Introduction
Over the years, email marketing has become a driving force in customer relations. Through email, you can create long lasting business relationships to promote physical business locations and website-based businesses. But with increased competition, it's more important than ever to build those relationships to maintain sales. This means you need to connect with subscribers quickly through quality content they can really use. To do this, you must understand that wants and needs of subscribers and then find ways to satisfy these wants and needs.
Traditional Publishing
In traditional magazine and newspaper publishing, writers and editors catered to specific groups of people. Pick up any magazine and you can clearly tell by the front image, article headings and magazine title who these specific groups are and the types of information the magazine is trying to provide. Online newsletters, ezines, and many websites try to accomplish the same.
Magazines and newspaper publications have a thorough understanding of their consumer base, and even though these publications have suffered over the years due to the expansion of the Internet and print publication industry's failure to adapt to this new medium, email marketers can take many of the same principles used by these publications to:
- Determine core groups of consumers
- Wants and needs of consumers
- Ways to satisfy wants and needs
- Increase sales and awareness of a business
Throughout this guide, you will learn how to adapt simple techniques used by traditional publications to build your mailing list, maintain subscriber interest, and hopefully, increase sales. Though the medium may have changed (print-based to Internet-based), the goals of publishing remain the same: give people what they want and they will keep coming back for more.
Know Your Market
Understanding your customers is the first step in building a successful email marketing campaign. While you could take the risk and market goods and services to everyone, chances are, you won't be very successful.
In traditional publishing, magazines and newspapers present articles filled with valuable information that caters to specific groups of people. Do the same with your email campaign so people view your messages as valuable resources instead of just sales materials.
There's an old saying in sales, 'When you market to everyone, you market to no one.' What this means is that if you create a generic marketing campaign and try to get everyone to buy from you, you will fail to make connections - this is what really sells products and services. Yes, you may make a few sales off of those in dire need of what you have to offer, but in most cases, you need to build trust with customers first, then sell to them.
Identify Groups
Discovering groups of people most interested in what you're selling requires research. Use the Internet to visit online forums, websites, social media pages, and blogs to find people that may want to buy from you. Learn more about their issues, concerns, wants and needs.
Wants and Needs
Create a list of what these groups are searching for. The Internet is filled with lots of useful and useless information. Some groups search for a very long time before finding goods and services that cater to their needs.
Competition
Determine what's currently available on the market that caters to people's wants and needs. There may be many products or very few. Knowing what's out there can help you design a marketing campaign that outshines the competition.
Research/Information
In addition to knowing your market in terms of people and competition, you need to have a thorough understanding of industries, hobbies, topics, and trends within the market if you want to provide quality information.
For example, if you sell environmentally friendly cleaning supplies to professional cleaning companies, you need to know how these companies operate, what they look for in cleaning supplies, price points, and the latest cleaning equipment and techniques.
With this information, you can provide advice, tips, product reviews, and other helpful items to make the professional cleaner's job a little easier. Then you can sell your products.
Build a List
Much like traditional publishing where people sign up to receive magazines and newspapers in the mail, you need to get people to sign up to receive email messages. Now that you know where the people that would benefit the most from your business hang out online, it's time to post links and sign up forms where these people can easily find them.
Most online forums allow you to sign up to post comments or respond to questions. And while you can't post a link to your website or sign-up page in a post, you can add these links to your profile.
Other ways to build an email list include:
- Adding sign up forms to your website, blog and social media pages
- Partnering with other businesses with customers that are also interested in your products/services
- Writing guest posts for blogs you know potential customers read
- Adding SEO keywords to your web content and landing pages that potential customers would most likely use to find the types of information you provide
This is why knowing your market is so important. To reach people, you must know where to find them first.
Satisfy Wants and Needs
Providing answers, solving problems, and making the lives of your customers easier are all ways to satisfy their wants and needs. For example, when a person purchases a magazine, they're expecting to find valuable or entertaining information about a particular topic(s). Publishers go above and beyond to satisfy these needs and wants by hiring the best journalists, writers, and editors to find, research, write and edit great content. You don't have to be a world-class journalist to succeed in email marketing, but it helps if you have an interest in your market.
To produce a popular magazine or newspaper, publishers and others scour the latest news, polls, and research papers to find new leads. Reporters go to live events, conduct interviews, and try to piece together information to write a complete story.
Even though email marketing is different in terms of how you reach customers, the approach is relatively the same. It's your job to present the most up-to-date information you can for your customers. Then, you can tie in goods and services to encourage sales. But providing top-notch information, you will not only become a valuable resource, you will also stand out from the competition.
Go to live events, attend lectures, and interview experts if that's what it takes to give people the information they're looking for.
Sell, Sell, Sell
In the real estate market, there's an old saying, 'Always be closing,' which means you should be continuously closing the deal. The same applies to email marketing. While providing great content, you also need to push goods and services. You can do this in a variety of ways:
- Calls to action
- Discounts
- Free stuff
- Customer interaction (social media, blogs)
How you approach customers depends on the market. You will also have to test a variety of sales methods until you find one that works. Unfortunately, there's no secret formula to get people to buy something. But, like traditional publishing, advertising is very important.
Advertise your website, social media pages, blog, landing pages and other marketing channels at the top of email messages. Provide links, short descriptions of goods and services, and a call to action (Buy Today and Save) to get people to visit your website.
Use social media and blog pages to provide even more quality information and to interact with customers. Answer questions, offer additional advice or just share a joke - whatever it takes to earn a customer's trust.
Earn Your Customer's Respect
Magazines and newspapers that have been around for decades have one thing in common - loyal readership. Building a loyal customer base takes time, but it's worth it in the end. Over time, customers will look forward to reading new content, interacting with you online, and buying products and services that have a positive impact on their lives.
Maxmail HQ
Maxmail HQ is a premier email marketing service you can use throughout your entire email marketing campaign. From sending unique content to autoresponders encouraging subscribers to visit your website, this service provides all the tools necessary to create, manage, and build an email campaign. Features include:
Ability to customize list fields for segmentation purposes
- Email templates for easy design
- Design features such as Drag & Drop editing
- Ability to import and save images and other files
- Integration with social media
- Ability to create and send autoresponder messages
- Advanced list cleaning
- Organize and manage multiple lists at the same time
- Adjust send frequency as needed
Maxmail HQ takes the guess work out of creating and managing an email campaign. Armed with the knowledge you gained from this guide in conjunction with the features Maxmail HQ has to offer, you can start promoting your business in no time!
For more information, check out these instructional Maxmail HQ videos:
Maxmail HQ: Customer Engagement
Maxmail HQ: The Power of Customer Satisfaction
Maxmail HQ: SMS for Instant Gratification
Maxmail HQ: ROI Driven Marketing
Maxmail HQ: Easy Mail Marketing, Social Media, SMS and Surveys
Maxmail HQ: High Volume Email Marketing