Three guiding principles for email marketing
Social media, search engine optimization, and other online marketing tools are good. But none of them match the effectiveness of email marketing. An email reaches your customer where he or she is always at – their inbox. And when you send information out to your customers, you’re sending it to people who are already interested in you.
Building your email newsletter is the second thing that you should do after building a website. And here are three guiding principles for email marketing you should keep in mind.
1. Find a good email marketing platform
There are many tools available to help you create and distribute email newsletters. At T&S, we’re big MailChimp fans. This tool, in many circumstances, is free forever.
The are also a lot of templates available, though you can certainly have an email newsletter template professionally created as well. You also get an landing page with each email list.
But no matter which email marketing platform you use, it should allow you to do those things fairly easily.
2. Be helpful
There is a lot of noise online, but helpful information still goes a long way to building relationships. Maybe you can offer a free ebook that tackles some of the problems that a customer faces. Or you can host a giveaway in exchange for email addresses. Drive those visitors to a landing page.
Even if you don’t have a full website, you should build a landing page that focuses on the reasons your target audience should sign up for your email list. You don’t have to have a marketing agency to do this. There are several services that help you construct landing pages.
3. Don’t be too promotional
One of the traps that companies fall in is being too promotional with their emails. Do you like to get hammered over and over with ads for products and sales? Your customers don’t either.
Whether you offer unique information with your email marketing or use it as a Blog Delivery System, make sure that the content you’re distributing is informational without being overly promotional. Be helpful, don’t just talk about yourself all of the time.
Again, many of the tools available for online marketing are great. But if you’re not utilizing an email newsletter as part of your marketing plan, you’re missing out on a big opportunity.