How to Build an Email List

How to Build an Email List Online and Off

 

The importance of learning how to build an email list in order to market your business cannot be emphasized enough. However, the process of doing so can seem daunting. How do you get customers to subscribe to your list? What if your business is primarily offline? There’s no need to fear! By using specific strategies for both online and offline email list generation everyone can build their email subscriptions without too much investment in terms of time or money. 

How to build an email list on your website

Your company’s website is your first and best asset in building an email list and it all starts with getting good email management software such as Constant Contact, Mail Chimp, or GetResponse. These programs will automatically generate HTML code for you to embed in your site that will lead users to a sign-up form for your newsletter, but that’s just the start. You must also consider how to get them to actually do this:

·         Placement: Where you put the signup form is important. It should be prominent. It should be on your main page as well as on several, if not all, auxiliary pages. It should also be at the top of the page, eliminating the need to scroll down to see it.

·         Incentive: Having a sign-up form is one thing, making people want to sign up with it is another. Therefore, give them something for taking the time out to give you information. This is content marketing at its finest. Provide a white paper, coupon, contest, or special promotion to newsletter subscribers.

How to build an email list offline

For businesses with brick-and-mortar operations, much of their client contact may come offline; but online presence is still important. In fact, face-to-face contact simply provides additional opportunities to gather email information. Here’s two great ideas:

·         Register at checkout: Many retailers ask customers to digitally or manually enter email information when they check out at their register. Like online registration, many customers will respond to these prompts in exchange for the promise of “valuable coupons” for their next visit.

·         Advertise your online presence: In addition to asking for customers’ online information, provide your own. In-person customers may not know of your website or newsletter, so make sure your web address is prominently displayed on all printed material.

Learning how to build an email list can seem tough at first. Companies that are new to online relationship management may be overwhelmed and startups may not know where to focus. The good news is that opportunities to gather email addresses present themselves all the time, both online and offline, and leveraging these opportunities is all one needs to do.

How to Use Direct Mail

How to Use Direct Mail in the 21^st Century

Most “old school” marketers are familiar with the use of direct mail as a key marketing strategy.

Throughout the 20^th century, learning how to use direct mail was absolutely essential for any company that wanted to thrive, whether they were a national retail chain or a small town service provider. The problem is that with the rise of the Internet direct mail strategies have steadily declined and a focus on digital marketing has taken over instead. 

Yet analytics prove that the noise of online chatter can become distracting and that learning how to use direct mail properly can still have a powerful, personal effect on your customers. Here are four short steps that will help you develop a strategy for how to use direct mail in the 21^st century:

Step 1: Develop a target market

Like any marketing strategy, learning how to use direct mail requires first isolating your target market and then designing a campaign that is tailor-made to suit their needs and wants. This is the single most important step in learning how to use direct mail. Without properly targeting your audience, your direct mail campaign has only a random chance at success.

Step 2: Consider your timing

Next, you must plan when direct mailings will occur. Try to make direct mail coincide with the time of the year, your buyer’s needs, and/or their position within the sales cycle. Make sure that you plan to send your direct mail items with enough time to compensate for delivery delays.

Step 2: Get personal

Once you isolate your target market, literally take the time to personalize your direct mail message to them. If you are only sending out a limited number of mailings, consider handwriting the addresses and signing them. For larger campaigns, use the computer to plug in names and choose a font that looks like script to give off a more personalized feel.

Step 4: Don’t limit your scope

Direct mail is about more than sales letters. Before green lighting a direct mail campaign, you need to make sure that you have considered alternatives to traditional techniques. Even though direct mail is not nearly as prevalent as it was even 10 years ago, many people are still immune to the ‘junk mail’ concept. Therefore, branching out of traditional patterns of sale and thinking outside of the box through offering coupons, brochures, and post cards is a great way to set your direct mail apart from the rest.

Despite the rise of online marketing and the importance of engaging in new age strategies, learning how to use direct mail in the 21^st is still important. Using these four simple steps will help any business to design a direct mail strategy that works.

Ways to Market Business

Ways to Market Business: Here Are Three Inexpensive Strategies...

With all of the pressures put on modern businesses by the economy the cost of just keeping your doors open can be daunting enough. However, no matter how easy it is to sweep it under the rug, marketing matters. The problem is that most businesses lack easy, affordable ways to market. Business, for most people, is about a product or service. It’s about customers. Self-promotion can seem at times to be both undignified and daunting. However, using the following simple strategies can get you the marketing exposure you need at a fraction of the cost of hiring a marketing firm.

1: Talk to Clients

It seems so simple, but you would be surprised how many people fail to make the connection between marketing and actually engaging with their current clients. The people who already do business with you are those most well-positioned to comment upon it and help to improve it. Though the ideal way to get an honest assessment of how your current clients feel is through an outside source, blind surveys are commonly used and easily accessible through free or low-cost websites. This information is marketing gold and, if properly implemented, can help you craft new strategies moving forward.

2: Get Creative

The largest problem that most businesses encounter is a lack of ideas when it comes to ways to market. Business is not an idle, unchanging world, but rather a dynamic roller coaster ride with twists and turns around every corner. Your commitment to the changing dynamics in your field obviously needs to be reflected in your product or service, but it also needs to shine through in the marketing materials used to present it.

So, think of creative ways to attract attention. Rather than a typical post card invitation, entice potential clients with details that make your mailing stand out. Food-related businesses could send custom napkins, for example. Look at others within and outside your industry to find ideas that will help your marketing material stand out and stay on top of the minds of your clients.

3: Embrace the Power of Email Marketing

One of the most consistent mistakes that companies are making these days is over-reliance on social media to get their word out. While social media is on the list of ways to market, business cannot base their marketing on social media alone. Rather, email marketing, that ‘old’ dragon is still the king when it comes to attracting new clients and upselling old ones. Email marketing is cost-effective, easy, and proven. 

There are literally dozens of programs out there that can make managing an email marketing campaign as easy as crafting a Facebook update and that will yield a much larger return.

Though the pressures of every aspect of business constantly weigh on us, the importance of marketing cannot be ignored, nor can the importance of learning ways to market. Business is not as simple as making a great product or providing a great service. 

This needs to be combined with efforts to promote that product or service in cost-effective and relevant ways. These three strategies are merely a starting point, but following them will put you leagues ahead of the competition.

How Do I Get More Clients?

Never Ask ‘How Do I Get More Clients’ Again with These Four Simple Steps

While the importance of marketing cannot be disputed, the sad fact of the matter is that the amount of money you spend is not directly correlated with the results you get. Many firms spend thousands, sometimes tens of thousands of dollars on marketing initiatives only to end up asking the same question: “How do I get more clients?”

In fact, the most important step of the marketing process actually happens before launching a marketing campaign. Careful planning and consideration can make all the difference in the effectiveness of your efforts. So, if you want to avoid asking how to get more clients at the end of your marketing campaign, follow these four simple steps before it even starts.

Step 1: Discover Your Strengths

What makes you stand out among your competition? What about your product, service, or company makes you the best choice in your field? A company’s competitive advantage is what sets them apart. It can be something complex such as the specifications on a gadget or something seemingly simple such as their location in relationship to their target market’s home or workplace. Identifying these strengths is essential since they should be the crux of your marketing message and appeal to clients.

Step 2: Identify a Target Market

If you find yourself asking “How do I get more clients?” without a clear picture of who those “clients” are, then you are missing an important step in the marketing process. You need to take time to clearly identify the people and businesses who will most value the products and/or services you offer. And, while this answer may vary when you look at your offerings, taking time for this specific identification will allow you to focus your marketing efforts on those people who are most likely to become valuable customers.

Step 3: Craft a Meaningful Message

Once you know what you offer and who wants it, you need to package those two things together into one message that clearly communicates those facts. A meaningful message must be scripted in the language of potential customers and directly address what it is that you can give them that no one else can. It’s also okay to have more than one message that targets different markets and/or different products/services.

Step 4: Deliver Your Message Often

Finally, an effective message will only generate new clients if it is heard. Therefore, once your message is formed you must work to get it out to your target market as often as possible. This means consciously choosing a delivery method for your message that is affordable, aimed at your target market, and frequent. There are many ways to do this from signage and direct mailings to email marketing and social media. Try to mix up the media of your message as much as possible to keep it fresh.

The tendency for businesses to constantly ask the question “How can I get more clients?” is not likely to go away soon with competition in the 21^st century as sharp as ever. However, through following these four simple steps with your marketing strategy you can be sure maximize your exposure to the right potential clients and spend your marketing budget wisely with excellent effects.

3 Email Marketing Tips

3 Email Marketing Tips that Everyone Can Use...

With the over-abundance of junk mail we all get to our inboxes each day, it’s easy for companies to disregard the importance of email marketing in their overall marketing plan. But to do so is a mistake. Review the following 3 email marketing tips to help reinvigorate your marketing efforts.

Commit to email above social media.

The changing nature of online marketing, especially in the realm of social media such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, has businesses thinking twice about the time and energy they should spend on their email marketing. The result is that many people approach email marketing with less reverence than it deserves and lose valuable customer engagement opportunities as a result. 

Studies consistently show that email marketing is the king of online marketing strategies despite the meteoric rise of Facebook in the past few years. In fact, the Pew Research Center’s Internet and American Life Project found in a 2011 study that over 60% of all adults check their email daily. This is up from less than 50% in 2002. The inclusion of email as a fact of our lives and staple in our culture makes a company who fails to harness this power start the race in last place. Email is a powerful way to engage new and old clients in a targeted way, on a regular basis.

Make sure to get permission and don’t abuse it once you have it.

Once you recognize the power of email as a marketing tool, it is still important to pay attention to the rules and etiquette of using it. The assumption that email is ‘overdone’ cannot be ignored. Therefore, companies need to make sure that they get permission from clients or potential clients before adding them to their email lists and then use common sense along with good analytics to make sure that they send their message at appropriate times without seeming ‘spammy.’

Target your offers.

One of the benefits of getting permission to add someone to an email marketing list is that in the process you can ask questions about that person that will help you to categorize him or her for future mailings. Former customers can be further categorized according to their buying patterns and preferences. Basic demographic information such as a client’s age and gender can help you to isolate offers that will appeal to them and those that will not, increasing their likelihood of viewing your company as one that is in touch with their needs.

Using these email marketing tips as a basis for your company’s email marketing plan is essential if you want your efforts to be successful. Email is an important part of our culture and business in the 21^st century; this means that companies who accurately and responsibly use it will reap amazing benefits.