Email marketing is one of the most effective ways to grow your business. It’s highly targeted, highly trackable, and it’s cheap! How else can you deliver a custom marketing message directly to the inbox of a highly targeted subscriber? Nowhere!
So enough about the WHY; now let’s talk about the HOW. To start, you need a list of people to email, right? Growing your email list can be as challenging as marketing to them; it’s certainly as important. Here are a couple of easy tips for increasing your email subscribers.
Tip #1 – Say Something
Offer some content, an article, a report, or even a video. Choose a subject that you’re an expert in, something that you’re passionate about, something that people are going to want to read. Invite your website visitors to sign-up for your email newsletter in exchange for the content.
Tip #2 – Get Social
Add a newsletter sign-up form to your Facebook account, and check out our sign-up page, http://on.fb.me/tetnewsletter – we used Static FBML App., super easy!
Tip #3 – Add a Sign-up to Your Email Signature
Consider how many emails you send out every day. Your daily email correspondence is a gold mine of opportunity! Adding your email signature is just one small thing you can do to get more out of your everyday email and grow your email list.
Great Example:
Last week I was in the fabulous restaurant The Blue Talon in Merchant Square, Colonial Williamsburg. I had this amazing lunch. I was alone with a great book, and it was bliss! Then out of nowhere, as I get the check, the below card was also left for me. Take a minute and read the absolute genius involved here.
The offer…..champagne, dessert, espresso…..sign me up! What do I need to do, write down my email……done! Then note, they are clever, they make you want to read to the end, they are fun!
Almost daily, I hear people make excuses on why they don’t have more emails, why it is so much work, how they don’t know what to do. Effective online marketing starts with great emails. You can be a fabulous writer, but if you can’t get it in front of anyone, then you are writing for yourself. Not a bad gig, but it won’t sell more of your product.
How do you have your mailing list organized? If it’s just one giant list, consider this effective online marketing strategy – develop smaller lists and online/newsletter content that targets specific groups of customers.
These smaller lists help in a variety of ways. Say you track the frequent spending or shopping habits of your clients. Perhaps you have an organic food company or want to market your farmer’s market, and you know which customers always purchase the sweetest sweets. As you think about how to write a newsletter to those clients, perhaps you include recipes just for them. They are then more likely to act on your emails.
You could also develop a smaller e-mail group of your most loyal clients. Test new ideas, new innovative marketing tools, on them. Ask to forward your newsletter to their friends and have those friends sign up. Reward those loyal customers with a special discount or service when that friend does join your mailing list. If this strategy works, apply it to the larger group.
With this strategy, as you develop these targeted lists, you may find yourself requesting your online content writer, like TheEmailTree.com, to develop additional newsletters or e-mails.
This effort will be worth it when you see your business grow!
So, get started, get smart, get clever, and get going. Collect those emails and grow your list.
And as far as the work goes, this card was work; they put some time into this, some real thought. However, once it was done, it is good for years. Time well spent.