Marketing Tip of the Week: Email Marketing (1 of 2)

Effective email marketing, really any marketing, can simply be summed up as effective communication. If you say the right thing to the right people at the right time, you are guaranteed to be successful. The problem lies in knowing when, who and what is right. Over the next two articles I’m going to give you a few tips on how you can make those determinations. The subject of today’s article will be:

Who Should You Target?

Marketing Tip

There are two schools of thought on this one. The first says that you should use the shotgun approach. Buy email lists and send out as many emails as you can to as many people as you can. You’re bound to get a few clicks with this method, aren’t you? Perhaps, but the negatives far outweigh any potential positives.

The biggest issue? Sending out unsolicited emails to that many people will result in a lot of people marking you as spam. With intelligent email servers such as gmail and yahoo, when enough people mark emails from your company as spam, the server designates all email from your company as spam for all their users. That means the majority of the mail you send out from that point, solicited or not, will never be seen. It will instead be whisked into a spam folder until the auto delete removes it forever.

So who should you target? Easy. People who have already shown an interest in your company! But how do you get email addresses from people interested in what you provide?

Just Ask!

In a nutshell, that’s it, but I know you want more details. There are a number of ways to get email addresses from the people you’re trying to target. Here are a few:

• Prominently display a box on your website – Interested parties will fill it out. The secret here is not to ask for too much information. You don’t want to put anyone off. What information do you really need? The email address and perhaps a name so you can personalize the next communication, but really just the address. You can get more information later.
• Ask at the counter – If you have a storefront, have your employees ask if the customer would like to receive special deals or coupons. Get the email address. Send the occasional coupon and advertise your specials! Fish in a barrel people, fish in a barrel.
• Social Media – If someone is liking your page on Facebook, she is interested in your company. If he is following you on Twitter, he is interested in your company. Feel free to include them in your email marketing.

Email marketing should not be handled like cold-calling. In order to be effective, the lead has to be warm. Don’t end up with an email blast that only blows up spam folders, choose your targets!

If you have any additional suggestions for getting email addresses from customers or prospective customers, leave them in the comments below! Come back next week to get more information on when to do email marketing and what to say!