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E-mail Marketing for Small Business

Written by Angie Picardo, has got 2 Comments.

Angie Picardo
Guest author Angie Picardo, staff writer for NerdWallet.com

If you are a running a small business, marketing is often an integral component to bringing awareness to your operation, products, and services. While there are various types of marketing strategies that small businesses can employ, e-mail marketing is often looked over in favor of more traditional methods like poster or mail advertising, sign & billboard, and buying television and radio space. But why do you need e-mail marketing?

E-mail marketing offers a larger reach in audience at a low cost to small businesses. E-mail marketing also provides small businesses with the ability to communicate instantly with potential customers and clients, while simultaneously driving traffic to the business website. Information received through e-mail can also help businesses understand the needs and desires of prospective customers without having to employ expensive research, trial and error, and learning from long term mistakes.

While there are many great advantages to e-mail marketing (↑), there are a few things business owners should know before fully embracing this type of marketing.

Don’t become a spammer – First and foremost, do not send out constant e-mail blasts to your customer mailing list or spam networks that might potentially attract new clients. Unless there is a good reason for your business to communicate with customers on a weekly basis, anything more than a couple of e-mail blasts each month is probably too much. No customer likes receiving a large amount of junk mail, and if you inundate them with ads, promotions, and other communication, they will ignore you at best or choose a competitor at worst.

Distinguish yourself – Consumers sign up for e-mail lists and marketing promotion updates all the time. Some consumers will spend the first part of their morning deleting 20-30 spam e-mails and other promotions they simply do not have the time or care for. Part of this has to do with the content in the subject line (the first thing a customer will generally read before opening an e-mail), while other consumers are simply tired of receiving the same old, lame product promotions that seem too good to be true (and generally are) before reading the fine print. Savvy e-mail marketers will know who their audience and target markets are, approach them accordingly, and distinguish themselves from other companies (even those who are not competitors) that also send out constant, bulky e-mail ads.

Get Legit – Make sure that when you send out advertising and promotions they are sent from your site’s domain name. Sending e-mails to prospective clients from a Gmail or Yahoo! Mail account looks unprofessional, so sending mail out from a legitimate e-mail domain account will enhance your credibility. Correspondence sent from credit domains will be noticed by prospective customers and will statistically increase your chances for making a sale.

Know your marketing – When marketing via e-mail, it is important that you stay consistent with your other marketing campaigns. Further, it wise to have a firm grasp of who you are targeting and what they require. Having solid experience in marketing will benefit you here, but for those who are new to such an endeavor should read up and get as much research under their belt as possible. Watching the behavior of your competitors can be beneficial, and noticing the types of e-mail marketing you receive as a consumer can help you learn what to do (and what not to do).

Be easy on your customers – If you make it easy to subscribe, you will significantly enhance the amount of people that will sign up for e-mail notifications and announcements. Posting a subtle hyperlink on your website, blog, or Facebook page will allow customers a quick and easy medium to subscribe for your e-mail notifications.

Edit – There’s not much to say here; be grammatically correct, succinct, and precise with what you want to say to customers.

Share – Any e-mail you send out to a prospective customer is shareable, but making content on your website sharable is a great, indirect e-mail marketing strategy. By making content e-mail-able, customers will do the e-mail marketing for you. If you create a page or post a blog that is newsworthy or of which becomes highly acclaimed, visitors to your site can e-mail each other the content. This not only promotes your website, product, or service, but helps increase your traffic as well.

_______________
Angie Picardo is a staff writer for NerdWallet. Her mission is to help consumers stay financially savvy, and save some money with the best online savings accounts. (↑)

Posted by Angie Picardo in Email Marketing Tips, Marketing, Top Posts on Monday, April 29, 2013 has got 2 Comments.
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Email Marketing Tips - Edition 28

Written by ,

Logo: Email marketing Tips Blog Carnival

Welcome to the 28th edition of email marketing tips on February, 9th, 2013.



After having put to sleep for more than two years, it’s time to wake up the carnival, again. I also have done some housekeeping:
All obsolete tips, broken links, etc. in the legacy editions 1 through 27 have been taken care of and are deleted now. Only evergreen, good tips from reputable sources have survived this procedure.

Update on April 12, 2015: All old editions 1 through 27 have been cleaned up, again. This time for the last time. I have finally decided to shut down my Email Marketing Tips blog carnival forever.


Interestingly it was mostly copywriters’ tips which had to be removed. Most of them just have disappeared from the web or their sites have got in too bad a shape that I don’t want to link to them anymore.

The good news is that we had some well known experts contributing here in the past.

You’ll find expert advise in those past editions from authorities like:

Since I started this carnival in 2008 the Web and the relevance of Blogcarnival.com have changed. However, let’s see how it goes in 2013.

Here are the tips of the day.


tools and strategy


The next two tips are quite interesting because they are quite opposite to each other. At first Ioan shows us how to use your blog to send out emails for free. Then Mike suggests to re-purpose your ezine content on your blog.

Ioan Draniciar presents How to Use Your Blog to Create a Free Viral List Building System (↑) posted at Lazy Cash Making Formula (↑), saying, “If you follow my blog closely, you’ll notice a pattern. I post an article on my blog every time I learn something of real value from internet marketers I respect and follow. We all have to learn from someone and it should be from somebody who’s an authority in our niche. Brad Gosse is an awesome internet marketer, a straight shooter, honest and someone I can really trust.

I picked up this little gold nugget of information from Brad and added a little twist of my own to it in order to make it more effective. This method can help you tremendously when it comes to getting repeat visitors to your site.”

John’s comment: Indeed, you can put an email signup form from Feedburner on your site. However, you are very limited with this approach. But, hey, it’ free and it might get you started.

(On the other hand the author uses email marketing services from getresponse.com on his site. I wonder why?



Mike Munter presents Move Your Newsletter Content To Your Blog And Reach A Wider Audience (↑) posted at Mike Munter, Marketing Consultant (↑), saying, “Use this tip to get more web traffic and increase sales.”

John’s comment: Personally I am not a fan of pretty, content rich ezines but there are certainly plenty of use cases for them. Saying that, I find it a good idea to put those ezines online for public viewing and indexing by search engines. Thanks also for the descriptive screen shots, Mike.




Nishadha presents Market Your Startup with Emails: 6 Effective Ways with Examples (↑) posted at Creately Blog | Diagramming Articles and How to Draw Diagram Tips (↑), saying, “How a start-up can use email marketing.”

John’s comment: Good examples and guidelines for a brand building type of newsletter. Also with pretty screen shots. Nishada lists and explains six important features of such a newsletter. Miss one and you diminish your ROI.




editor’s pick


Mark Brownlow, The permission gamble: can you send more email safely? (↑) posted at No man is an iland (↑), saying, “”

John’s comment: The article I have picked here is from 2010 but still relevant. After a short discussion Mark calls out 6 way you could send more emails to your subscribers without too much risk of annoying them.




Zach Bulygo, How to Keep Email Marketing Manageable (↑) posted at KISSmetrics - Tips, Tricks and Resources for Analytics, Marketing and Testing (↑), saying, “It could be argued that email marketing is a better and more effective form of marketing. Unlike TV, print, and internet ads, email marketing is opt-in, so people are willing and want to read your email messages. Unfortunately, many companies get overwhelmed and abandon their email marketing efforts. How can you set up an email marketing initiative that is relatively easy to undertake and maintain? Well, cover the basics first.”

John’s comment: Zach provides three ways for getting the creative juices flowing. And he discusses them in context of recent real world examples and shows why they work.



That concludes this edition of email marketing tips. Past posts and future hosts can be found on my email marketing tips blog carnival home page.

Yours
John W. Furst

P.S.: If you like this edition, check out the previous email marketing tips - edition 27, too.


Contact me to host an edition of this carnival on your Internet marketing related blog.
  • Get your blog more exposure!
  • It’s easier than you might think.
Also submit your articles to this carnival.

Thanks in advance for your contribution.



Technorati tags: email marketing tips, blog carnival



Posted by in Blog Carnival, Business Strategy, Email Marketing Tips, Marketing, Top Posts on Saturday, February 9, 2013
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How You Can Generate Sales Leads Using Inbound Marketing in 30 Days

Written by Greg Digneo, has got 7 Comments.

When you ask someone with a successful social media presence how to build your own audience, the answer most often is, “Write a blog post, Tweet it to your following, and share it on Facebook and LinkedIn.” But what if you do not have many followers on Twitter or Facebook Fans?

A few weeks ago, my company decided to start a process to answer the question: “How can a business that does not have many hits on their website, has no followers on Twitter, and no Fans on Facebook, generate sales leads using inbound marketing in only 30 days?”



lead generation with social media
Catching leads on social media ain't easy without a plan (image credit)


Our goal is to get people to sign up for a webinar where we will share this marketing plan.

Below is how we are getting webinar attendees:


Create a Story


The web is a crowded space and you are in constant competition to earn your target audience’s attention. We have come to realize that your competition does not just reside in your industry, but is everywhere. Think about what you read – whether it pertains to your business or not. What stories resonate with you the most? It can be a blog post on how to grow your business, or news relating to your favorite football team, or the heartfelt story of a mother reunited with her child. All content producers are competing for your time, and no matter how you spend it, you only have 24 hours a day.

Before writing a blog post, and before building your social media plan, you first need a story that will resonate with your ideal customer. At Cloud Marketing Labs, we want to be known as the firm who can deliver sales leads in 30 days using Social Media. We feel this is something our audience can wrap their hands around, and will help us stand out from some of our marketing firm competitors.


Focus


You cannot join every network and be successful at all of them in 30 days. You need to focus all of your time and energy on 2 or 3 platforms. We chose blogging, public relations and Pay Per Click (PPC).


Blogging


After writing great content pertaining to your story, you need an audience to read it. In order to grow our audience, we would share our most helpful posts with friends and customers by emailing them a link to the post and asking them to share it with their friends. The key here is not to abuse your contacts. Only send a few posts, otherwise, you risk becoming a bit of a spammer and annoying. Even if you do not have a large following on Facebook, Twitter, etc., chances are someone who you are in regular contact with does, and will be happy to share helpful information with their network.


Public Relations


We found many blogs, such as the E-Biz Booster Blog, looking for guest posters and fresh content. If your story is compelling and unique, chances are they will allow you to leverage their network and help you grow your audience and expand your reach.

By pitching our “Sales Leads in 30 Days Using Social Media” story to various blogs and friends, we have been able to set up a few guest posts over the course of these 30 days. We get the benefit of expanded reach, and they get the benefit of new voices.

We are also going to submit a news release announcing a webinar where we will share this story with small and mid-sized business owners. However, instead of emailing the news release to journalists, we are going to use the online distribution service PRWeb. This will help with our search rankings and increase the visibility of our story as it gets picked up by various news aggregation sites.


Pay Per Click


Our final focus is on PPC advertising. However, instead of using Adwords, we decided to use Facebook’s advertising platform. There are two main reasons for this. First, it is cheaper. We are in a competitive space, and Adwords clicks would be well over $1.00 per click to get onto the first page. Second, Facebook ads will help you develop your buyer persona. You have visibility on things like age, gender, likes, and job titles that you are unable to see using Google Adwords. This will help us target our ads more precisely, increasing the efficiency of our campaign.

__________
Greg Digneo
Greg Digneo,
founder of Cloud Marketing Labs gets you leads.
Greg Digneo is founder of Cloud Marketing Labs, a marketing service that helps small and midsized businesses generate sales leads in 30 days using inbound marketing. He is hosting the webinar “How to generate sales leads in 30 days using social media” (offer has expired), is co-author of the Cloud Marketing Labs blog, and guest author on the reputable site Copyblogger.

Image source: Lasso, ©2007 by williac/flickr. - Some rights reserved. - CC-BY 2.0.



Posted by Greg Digneo in Business Strategy, Consulting, Marketing, Social Media, Top Posts on Tuesday, June 8, 2010 has got 7 Comments.
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Podcast About Tribes And Speech About Purple Cows (Revisited)

Written by , has got 1 Comments.

This is a post I had written much earlier on a static web-page. Now I am importing it into the blog. It’s not such a bad idea to revisit Seth Godin’s work from time to time anyway. Enjoy.


Seth Godin - A Podcast and a video from a TED talk


Shortly after I turned on the computer this morning, I decided that I will continue to write about Seth Godin and provide you with two great resources about smart marketing.




The Podcast for Tribes


I just finished reading the book and published my honest review on my blog.
Tribes - A Review by John W. Furst
John, 2008-10-25


On September 12th, 2008 Seth Godin had recorded an exclusive interview style podcast done by and for his community Triiibes.com.

(I don’t hot link there, because it is a private community — and will remain to be private — and all you would see is a login screen.)

In this roughly 47 minutes Seth talks about
  • His notion of Tribes
  • The Book: Tribes - We Need You To Lead Us
  • Triiibes.com


Listen to the Podcast now

→ Continue reading: Podcast About Tribes And Speech About Purple Cows (Revisited)

 

Posted by in Audio Series, Marketing, Seth Godin, Top Posts, Video Series on Sunday, April 18, 2010 has got 1 Comments.
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Email or Social Networks or Mobile or What For Business?

Written by , has got 7 Comments.

Isn’t it fascinating how social networking platforms are taking over the Internet in a storm?

Ease of use and multimedia capabilities seem to be the main driver behind this development. It makes it fun for non techie people to use the Internet, to play around, and to communicate.



Fred Wilson, principal of Union Square Ventures, discussed today that he was quite shocked—even though he had anticipated it—when he realized that social networking has overrun email (↑) already.

Here is the corresponding slide from Morgan Stanley’s latest Internet trend report (PDF file, 2.5 MiBytes ↑). (Update in Feb. 2013: 404 Not Found)

Email versus Social Networking Trend
Communications Trends, April 2010

Now, let’s be honest and compare the two.


Email


Common email clients (even Gmail) smash a wall of incomprehensible letters into your face. I am talking about the inbox displayed as a dense list. Too many emails, too many of them irrelevant, and mostly not fun at all.

On the other hand when composing a new message you are staring at a scary white page. Ever had writer’s block in that situation?


Social Media


In contrast to that you are basically navigating in a space that’s comparable to your email client’s address book. But an address book on steroids.

You see avatars and blurbs with what your friends are up to right now, videos, pictures, full multimedia. And it’s so easy to use. You don’t need to compose a new message, you just click one time or even type your response directly. Takes you seconds and you don’t have to switch platform to do so.

Much of what’s happening on social networks is not private between two people, but it can be. Twitter’s direct messages and Facebook messages are a good example for this. And many users get email notification about activity on social networks anyway.


Don’t write off email, yet.


An email address is still a valuable asset of contact information for a business. For now and the near future. And I have pointed out some additional reasons in a previous discussion about email marketing versus social media.

But the one piece of contact information that might prove to be even more valuable in a short time is a mobile phone number.


Mobile Is Coming With Light-speed


When I compare the quality of contact information, then mobile phone number is a clear winner. It has certain advantages:
  • It’s more intimate than an email address.
  • Is tied to a device that is on almost 24/7.
  • Less likely to be a fake one.
  • Has direct billing capabilities built in for some classes of products.
  • And much more.

Regardless of mobile Internet usage with iPhone, Blackberry, Google Phone, whatever. Messages from the Internet can “ring through” to the user. An increasing number of services are taking advantage of this.

Facebook and Twitter can optionally handle your mobile phone number for texting purposes. Airlines offer to notify you about delays, etc.

Besides those “Internet attached cases”, the Net arrives at more and more users while they are on the road so to speak.

The mobile Internet user base is growing faster than desktop usage ever did. Morgan Stanley predicts that the number of mobile users of the Internet will outgrow the number of desktop users in 5 years.

Trend of mobile Internet use
Trend towards mobility, April 2010

What does that mean for you?


Big opportunities of course. Like if you are dealing in information product marketing, it’s smart to think about convergence.
  • Your free and paid content accessible from desktop and mobile devices. For some niches you might want to offer editions for Amazon’s kindle as well or put something in the iTunes store.

  • Delivering your content in multiple media formats. Video channels, podcasts, slide shows, classic PDFs, etc.

  • Advertising on mobile devices. Google once again goes that route early on as well. And its CEO, Eric Schmidt, has stated many times that Google is embracing mobile use BIG time.

  • Multiple ways of contact with prospects and customers. From presence on social platforms, having lists of fans, followers, friends to email addresses and mobile phone numbers.

This technological and social revolution does indeed change the way we communicate privately. This happens almost automatically.
However, it takes effort to change the way your business communicates.

Let’s do it.

Expand your sphere of influence.

Yours
John W. Furst


Posted by in Business Strategy, Email Marketing Tips, Social Media, Top Posts on Tuesday, April 13, 2010 has got 7 Comments.
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A Monologue: Listen Marketers!

Written by ,

Marketing gone wrong? The Pink Elephant
Pinky the Elephant (*)

It has become hard to listen to and concentrate on a specific message which is buried in ever intensifying noise.


You as a marketer cannot blame people for being ignorant.


You only can blame yourself for being ignorant.

When was the last time you listened to the response you stimulated? Did you adjust your message, your timing, the channel, …?



It’s easy to be the pink elephant in the room — and I mean the opposite of a Purple Cow. If that’s what you wanna be, fine with me, but don’t drop your shit in front of my feet.


I just picked that up from the universe with my telepathic senses.

Something to think about.


LISTEN!


You probably don’t care about what I have to say. But don’t worry, I might give a damn about your message as well.

Do you have a clue what I am interested in right now?

Yours
John W. Furst


(*) Image credit: ©2007 by myklroventine/flickr. - Some rights reserved. - CC-BY 2.0



Posted by in Marketing, Social Media, Top Posts on Saturday, April 10, 2010
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