Email Marketing – Surefire Results, or Spam?

Making Email Marketing Work for You

Email marketing can be the best tool a webmaster can have, or the most misused and misunderstood. Many people use emails to spam, giving the marketing ploy a bad name. Others avoid it completely, disbelieving in its power. The potential of email marketing is  huge, however, and this tactic can be used properly to extend your reach, snag new customers and keep in touch with old ones.

First, to take full advantage of email marketing, you must compile a subscriber list. Offer a newsletter on your site by presenting it as a free resource full of free tips, special offers or important information. All you need for this approach is a capture box on your site for visitors to type in their first name and email address.

Make sure you include a disclaimer stating that the address will only be used to send your own newsletter. Alternately, have a separate box to check for receiving special offers and alerts. You have to reassure people that you will never spam anyone and (even more importantly) that you will never EVER sell their information to anyone else. Don’t get greedy and expect them to fill out a huge lot of contact information; stick to asking for a name and email address.

You should also require a double opt-in feature to make sure the email addresses you get actually belong to the person who signed up. This means sending an email to the address provided and requiring the recipient to click on a link. This will complete the sign up process, and put them into your autoresponder system as a verified lead. The best option is to use a service outside your own domain to avoid any trouble with spam complaints.

An email list is great for marketing; as long as you provide helpful, valuable, use-right-now information along with your pre-sell to the customer. See if you can implement a certain theme – include an article, a news story, a helpful tip and a notice about a special in each newsletter, and you can easily add a product review or testimonial in order to pre-selling your product or that of an affiliate.

Offer an incentive if you don’t get many visitors signing up for your newsletter. The first newsletter can include a coupon or a free mini eBook. People love free stuff! Then you can use the newsletter to tell your customers about upcoming sales and new product to encourage them to visit your site. If you get tjhem used to reading your newsletter, they will naturally be reading your pre-sell page.

Start an email marketing program now! Your traffic will get a boost. Just don’t abuse it, or you could be labeled a spammer! Use good judgment whenever you have contact with potential customers, and you should be fine.