Are you a spam master and don't even know it yet? What do people think when they see an email with your company name on it? Do you even know what your click through rates are or what your ROI is on your email marketing efforts? Do you know anything about email marketing best practices? If you had a problem answering any of those questions then you definitely need to read this article.
There is a fine line when it comes to email marketing. Everyone has a list of email contacts that they have built over time from networking events, business meetings, conventions or any other number of business card exchange oriented events. Although it might be good etiquette to follow up with those people personally via email it is not ok to throw them all on one mailing list and regularly send them emails that they just don't want to receive. Not only does this turn people off, it desensitizes them so when you finally do have something awesome to send out that they might actually be interested in they just hit delete because they assume it is just more unsolicited spam.
From The Top
Email marketing is a powerful tool for any business and should definitely be a big part of your online marketing strategy. The problem is that you have to build a list of people who actually want to hear from you or have an interest in your product before you will ever see any return on your email marketing. The days of buying lists or gathering emails from other obscure sources are long behind us and you even run the risk of being flagged as a spammer if you happen to continually send emails to unsolicited addresses as many expired emails are converted to spam traps specifically with the intent of flagging and penalizing people who don't keep a tight leash on their email lists. Keeping a current and up to date list is of the utmost importance and regularly cleaning or scrubbing your contact list is an important part of email marketing.
How Do You Properly Gather Email Addresses?
There are a number of ways for you to properly collect email addresses and then segment them so that you can target your messages to people who will actually find the information useful. Here are some ways to clean up your list and gather email addresses for people who actually want to hear from you.
Start a blog:
Blogging is essential in order to get your message out and create content that people want to share and read. there are a ton of free blogging tools out there and they all allow you to collect and add email subscribers. Not only is blogging good to get your message out there but it is great for Search Engine Optimization.
Use Marketing Automation Software To Capture Leads:
Using marketing automation software to help you optimize your website with calls to action and landing pages with the intent of gathering email addresses as leads is a perfect way to gather engaged leads as well as giving you the ability to segment those leads.
Use Social Media:
There is no better way to engage with your audience online and gather information. You can use a tool like our social media integration software to add custom forms to your facebook page which you can then use to gather emails and other lead information.
Use QR Codes And Landing Pages:
QR codes are a great way to engage people and gather email addresses. If someone takes the time to scan your code and fill out the form on your landing page then they are interested in getting more information about your company.
What Do You Do Once You Have Them?
Now that you have all those email addresses you need to segment the lists and make sure that you are only sending people emails that they want from you. You can do this through all major email marketing platforms including our email marketing platform. By segmenting your lists you allow people to chose what emails they want to get from you as well as target your message by list. Segmenting your email marketing lists will also increase your click through rates, lower your unsubscribe rates and increase the effectiveness of your email marketing efforts.
If you wanted to take it one step further you could even add automated email workflows which help nurture your contacts and keep them active in your closed loop marketing efforts. That, my friend is for another day though. Thats a graduate course in email marketing and this is email marketing 101 so... until then.
Conclusion
Email marketing is a big part of marketing but it is up to you whether you chose to use it as an inbound marketing tactic or the same old played out Interruption style outbound marketing that people have been using unsuccessfully for years. Proper use of email marketing is vital to a successful online marketing strategy and gathering lead data from people who are interested in your product is the most important part of all of it. I would take 500 engaged readers over 5000 random contacts. Those types of vanity stats are not going to help you grow your small business. So for goodness sake, if I meet you at a networking event and I give you my business card that does not give you the right to add me to your email lists or company newsletter. And if you do I'll probably just unsubscribe or worst, report you as a spammer! Just Dont Do It!
