Email Marketing: The Basics

With new tools and software being introduced into the Denver marketing world, and the growing popularity of social media outlet, we sometimes overlook one of the oldest, most time-tested internet marketing techniques: email marketing.  Email marketing is efficient, and, when done effectively, can send a powerful message.  This classic internet marketing technique also allows for plenty of creativity and personal touch to help build your brand, and reach your customers.  Today, we are just going to go over some basic guidelines to be considered when you are beginning an internet marketing campaign.

1. Make sure you have permission to email your customers

Although at first thought this may seem to not be of much importance, remember that it is important to support customer trust in your brand by making sure customers have given you permission to land advertisements into their inboxes.  Whether permission is gained via website sign-ups or other promotions, customer permission to use email is generally not difficult to obtain.  However, make sure you have it, so that your company is not guilty of spamming!

2. Keep it simple

As far as the actual design of email goes, simple is often more successful than intricate or fancy.  Depending on customers’ email database of choice, emails can look very different to different customers.  Although colors and interesting images are great, it is also important to be sure that a customer who is unable to view these design details and pictures can get the gist of the email message.

3. Drawing the customer in: it’s all about the title!

Consider the number of emails you get in one day.  It’s highly possible that you are receiving hundreds of emails in the span of 24 hours.  You know as well as we do that some messages take priority over others, and that some messages are regarded for several seconds before being discarded.  Other messages still are sent straight to the ‘trash’ after the title and sender are written off as being of no importance!  In email marketing, consider this: the only way you can ensure that the majority of customers will read your email is by pulling customers in with the title.  Consider key words and phrases that will convince customers of why this email is important to read.  Dates and numbers (for example, sales prices and promotion time-spans) are often a good thing to include.  Going back to our #2 guideline of keeping it simple is also a good idea!

4. Be persistent

An effective email campaign doesn’t mean one email sent per year, you have to be dedicated to reaching your customers by contacting them on a regular basis with new, pertinent information!  Just as a website or social media site needs to be frequently updated to be effective, email marketing needs to be a regular channel of communication.

5. Target the right customers

Email is similar to direct mail marketing, without the excessive amount of paper waste.  By building a database of customers (who have given permission) to be contacted via email about company developments, promotions, etc., we would hope that so-called ‘cyber waste’ could be minimized.  Analyzing customers and segmenting them into target markets can help you personalize a campaign for each market to better reach your customers.

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