Online marketing solutions

One size does not fit all, even though many clothes manufacturers tell us so.  When trying on any garment, the fit is important.  Why buy anything for the sole sake of spending money.  In a bad economy, everyone is looking for bargains, wanting to become wiser spenders.  If you are sending out generic email newsletter campaigns, you are enforcing and repeating that message – one campaign suits all.  Your campaign is then assuming the times we live in and the people that you are trying to target never change.  Do you think everyone wants to hear and buy the same things?  Without any complicated demographics, our experiences tell us that statement is false.

So now you have your email lists parsed, your behavioral stats are in, and your demographics are tuned.  So now what?

Creating successful email campaigns takes time and planning.  Pretty graphics, a smart logo, and interesting content, make a good start, but, there are many other factors to consider.  Taking the time to rethink your strategies, while weighing and comparing past email campaign results, is the surest way towards the better path of a higher ROI.

As with any car that needs monthly maintenance, a smart email marketer regularly analyze their campaigns.  They look for all the ways to modify, fix, and improve on the results they are receiving.  They are out of the box thinkers that are not afraid to try new things.

So here are some suggestions worth considering when evaluating your future newsletter campaigns:

Revisiting your Style and Design. Times and people change.  What was eye-catching last year may be boring now.  Does your design look professional and inviting?  Does it strengthen and convey your image and message?  Test your design by sending it out to trusted family members, friends, and colleagues.  Have some fresh eyes help see where adjustments and changes may be needed.  Here are some areas of concentration:

• Colors and fonts
• Photographs and imagery
• Too much or too little white space
• Is your content easy to read and parse?  Can readers quickly scan finding what they want quickly and easily?
• Are your articles too long?  Do you link readers back to your website to continue reading longer stories?
• Does your newsletter contain clear and precise calls to action with links to a corresponding and dedicated landing page on your website?
• Have you created an alternative text-only version of your newsletter for users who block graphics, or read predominantly on mobile devices?
• Does your newsletter contain tips and valuable information with special sales and close out information?

Create Dynamic Content. Think beyond the sale.  Content needs to be catchy, interesting, but most of all, relevant.  Your recipients receive a great deal of email, comprised of spammers selling everything you could think of.  The average user spends about 4 seconds looking at the sender address and the subject line, before deciding to keep or trash.  Here are a few ways to keep ahead of your market and industry, while creating dynamic content for your readers:

• Make sure your company name is in the “from line.”  People hesitate to open an email when the name is not recognized.
• Your subject line should be short, catchy, and clearly represent your main content.
• Send out a survey asking your subscribers what they would like to see in future issues.  Give them a list of potential topics from which to pick.
• Ask your readers to submit questions about your industry, products, or services.  Let them know that those questions and answers will be put in the next issue.  Create a little anticipation.
• Invite readers to send in their problem solving success stories.  This will greatly contribute to making your email newsletter content interesting and relevant.
• Have contest for the best story, rewarding them with a gift or discount coupon.  Everyone loves recognition, with an added freebie.
• Be savvy.  Research the industry experts in your field.  Ask them if they would like to be featured in your newsletter, with a section promoting their book or article.  Let your readers see it is not all about you.
• Use Social Media.  Write blogs and articles and put those links in your newsletter.  Involve your recipients in a dialogue.  Create a personal voice showing that a real person is behind the company.

In hard economic times, we need to be innovative and creative.  Use all the technology tools available to create conversations and talk to your audience.  Reaching out in creative and fun ways brings in your personality, while you are building an Internet persona.  Do not be afraid to experiment.  You are dealing with everyday people, like yourself.  Get out there and have some fun.  Now is the time to be different.

Once considered a luxury, (hey I am dating myself), cell phones are now falling out of everyone’s pockets, including kids.  Having a cell phone is like having a watch; you can’t leave home without it.  How exciting it once was to receive a call outside the home!  You felt important, privileged, and singled out from the crowd.

In 2010, from Nextel to Blackberry to IPhone to Android, the transformation of that little cell phone, coupled with the latest state of the art technology, has overwhelmed and excited even us die hard techies.

Nope, it’s not just for texting and taking pictures anymore.  Cell phones are being used to help people in developing nations, bringing global awareness of their needs, raising their living standards, along with diagnosing their problems!

Mobility and literacy
“A variety of other applications for cell phones in remote areas are also being developed, including some aimed at improving coordination in areas where transportation both for people and goods is often unpredictable. One such system, called Transport Link, also developed in NextLab, is a way for people who rely on infrequent bus service to get timely updates on when the next bus will come through their area or to arrange informal transportation with others in the area who have private vehicles.”  Read Entire Article

Predictions for 2013
“Yet, personal mobile devices with Internet connectivity encompass a broad array of devices and with a wide range of functionality that continues to evolve and expand rapidly.  To put this in perspective, the number of mobile devices accessing the Internet is projected to reach 1 billion by 2013 based on research by IDC.  Say “mobile” to most marketers and they think cell phone, maybe SMS (define).”

Mobile E-Marketing Strategies
From an e-marketing perspective, this leads to increased complexity and expense. In order to integrate a mobile strategy to take advantage of this evolving market, here are some basic suggestions:

Conform your e-marketing campaigns for mobile surfers. Make sure your mobile campaign can be easily read on a mobile smartphone.  Most mobile shoppers are looking for high priority items, quickly scanning the surface in between meetings and travel.  They want to find what they need quickly.  As with any email marketing campaign, use brand name they will recognize, with a visible call to action.  Don’t forget to include your phone number, e-mail address, or Web site on the bottom.

Mobile Demographics

Before starting a mobile-oriented marketing program, gather your demographics.  Survey your customers and prospects, finding out which devices they use and what type of mobile content they’d like to receive from you.  Don’t forget to find out what your competitors are creating and sending.

Create a Mobile Website

“Think of where customers are when they access your information and include critical information like phone number, store hours, location and/or directions,” recommends Microsoft Mobile Solutions Specialist Steve Siegel.

Register and Index your Mobile Site on:

• Yahoo.mobi
• msn.mobi
• Google Mobile
• aol.mobi
• 4info.mobi

Based on Nielsen tracking, mobile search grew 102% in 2009.  Remember you can’t be found if you aren’t there.

Mobile Metrics
* Count the number of impressions from mobile Web sites.
* Track your mobile marketing advertising results.
*  Monitor social media stats related to mobile communications.

As the variety and power of mobile devices continue to grow, marketing strategies need to evolve as well.  Remember, whether or not you have a mobile strategy, your prospects and customers are already receiving your competitor’s marketing messages via these devices.  Don’t be left behind.  Your ROI is depending on it.

Whether for your own company or the one you work for, beginning your adventure in the social media world of digital communications is a good decision.

Social Media has become one of the most aggressive ways to promote your site or business, increasing back  links, resulting in additional website traffic.  For any business counting their costs, while weathering a bad economy, social media has become a lifesaving path.

Social media is all about conversation.  It is a very appealing way to create relationships online – giving a face and voice to small and large businesses.  This strategy can easily add to an email marketing campaign, whose name and brand begin to take on a more personal and widespread public recognition.

Beginning your SM Campaign Strategy – Before jumping in head first, you need to know what tools you will be using, as well as the information you want to share.  As with any email marketing campaign, research, time, and strategy must always come first.  Here are a few tips:

Preparation and Research

• Create an audience persona. What does your target audience look like?  As an email marketer, demographics is a survival word.  Get an image of your audience, age, gender, spending and surfing habits, what sites they visit, and how they use the Web.  This forms your foundation.

• Check out your competition. Find out what your competition is doing in the social media arena.  What are they talking about, what are they writing about.  See what kind of responses they are getting.

• Policy Guidelines. Make sure your company has a social media policy in place.  Guidelines are needed for any employee that engages online conversations representing your organization.

• The Designated Blogger. It is very important to designate a blogger.  Whether you hire a freelance blogger, or give someone in your organization this opportunity, this is a serious commitment.  Blogging needs to be consistent, live conversations need to be monitored.  Give this serious thought – you need the right person creating the right voice and conversations.

• Goals and Meetings. Have your plans and strategies clearly defined.  Make time for follow-up meetings on the outcome and results.  This is a learning process.  You can easily modify ideas and content along the way.

• Interesting and Relevant. Whatever message you put out there, cannot be taken back.  People are stressed, quickly skimming through titles and bits of conversations, as they surf.  Take the time to surf around at what your target audience is talking about on YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter.  Do not let stress or urgency make your efforts sloppy.

Don’t forget to have fun. Social conversations should have some lightness about them.  We are not engaging in metrics or behavioral sciences.  Bring a bit of fun into this.   The very fact of the enormous proliferation of social media, proves that people want a more personal relationship and voice with those they do business with or buy from.

Here are some of the top SM sites in which to get started – Click Me!

As great as a value added email marketing campaign can be, planning its content, timing, and target is just as important to its success.  The proper approach to any email campaign should start with a well thought-out plan, which requires a little more time and effort then most e-marketers realize.  Here are some points that you need to cover when planning your email campaigns:

1.   Permission-based mailing list. Unless you have the recipient’s permission (op-in), you are trespassing and may be considered sending spam, which is against the CAN-SPAM Act.  Know the spam laws.  Stay out of trouble.

2.    Content is still king.  Your content should be relevant and directed at an intelligent audience.  Your message should be clear, sharing the essential facts in carefully thought out wording.  The structure of your message should be easy to parse.  Remember to give your message a personal voice.  You need to provide them with something that they desire.  Your content should hold their attention long enough for you to market yourself successfully.

3.    Grammatical errors. The amount of errors found within many emails can be quite surprising.  Misspelled words and poor grammar convey a lack of professionalism.  Rushing to get a campaign out, may cost you the loss of clients.  Take the time to read your email campaign over several times.  Have someone else read it as well.  Don’t let pressure cause you to be sloppy.

4.   Are your graphics in overdrive? Too many cooks spoil the soup; too many graphics spoil your message.  Your graphics should compliment not overshadow your text.  Keep your message simple and easy to parse.  Oversized graphics can cause a slow download, causing impatience in the recipient

5.    A clear and precise call to action. Don’t make your clients perform and jump through hoops.  If you want someone to subscribe to an e-mail newsletter or sign up for updates about your product or service, do not make it difficult for them.  Filling out endless online forms, clicking through multiple pages, is annoying.  Even if someone wants your product, you may push them over to your competitor.

6.    Your “from” and “subject” lines are crucial to your email campaign.   Why?  Because that is what your recipient will see in their in-box before opening your email.  If you are not recognized in the “from” line, recycle bin or spam here you come.  The “from” line should represent your company or newsletter name that they signed up with.

Subject lines should be catchy and short. Keeping your subject line down to 50 characters or less is the general rule.  If your subject line is too long or cut off, it may quickly end in the trash bin.  Shorter lines help optimize your open rates.  Remember, subject lines need to be relevant to the content.

7.    Do you have a landing page? Are you sending people to your homepage?  Not good.  A targeted direct email campaign needs an accompanying landing page.  Creating key pages that people land on when they click a link from your e-mail campaign is very important.  Make sure that page has all the relevant information pertaining to the product or service you are marketing.  Giving a prospect all the information needed, on that page, enables them to be able to make a quick response.

8.    What’s in it for them? Don’t focus on telling your readers how great your business is, and the fabulous products you sell.  All they want to know is how does this benefit them?  Focus on what they want and need.  It’s all about them, not you.

9.    Using Social Media. If you have a Twitter or Facebook account, you can let clients know to join and follow you, as you use that media to announce your specials and discounted pricing.  That makes you cool, and gets your name out there as well.

10.   The Three T’s – Test – Test – Test. Before you send out your campaign, do a sampling on a small number of people.  See what the response is.  How well was it received?  Better to delay a campaign, than to court a disaster.

There is still an important point to add.  Make sure that your e-campaign is targeted to the right audience.  An email campaign can only be effective when the right campaign, goes to the right people, with the right message.  Don’t let all your hard work go down the drain.  Make each campaign work for you.

Creating a professionally targeted campaign is not easy.  It takes planning, thought, and strategy.  Don’t let time pressure you.  Your campaign needs to be professional and relevant.  Do you have everything covered?

Behavioral marketing gives the e-marketer the ability to accurately segment and target your audience by present and past online behavior.  Utilizing this method when creating your email campaigns, can significantly change the way you plan and send your emails in the future.

“eMarketer projects that behaviorally targeted ad spending will reach $4.4 billion by the end of 2012.”

Behavioral targeting is predicated to become more widespread, resulting in better customer experiences, as they are targeted with more relevant information.

“Using behavioral targeting with email is not a new idea,” says Shar VanBoskirk, senior analyst with Forrester Research in Cambridge, MA. “It is something that good, smart marketers have been tuned into for several years: understanding that the activities within an email are good clues to the types of offers that would be useful to send in a subsequent message. In fact, email used BT even before other types of online advertising did.”

E-mail campaigns need to evolve.  Irrelevant email campaigns must change focus and deliver messages that their recipients want to see, hear, and read.  What does this mean?  Direct email marketing campaigns need to make use of behaviorally triggered e-mail in response to customer actions.  Content needs to be more personalized and much more dynamic.  E-newsletters need to have more valuable and interesting content, not becoming a replacement for an autoresponder type message.  All e-newsletter content needs planning and purpose.

Implementing Behavioral Marketing in our Email Targeted Campaigns:

Broadcast email:  According to Jupiter Research “when marketers actively target their email campaigns to specific behavioral and demographic characteristics, they can produce more than 18 times the profits that broadcast messages produce.  Think of the effect on your ROI?

Re-marketing: Marketers can easily track when an email is opened, what specific pages are explored, what links are clicked on, or any combination of actions and responses.  This important and recorded data can then used to create dynamic and strategic behaviorally targeted email.

Email Address Lists:
By collecting and utilizing specific and accurate information from your email address lists, you can send relevant offers and information based on a user’s preferences and prior purchases.  Instead of just depending upon your demographic data, you can now deliver unique offers and information that they want, according to their behavioral patterns.  This is differentiating the differences in specific actions that have happened, opposed to behavioral, demographical theory.

Actions are Key – Don’t Assume

Demographics are important but cannot be relied upon as the sole means to understanding your audience.  For instance, if you are selling perfume, and have targeted just women, within a certain age range, and location, you have automatically left out the all the men who buy perfume for their wives or girlfriends.  When the holidays come, men buy perfume, flowers, chocolate for various reasons and various people.  You can now see the implications and importance of targeting behavior and actions.

Up-selling to the Full Person

Combine past and present behavior.  Using the above approach let the actions speak louder than statistics.  Using past purchase behavior coupled with recent purchase activity, gives you a better and wider scope of understanding the entire person.  The more you know about the interests and overall purchases of anyone, the better chance you have of sending them a campaign that speaks directly to them.

Behavioral targeting is an ongoing process.  Remember, the more accurate the campaign, the better chance you have to convert browsers to clients.

What is Email Harvesting? Email harvesting is the process Where your email address lists are obtained, without your permission or knowledge.  They are used in various bulk and direct email marketing campaigns, usually labeled as spam.  Through spiders, spammers have obtained programs which look through web pages for email addresses, as well.

How does this affect you?

Email address harvesting is not a good thing.  Once your client’s email address is stolen and is now in the hands of a spammer,  your client will get flooded with spam and trash – almost immediately.

You could even be held liable, especially if your email address is displayed somewhere in that spammer’s email.  Your client will think it is from you and soon you may be trashed, and spammed.  The implications and results will be chilling.  Imagine  having to cancel and create a brand  new business email address?  Think of all the clients, associates, and prospects who are already signed up and linked with an email address taken years to build!

Why are they doing this?
Their one goal – to sell something or to conduct some illegal activity benefiting them with some monetary gain, all at your expense.  You have inadvertently become a target of their bad intentions now that they have your your email address list.  Some, just collect email address lists and sell them to marketing companies.  Pretty upsetting don’t you agree?

Reunion.com – Reunion.com dupes new members into signing up by sending them an email that pretends to be from an acquaintance who’s been looking for them (on Reunion.com, naturally). After signing up, the site extracts your contacts and immediately begins spamming them to join by sending out a similar email.

More and more companies have been considering engaging in marketing campaigns that involve “address book scraping, (address book harvesting)”  in which a user is asked to import his contacts (i.e., the e-mail addresses he has stored in his e-mail account address book) into his social networking Web site or other online service so that a message can be sent to those contacts inviting them to join the social network or to participate in a joint offering of the company and its partner.  In some cases, the user is asked to provide the username and password for his e-mail account so that the import can be done transparently.  Read Full Article

Legitimate sites use deceptive email marketing tactics as well.
Upon my research, I came across an article about a site known worldwide called “Classmates.com” which promises to hook you up with former classmates who just might be looking for you, if you upgrade to their gold membership.

Classmates.com Agrees to $9.5 Million False Advertising Settlement
Classmates.com — the website that promises to reunite people with their mullet-haired friends of youth — has agreed to pay out a $9.5 million settlement for a lawsuit dating back to 2008 accusing the company of “false advertising” through “deceptive” marketing e-mails.

OK – You  have convinced me – What should I do?
First, for those of you who want all the technical ways to protect your email lists online, please see:  Effect Methods of Protection.

As for me, I am a simple kind of gal living by the rules of  “make it simple – PLEASE!”.  After my research in this topic, one thing is for sure.  I will never import my address list anywhere, on any website, EVER AGAIN!

If you know a better way, please share.

If you have chosen to try email marketing, you have chosen a good path.  Email marketing is still one of the most cost-effective ways to promote any business.  While balancing your business and life in a tough economy, the tough need to be creative and resourceful.  Using email marketing campaigns enable you to be creative, while learning who your niche market is.  As you know, with any serious investment risk, planning and strategy need to be included to achieve successful results.

How do you Get Started?
There is a learning curve when it comes to sending out direct email marketing campaigns.  You may find yourself having difficulty trying to figure out your first step.  We have anticipated that question and hope that this article will help provide you with good basic starters to get you up and running.  There are no pat answers, so you need to see what will work for you within your budget and time frame.

Mailing Lists for Targeted Email Campaigns

Without a mailing list, you have no one to send your e-campaigns to.  But how do you start?  Normally, there are three options:  Buying a list, renting a list, or creating your own.  If you are a new business, the last choice may be impossible, even though it is the best one.  You may not have time to wait, and need to start somewhere.  Here are your options:

1.    Renting an Email Address List
Renting an email address for direct email campaigns can be very cost-effective.  Whether obtained from email campaigns, direct bulk email marketing, or an email newsletter subscription, these email address lists are a valuable source of sales and leads.

2.    Buying an email address list
The alternative to renting an email list is to buy the list.  Once bought, you have full control over your list sending out your own promotions, whenever you want.

3.    Building your own mailing lists
Building your own mailings lists takes time.  Your reward is the fact that you have managed to create a list of prospects who want to receive your information and e-newsletters.

An Optimized Website:

Getting on board with SEO: How do get started?  Here are some of the key things to know:

Keywords and key phrases: Know the right key phrases or key phrase optimization.  These are the words and phrases that will be picked up by the search engines when someone does a query.

You need the specific key phrases that describe your services or products, strategically placed within your content, thus allowing your site to show up on the first results page, of a search query commonly referred to as the (SERPs).  If you are not sure what those words are, go to Google AdWords – this site will help you determine what words come up in a search.  You can also put your competitor’s website URL in the search to see what keywords they are using.

Back links: Back links are links on one website that lead back to another.  Creating back links to your site is another way to be found.  Here are some suggestions:

1.    Articles: Write articles – get them published with your website and name as a signature.  There are at least 100 websites called Social News and Social Book Marking.  Write an interesting article about your field or something you feel strongly about.  Once published, your article will be parsed in the Search Engines and come up under the right keywords, as well.

2.    Press Release: If you are new and have newsworthy information to share, write a press release about your company or product and get it published on as many press release submission sites as possible.  Remember, it must have a common interest to your targeted audience.

3.    Reciprocal Relationships. Find products that compliment what you do and agree to put their link on your site, with a reciprocal back link to yours.

Networking and Sales Leads: Join Yahoo Groups that align with your goals and business objectives.  Answer questions poised by other members.  Show your knowledge and get your name out there.  Attend different events that partner with other organizations.  Make contacts as you create new leads.  Do not let them grow cold.  Reach out in someway.  Keep your name and company in the front of their minds.

Company Blog: Not only is this a great way to share information about your company or service, but you are communicating to your audience in a person voice.  Blogging is huge, and people love to share their opinions.  Start a conversation with your clients and prospects.  Let them know you are a person, not just a company.

Landing Pages: Before sending out any email marketing campaign, you must have a matching landing page.  This is page will have a specific and clear call to action.  Your page should match your campaign and create a strong sales pitch to the prospect upon landing.

Communication and Permission Email
Before sending any of your leads any email newsletters or campaigns, reach out to them in a personal email or phone call, asking them if they would be interested in joining your newsletter or reading your blog.  Don’t be labeled as a spammer.  Your reputation represents your company, product, and service.

Get informed. Any email campaign marketer needs to become familiar with The federal CAN-SPAM Act protects consumers against unwanted e-mail.

Becoming an email marketer is easy.  Becoming a successful one takes research, time, and planning.  Before taking the plunge, make sure you know how to swim.

No business wants to spend money on a marketing campaign if they can’t see a return on their investment. Recent reports have estimated that for each business that spends a dollar on an e-mail marketing campaign, they can see over 40 times that amount in profits. That means $1 spent is equal to over $40 in profit for a business. Of course, it helps if you know how to make a good e-mail marketing campaign. If you listen to the following tips, you might end up with much more money in your pocket than when you started.

Plan your campaign before you begin

Don’t just send out emails with a loaded message of advertisements, coupons, and the life story of your business. An email campaign is not a one-time thing, it takes place over a longer period of time, like a year. You have to introduce yourself to your customer, gain their trust, and tell the customer about your business, a little bit about your products and services. Give the customers and prospective customers time to believe in your expertise and your excellent service and then you can make some friendly offers for sampling your services.

Send the right messages to the right people

Remember that not everyone is interested in the same thing. Certain customers will want to know about your new products and others will want to know about your sales. If you specialize in selling both paper and puppies, you can’t sell both of them together. A printing shop will be much more interested in the paper than the puppies, and a pet shop will be more interested in the puppies than the paper.

On a different note, you can’t send the same message to the same people because they have different roles in their businesses. It’s different if you’re trying to make a small individual sale or if you’re trying to be the sole supplier for a large company. You wouldn’t talk to an individual customer the way you would to the CEO of a large corporation.

Make it personal

Remember when you’re organizing your emails to customers or potential customers that you can’t just think of them as a mass of people. You have to tyr to use language that makes a person feel as if you’re talking only to them. Try to stay clear of the stereotypical marketing lingo that makes people want to automatically click delete.

Pay Attention to your own e-mail address

The name of the email address that you send your messages from matters. It shouldn’t look like spam and it should be something that customers will be able to easily recognize in their mailbox.

Don’t use words commonly used in spam

Remember you don’t want your email to be filtered as spam and you don’t want the customer to automatically delete it. If you start with an advertisement with the word “FREE”, and write a generic message, no one will be interested. Look up words commonly used in spam, and don’t put them in your emails. Also learn the spam rules so that your emails don’t automatically get shoved into spam.

Sample different colors and texts

Every email doesn’t have to look the same. If you think that a color change might improve traffic, then try it, or maybe a font change or different words. But try one change at a time, to see which is working and which isn’t.

Use few images

Don’t overload your messages with graphics. If you do use some that are related to your business or brand, try to make them look custom-made. Don’t steal others’ graphics.

Create a nice landing page

If the customer decides to click on a link you attached in your email, you should have a nice landing page that goes into greater detail about what you began talking about in the email.

Whether you create targeted direct email campaigns or are the recipient of them, there is one point on which we can all agree, we want and demand our freedom of choice.  This passion for options and choosing is instilled within all of us.  That is why the opt-in plays such an integral part of our HTML or e-newsletter email campaigns.

Opt-In Email Marketing is a powerful marketing tool when we want to reach a very specific and centered audience of possible purchasers.  If understood and implemented correctly, you will be building a top quality client base to interact with, while rewarding them with valuable offers and service.

The Right Attitude Attracts the Right Client

What are your goals when you send out your e-campaigns and e-newsletters?  Your two primary goals need to focus on building your opt-in subscriber list which in turn, is building a solid client database.  This will be the most valuable resource you will own, as this list will represent those clients that are waiting for and anticipating your email on a somewhat regular basis.  These are not lists bought and rented; they are yours and yours alone.  Clients that opt-in are exhibiting trust and a willingness to see what you are offering.  A client base built on opt-ins opens up the door for honest and open communication and a future list of loyal subscribers and buyers.

What’s in it For Me? – Where’s the Beef?
Do you remember that great TV commercial by Wendy’s?  People advertise value, but what they receive is not what was promised.  Going into a restaurant anticipating a large and juicy hamburger, then receiving one that can hardly be seen, creates distrust while pushing away a possible loyal patron.  What a great parallel example to your e-mail campaigns.  What valuable offer have you promised your recipients?  When your e-mail is opened, will they be disappointed having expected much more?

According to MarketingSherpa, “consumers want special treatment. They are giving up their precious time in exchange for the benefit of content – so that content should convey some real benefits.”  In a sampling of over 1,400 nationally representative consumers, most wanted to opt in if there was a worthwhile exchange.”

Value Added Tips

•    Sell to help – not just to make money: Your service or product should answer a need.
•    Offer valuable information or tips your recipients can use
•    “How To” instructional type tips are very well received
•    Offer discounts to first time subscribers
•    Offer special sales and discounts to repeat buyers
•    Create interesting content that appeals to your entire target audience
•    Always encourage feedback.  This creates an ongoing dialogue with your customers.
•    Follow up is a Must!  Once a sale happens, that is just the beginning.  Communicate with your client.  Let them now they are valuable and you are standing behind your product or service.  We all appreciate the personal touch.  You can’t communicate with an office or building.  Let them know that you are a real person and can be trusted.

Lastly, use all communication and feedback received to help you continue gathering a more accurate and detailed personal demographic profile for your email database.  This gives you the ability to create a more targeted future campaign, helping you become more successful; one campaign at a time.

Using these techniques effectively will increase your sales and opt in subscribers.  With the power of the internet and viral marketing, word of mouth will spread quickly from one happy customer to another.

What are you waiting for?  Get out there and build some long term trusted relationships right now.

As e-mail marketers know, life is constantly changing.  The ever growing global population relies more and more for its knowledge and communication on the Internet, as its heartbeat and sustenance.  From interest to need, from hobby to livelihood the years have produced great change in the world around us.

A large part of that change includes our prospects and clients that we target and communicate with through our direct e-mail campaigns.  We spend many hours compiling data, information, stats and studies in order to create compelling and valuable targeted messages, worth opening and reading.

E-Mail Overload

As we plot and plan our next e-campaign strategies, we join hundreds of others desiring the same goals – walking the same path – turning prospects into clients, turning clients into repeat sales.  Daily, all of our in-boxes are constantly being bombarded not only with legitimate mail from our friends and family, but with the latest announcements of sales and specials from so many other companies.  Illegal spammers create stress and annoyance, affecting even those whose campaigns are legitimate and anticipated.

With all our good efforts, the surveys still assure us, that people are going to unsubscribe at some point in time.  Marriage, divorce, children and relocation, play a large role.  Our e-mail preferences change along with our new perceptions of e-mail and its relevancy to our daily lives.

Just give me the facts and stats

So what can we do?  Can we change or influence the number of unsubscribers?  Yes we can.  Knowing all of this is important, but applying these truths, must be done knowing the facts.  If we have to invest our time and money, making costly decisions and revisiting our strategies, we need to know that we are not wasting our time on someone’s opinion.  Here are some of those facts from MarketingSherpa.  Make it work for you.

Why do consumers unsubscribe? According to MarketingSherpa, people unsubscribe for the following reasons:

Relevancy:  One Size Does Not Fit All.  If we do our due diligence with our e-mail list demographics, it is obvious.  Each campaign must have its own targeted segment.  Age, gender, and profession are strong influences in a purchase decision. Our offers must fit their interests and lifestyle.  Make your campaigns meaningful and valuable.

E-Mail frequency:  How many e-mails constitute too many?  The consensus seems to indicate that keeping in touch at least monthly to maintain a dialogue with your clients is good.  The most important rule is to keep your communications fresh, relevant, and timely.

E-mail bankruptcy: (a form of e-mail mental breakdown.) There are consumers that have reported they are just overwhelmed and overloaded in their in-boxes.  They have had enough.  In one swoop, they decide to unsubscribe to every mailing list that they see.

Wrong person – Wrong timing: Maintaining up-to-date database lists are the key to successful campaigns.  Using accurate metrics and stats will quickly help you see how each e-campaign performed and who your active and inactive clients may be.  Keeping accurate and regularly updated demographic e-mail lists, helps modify, target and optimize all future campaigns.

Social Media:  The report states that a small percentage of people have unsubscribed and are using text messages and social media to remain updated.  Maybe it’s time for a e-mail marketing coupon campaign?

When life gives you lemons, make lemonade.  Here are a few creative suggestions:

1. Reward your customers: Give them a special discount or bonus on their next purchase.
2. Awaken the Inactive Buyer: You can send a special sale to those who have bought in the past, and have not returned.
3. Prospects: Offer a special discount for first time subscribers.
4. Valuable Tips: We are all experts with loads of experience in some area.  Whatever your service or product is, offering some helpful tips or a “How to do” tutorial.  Free is always good – when it is relevant and meets a practical need

Do not fear the unknown little grasshopper.  Dare to be different and innovative.  Reach out to your mail recipients and ask them why they unsubscribed or stopped purchasing your product.  Listen and learn.  Everyone has an opinion and appreciates being heard.