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Marketing with an Email List |
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Friday, 23 January 2009 |
By Jan Williams
 If you plan to do some Internet marketing to promote your business endeavor, you should seriously consider email marketing as at least one tier of your Internet marketing campaign. Although email marketing has received a bad rap because of spam marketing, it is still legal and effective. Dont let its bad reputation discourage you from using email to promote your business, services or product. You could lose a great deal of business to competitors who are using email marketing campaigns to reach customers around the world. An email list is the first requirement for an email advertising campaign. This article will discuss some popular options for doing this and should help to the reader to learn more about what is acceptable and what is not when it comes to email marketing.
After you decide to try email marketing you will need to acquire a list of people willing to receive your emails. This is essentially a list of email addresses to which you will email your advertising and promotional materials. It is possible to purchase a
ready made list. However, this method is not very effective and we do not recommend it. Purchased email lists often do not reach people interested in your products. This is very important because while you want to reach a large audience with your email marketing you also want this audience to be members of your overall target group. Another problem with purchased lists is you will not know for certain how they were acquired. Some distributors sell lists of people who have not agreed to be on a list.
Internet users are very quick to delete materials they believe to be spam without even opening or reading the emails. Most email accounts include automatic filtering of emails based on complicated algorithms. Therefore you run the risk of having your email marketing effort turn out to be a complete waste if the majority of recipients never even read or receive the message.
One of the ways to create a list is to obtain your customers email addresses if they would like to receive information about your business. Social networking sites and blogs provide a way to introduce your business and attract people to your blog or website where you can offer the opportunity to sign up for email updates about your business or products. If you consistently ask for email addresses either from your existing customer base or offer information via blogs and social marketing sites in return for email addresses, you will eventually develop a good marketing list. Be sure to send your emails only to people who have agreed to receive them and provide a way for them to easily unsubscribe. A responder service will provide an opt in and opt out service to help you avoid any legal consequences of spamming in some jurisdictions. Submit existing customers email addresses and your email letters to your responder service and begin sending out news or information. A good responder service will schedule emails and all you have to do is update it for new submissions. These documents should contain a wealth of valuable information as well as a soft sell pitch for your products and services.
You might also want to include useful links to either your website as well as other websites which may be of interest to your readers. Each email should have a call to action. This is common to nearly all types of advertising.
Jan Williams presents more information about Internet or affiliate marketing and earning a living online on her website, http://www.gohomeworkers.com
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