Marketing via email is a craft. It is powerful, but easily abused. It is easy, and at the same time, really difficult. Here are a few email marketing tips.
Address Recipients with Their Name in Email Campaigns
Make your newsletter recipients feel less like mere numbers by greeting them individually and personally.
Avoid Mistyped Addresses by Requiring Retyping
Require retyping of email addresses in the signup form for your newsletter.
Create a Clear Call to Action in Email Marketing Campaigns
Make sure recipients of your email marketing message know what you expect them to do (and what they can expect in return).
Email Marketing Needs to Reflect Your Brand
Help people recognize instantly that it is your email marketing.
Experiment with Link Placement in Newsletters
Maximize performance by putting the right links in the right places.
Include an Easy to Use Unsubscribe Link in Newsletters
Unhappy subscribers are worse than no subscribers. An easy and fail-safe way to unsubscribe is a way to make subscribers happy.
Online marketing and advertising has changed drastically over the last several years. Now, it’s easier and cheaper for small businesses to get in the game and compete with big business. We want to help you get in the game.
On their own, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and social media integration offer small business marketers attractive opportunities for reaching new customers.
Many small businesses are scrambling over social media, trying to figure out how to boost sales and keep the customers they have. SEO combined with social media integration is an online marketing tactic that’s become an established part of the online marketing mix.
As a business owner, the most important place to spend time and money is in marketing. It’s not in doing all the daily grind and functions of working “in” your business.
STOP seeing yourself as a provider or salesperson of your category of products or services. Begin to recognize that you are a “marketer of” your business that offers and sells your category of products/services.
“MARKETER OF” – The person (you) who fully understands and sees the importance and benefits of marketing is THE ONE who will ultimately achieve financial stability as a business owner.
ACTION:
In the next 57 minutes, write down and act upon what you CAN DO and what you WILL DO to begin working “on” your business. Schedule a designated block of time each day or each week that you will focus on working “on” your business.
Hopefully, you’ve become a smart business owner and realize the power AND importance of working “on” your business instead of “in” your business. These two go hand in hand — if you can balance them.
Do you really understand the importance of MARKETING your business?
So many business owners are just too busy to focus on “marketing.” Many business owners spend too much time managing or baby sitting staff (and customers) and too little time working “on” marketing their business.
When marketing becomes a chore and gets done as a last resort, it shows in the final marketing pieces.
McGraw-Hill Research conducted a study of U.S. recessions from 1980-1985. Out of the 600 business-to-business companies analyzed, the ones who continued to advertise during the 1981-1982 recession hit a 256-percent growth by 1985 over their competitors that eliminated or decreased spending.
In a recession, the first dollars that a company usually cuts come from the advertising budget. Advertising in a recession is actually a smart business move to grow your business now and for the future.
The chiropractor has fewer patients so he doesn’t invest as much in training or staff and so other patients choose to leave which means that there are even fewer patients.
The television station has fewer advertisers, so they can’t invest as much in running stories, so people stop watching it, which means advertisers have less reason to advertise which leaves less money for stories.
The bait shop sees a decline in business, so they have less money to spend on upkeep and inventory, so they keep the bait a bit longer than they should, so of course, business declines and then they have even less money. Eventually, you have an empty, smelly bait shop that’s out of business.
Many businesses hunker down and wait for things to get better, but they don’t. This isn’t a warning sign, it’s a dead end street. You can’t shrink yourself to greatness.
Right now, you still have some cash, some customers, some momentum. Instead of wasting it in a long, slow, death spiral, do something else. Advertise. Move. Find a New Product or Service. Just Do Something. Find a way to keep the customers that still trust you.
Most people don’t get married after the first date. It takes time to build a trustworthy relationship.
Traditional marketing and advertising still works. However, companies who are aware they need to strengthen their brands through social media relationships with consumers are more likely to prosper no matter what we hear on the news about the economy.
So, exactly what is social media? If you don’t know what social media is, consider this your first date.
Facebook is the current network of choice for most people with over 250 million active users. Facebook has tools in place that lets you hone in on target demographics of the people you want to reach. Get involved by setting up a personal page then a page or group for your company. Do you have a Facebook page?
Twitter is good for is keeping people informed and establishing fun and interesting relationships between current or potential clients and your brand by creating links to your website or other social media sites. Don’t plug your products and services with every tweet. Keep it fun and informative. Are you tweeting yet?
Not having a vision means that there’s plenty of room for whining, for infighting and for dissolution.
A solid vision keeps everyone on track; chaos takes over wherever the vision lapses. Having a vision not only points everyone in the same direction, it also creates motion.
While motion in any direction is often better than no motion at all, motion with vision creates synergy. Synergy inspires a team to work together to produce an overall better result than working individually.
Marketing has traditionally focused on the Four Ps – Pricing, Product, Promotion, and Place.
But in today’s demanding environment, marketers need to be focused on an additional set of letters – three Os and an I: Online, Offline, Outbound, and Inbound.
These letters represent new channels for marketing and new challenges for coordination, management, and measurement.
If you’re not online and generating inbound traffic, you might find your business offline and outbound for failure.
Are you ready for the three Os and the I? Ready or not, they’re here.
