Do your sales need a pick-me-up?
Why not reach out to your client base to remind them of your services? A newsletter or discount offer can go a long way towards top-of-mind awareness and increased sales.
Email marketing works for a variety of reasons…
- It allows targeting
- It is data driven
- It drives direct sales
- It builds relationships, loyalty and trust
- It supports sales through other channels
Many business owners mistakenly believe that email marketing was killed off by spam. In fact email marketing is one of the most powerful tools available to promote your website and your services (check out the research section below).
For a successful campaign you have to get the basics right. The basics of building a list of people who want to hear from you, crafting a message, and ensuring the emails get through to those on that list.
Getting those emails through to the recipients and not getting trapped by spam filters is paramount to a successful email marketing campaign. Use of a third party is crucial.
Google’s GMail, Hotmail and other mail servers in general recognize Mail Chimp and Constant Contact as “safe sources”. They understand that these services have strict policies about spamming, so they don’t filter email from Mail Chimp or Constant Contact.
We’ve been searching for the best solution for sending email newsletters and promotional offers and have settled on Mail Chimp.
It’s the most economical Mail Chimp offers those with lists up to 2,000 subscribers, to use the service for FREE with the ability to send up to 12,000 emails each month.
And one of the best features is that the level of reporting is truly staggering. Check out the Reporting discussion below.
While the service is terrific, a professional look and approach is essential. A poorly executed newsletter or promotion can do more harm than good. Let us help you do it right.
To get going with a newsletter or promotion campaign of your own, respond here and I’ll get right back to you
REPORTING
The reporting that is available is simply outstanding. Below you’ll discover a few of the things that are available, but there is a lot more.
There’s an Overview that gives the general performance of the campaign and compares the performance of the campaign to the performance of others in the same industry but you can delve in a lot deeper.
The Subscriber Activity report tells you who opened the email and how many of the links in the email they visited and which ones.
Delivery Statistics include any bounced emails and the reason why.
Click Performance reporting gives an analysis of your email showing where people clicked on the email and the percentage that did so.
You can track readership and click-throughs and even run multiple campaigns at once to see which is more effective.
The reports tell you who’s opening, clicking, and coming back for more and Google Analytics integration can give advanced stats on how your campaigns affect traffic to your website.
RESEARCH
According to research conducted by the Direct Marketing Association, email marketing was expected to generate an ROI of $44.00 for every dollar spent on it in 2011. e-Mail Marketing, outperforms all the other direct marketing channels examined, such as print catalogs.
A 2011 MerchantCircle survey of over 8,000 local business owners in the US found email marketing cited by 35.8% as a Top 3 most effective marketing or advertising method. Only social network profiles and search engine marketing scored higher.
The ForeSee Results 2010 report on the effectiveness of social media found that promotional emails were the second biggest influence on retail website visits. The biggest influence was familiarity with the brand.
A January 2011 survey by BtoB Magazine found 63% of respondents likely to increase spending on email in 2011 (second only to websites), with 29% keeping spend constant.