As Internet marketers continue to look for novel ways to find new customer for their clients, most are overlooking the obvious: Each of their clients has an established customer base to work with. One of the best ways to keep in contact with these clients is through email marketing. Why not send an email today and see what happens? Here’s guide to why email marketing can work for your business.
Email Marketing, Not Spam Marketing
I have a number of clients who use our email marketing services and oddly enough, while everyone complains about receiving spam, many think that it’s ok to send it.
I then make several points including the fact that that makes them no better than the spammers, it is illegal according to the Can Spam Act, and that the method is not targeted, making it a waste of money.
Opt-in is Key
The reason why you can legally send bulk emails (often called “email blasts,” “mass emails,” or “newsletter emails”) is that companies like MailPrince.com only allow opt-in emails. That means that people have to agree to receive an email from you. This is done in many ways but the most obvious is by placing a “join my mailing list” button with a form field for their email address on your website. By voluntarily sending you their email address, they are agreeing to be sent newsletters and other company updates.
The 2-Step Process
I will explain this more in a future post but in a nutshell, there are 2 parts to email campaigns: Gathering emails and sending emails. This 2-step process can prove to be very powerful to generate new sales fairly quickly.
Target Market is Key
Your clients are your target market. That’s the obvious point. But you can also make use of other target market streams that flow into your website. If you’ve done a great job at SEO or PPC (or both), most of the people who come to your sitey are your target market. Not only is that better for you since you want to sell to them more than anyone else, they are more likely to sign up for your email where you can update them with important news such as new services, discount coupons, and so on.
You can also take advantage of social media and other online sources to gather emails legitimately but if you’re just getting started, search engine optimization and pay per click are the most direct, best ways to get people to your website who would be interested in signing up.
Why This Works
Combining SEO, PPC, and email marketing can become a powerful sales tool for your business. This form of marketing is very strong because you are able to reach target market website visitors who may have been to your website but not contacted you. As such, you gain a competitive advantage.
Example
Suppose your optimized website brings in 1,000 visitors per month. Of those visitors, let’s say that 10% sign up for your newsletter. That’s 100 people. You then decided to use Pay Per Click (PPC) services like Google AdWords. Let’s say that your PPC campaign brings in another 1,000 visitors per month. Of those, another 100 people sign up.
That’s 200 people per month who have signed up for your newsletter. Now, multiply that number by one year (12 months), and you have 2,400 people on your list. That’s 2400 people who might not have contacted you otherwise but were happy just to receive emails with your specials on them.
So now, January comes around and you are looking for leads. What do you do? Send an email blast to the 2,400 opt-in people and give them an offer they can’t refuse! You are bound to generate sales that way.
Keep growing your list and you have tapped into a new way to generate business using customers that you have but also many that may have gone somewhere else, or not engaged your business to begin with.
How to Get Started
You need to find an email marketing provider that suits your needs. If you’re just beginning, stay away from email marketing companies that force you into long-term contracts. You should try a pay-per-send service rather than a forced monthly fixed rate. Since the Mail Prince Email Marketing Service is about to launch its new website, you can contact me to get you started. If you want to send a mass email blast to clients today, I can help you.
(In the interest of transparency, I will point out that I am involved with MailPrince.com and would like very much for it to be successful.)
Comments
SEO is a lot cheaper but a lot of hardwork equals more money, PPC you spend more less work but uneven ROI, email marketing is a long shot. so I prefer doing SEO rather doing them all to make sure you are in the right track.
I must admit, id always prefer doing seo rather than ppc. I just believe that ppc is for those who are willing to take that risk.
But in fairness, if you find something that works for you in PPC, then you uncovered a gem that will give you the short cut to income success. But again, risk.. risk.. risk..
I think if more webmasters paid closer attention to improving their opt-in rates with split testing (both the offer, and the actual opt-in boxes) they would be pleasantly surprised with how their business’ would improve.
The big “idea” that most people overlook is that if I pay $0.50 for each PPC click…and I can get 1 out of 5 people to sign up for my newsletter…then the total cost per subscriber is $2.50.
Now…I get to divide the # of email messages into that $2.50 to bring down the “ad impression cost”.
So if on average I can get a subscriber to open 9 emails and view the offers, the actual “ad impression cost” comes down to just 27 cents!
Email marketing does work…especially when you use it properly. 🙂
Great post!
Great work. I’ve just started my own blog on email marketing and I’m still learning 🙂
I have recently been conducting a fair quantity of basic research on direct marketing for a brand-new posting that i am working on and simply felt like saying that you blog is pretty sound. Thank you for the topical strategies you have constructed.
well,Search engine optimization and ppc are two important elements of every online business. You want to be top listed in search engines for targeted keywords! It all depends on how much traffic does your site get. More targeted traffic, more sales. It is that simple. Seo is as important as web design. You want many targeted visitors but also a well designed website.
Email advertising and marketing is becoming a confusing and highly potent advertising and marketing technique. I believe the exact elements that make it terrific may very well be things that create it to get infected with so many troubles. It really is quite possibly the single most powerful advertising and marketing approach to explode out there in the last 40 yrs. I just request that people would certainly work with it in such a method that it would not trigger countless problems. I have a friend that truly does major scale marketing via email campaigns and he still claims it’s one of the most affordable method of internet marketing accessible if executed the right way.
SEO is also a long term investment compared to PPC. You will gain positive effects for a long time after spending your time doing SEO rather than starting an adwords campaign.
.-= Billig SEO´s last blog ..Link Building – Linkbygning =-.
This is good stuff…right here. Thanks for this.
Nice work
Thanks for the reminder about the importance of getting ‘targeted traffic’.
Sometimes its easy for us video marketers to get high with the numbers of views, and lose laser focus on what our niche customers really need.
So segmentation of our opt-in lists is key. And like what your other commenter said, we need to test constantly to find what generates the highest sales conversion.
Including videos in your sales letters and e-mail marketing campaigns may also be one way of increasing your sales.
nice post, dude
Great post. I appreciate your blog. Search engine optimization and ppc are two important elements of every online business.
Thanks
SEO is a lot cheaper but a lot of hardwork equals more money, PPC you spend more less work but uneven ROI, email marketing is a long shot. so I prefer doing SEO rather doing them all to make sure you are in the right track.
I don’t think SEO is necessarily a lot cheaper than PPC. It depends on your situation. SEO is a lot of work and to get it done write can be a worthy investment. On the other hand, managing a PPC campaign can be easier to set up but more time consuming in the long run.
Email marketing seems like a good way to boost sale. Does this also work for a tech site, since my site features laptops, notebooks, desktops & other gadgets? Anyways, there’s no harm in trying. Many thanks!
Every person is going to have their favorite tactic whether it be SEO, PPC, or Email campaigns. I’m an overly competitive person which is probably why I put a large percentage of my efforts into SEO. PPC definitely should have it’s place, and can be very effective if done properly. I would say I use email campaigns the least, though I do see their usefulness. You hit the most important points on how to go about starting one. Once it’s up and running it’s important not to overdue how often they are sent. Nothing leads to more opt outs then an overly enthusiastic emailer. Thanks!
I think seo plays a important role for every blogger,if seo is better then you get the good traffic.
Basically, an excellent write-up.
Hi I need to make Income on the internet. Can someone please teach me how to make money online? thank-you. This was a good idea – showing people that google ads and SEO are good when you combine them with email marketing. There’s lots of ways to make money but I need help!