rent their name to anyone and that you make it easy for people to unsubscribe from your newsletter.

Check out our article on the future of email marketing here.

If you'd like to discuss whether email marketing is suitable for you, develop a strategy and/or a design give us a call. As part of the strategy we'll work through the best ways of making sure your newsletters are actually delivered and the best ways of getting them opened! If you'd rather send us an email for more information you could complete our enquiry form.