8 Very Simple Steps to Be Good at Email Marketing

You’ve probably never heard the term “email marketing” before, but more than likely you have seen it. It’s everywhere! Your favorite companies have more than likely sent you a message telling you about a product. This is email marketing in its purest form. Does this sound like something you would want to use? Granting that it is, then continue reading.

1. Even though it should be obvious, it is important enough to state over and over — never send unsolicited emails. You should have explicit permission from everyone you send marketing emails to. This is about more than trying not to upset them; a recipient who considers your email spam can cause trouble for you with your ISP or email service provider. So, the first step in email marketing is put an opt-in form to your blog or website.
    
2. Offer incentives. People might be hesitant to give their consent to receive e-mail newsletters from you. Try offering some sort of incentive as a bonus for subscribing to your mailing list. Offer coupons or exclusive promo codes.
    
3. Develop content that is interesting and informative to your customer base. The message should be engaging, and not filled with dry, boring content. The recipients are more likely to read it all the way through if it is not too long. As they see that your content is relevant, your reputation will grow.
    
4. Use your name or the name of your business in the From: line. Most people are hesitant to open emails that are from seemingly random, anonymous senders for fear of getting a virus or Trojan horse. However, a familiar or trusted name makes the message far less likely to be deleted immediately.
    
5. Send your email marketing messages as multipart format for maximum accessibility. Any email clients that support HTML or have it user-enabled will show your content in HTML format. However, if someone receives your email and only allows text content, that is what they will see. Doing this allows everyone to see your message, regardless of their client or settings. For example, G-Lock EasyMail bulk email software automatically prepares a plain text version of your HTML email and sends the message in the multipart format.
    
6. Let your subscribers have the option of sharing your email message through their social media profiles. When your messages have the buttons for Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, especially intriguing content can get secondary distribution by your readers to prospects you do not currently have direct access to. Nothing is cheaper or more authentic than word of mouth advertising.
    
7. Do what you can to make your email go into your customers’ inboxes. You must work to get your email to pass ISPs and not get tagged as spam messages. If they get tagged as spam messages, your recipient may never see them. The simplest way of knowing if your email is delivered to the Inbox or not is send a test copy of your newsletter to your own email accounts. Setup free email accounts with major free ISP like AOL, Yahoo, Hotmail and Gmail and always send a copy of your email to those accounts.
    
8. Track the subscribers’ response to check if they like your emails, or if they’re no longer interested. Signup with an email tracking system to get realtime email tracking reports for each email campaign you send.