Effective email marketing has its ups and downs. On one side, it is usually considered spam to email a lot of people. On the other hand, if you can get someone hooked into reading your email, you may have found a new customer. What you can do in order to utilize email marketing for your site is to offer a newsletter.
In the newsletter, you will have to provide useful information that people will be interested in reading. It also has to be relevant to the topic of your business in order to work. If you can get someone interested in reading an article that pertains to something you sell, all the better. Give them a link at the end of the article to check out your business and you will see how much more business you will get.
If you don’t want to maintain a consistent newsletter, you can also offer a one time article or report for new visitors to you site. Once they have signed up for this, you can send them additional emails about special offers and other types of rewards. Although you will have to watch the frequency of these emails. If they are showing up in multiples in emails boxes everyday, chances are they will go straight to a spam folder and never be seen again.
The best way to get the most out of email marketing is to be smart about it. Make your emails appealing to the people who get them so that they will be more interested in your products instead of interested in getting off the mailing list.
Tags: email marketing, email newsletter, email report, spam
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May 11th, 2008 at 1:17 pm
One thing about using email is that you need to pay attention to how the provider hosting your web site handles email that goes out to a large list of people. Some of them have a system that only lets a certain number per hour go out. The reason for that is that spammers typically send thousands at a time.
One other thing I discovered is that a web host I used to use had been listed as a “spam site” because some other site that was hosted there was blasting out emails in all directions. So, even though I wasn’t doing big emailings, I got caught in spam filters because of that other person doing bad things.
May 11th, 2008 at 1:19 pm
It’s not spam if you ask for their permission to send information and you offer a way to opt-out should they no longer wish to receive your emails. I use Aweber for my newsletters, although I am now veering away from long emails and towards sending brief emails directing people to a blog post.
May 11th, 2008 at 7:36 pm
I think in the age of spam, in order not to ailenate potential customners, a opt-in system must be implemented. Once the customer consented to be on your email list, the next step is to ensure that you have compelling content and preferably with a call to action.
May 13th, 2008 at 4:17 am
I find that email marketing doesn’t really increase my sales. I used Aweber for a while and noticed a very small conversion ratio consdering the number of emails I was sending. I used it for 3 months, with lots of useful emails and about 5 promotional ones, and got a total of one sale. Bah.
May 15th, 2008 at 3:08 pm
I think things will eventually reach a point where double opt-in is required. i.e. people ask to receive your newsletter via a web form or similar and then they receive an email just asking them to confirm that they wanted to receive this info. Many people do this already. Results in fewer opt-ins but also fewer spam complaints.
May 16th, 2008 at 4:31 am
I think this is a great technique to expand an online business. Many big companies are using this technique to grow their business worldwide. Email marketing was one of the best marketing technique to sell products in early days but today many people avoid such emails and hence it is going down day by day.
May 16th, 2008 at 10:42 am
To be honest, I don’t see the point in using it as a marketing tool. Even the rare times that I do sign up for a newsletter, I rarely bother with them when they come. Sometimes, people abuse the fact that you’ve added yourself to their mailing list, and dish out two or three e-mails a day, at which point it just becomes really annoying.
Other forms are, frankly, spam. My lovely Gmail filters these all out for me. I never look at them, and never will. If I didn’t request it, I don’t want it. It’s sort of like someone invading my personal space.
Most people will be turned off by e-mail marketing, if anything.
May 16th, 2008 at 5:51 pm
I agree with Somnilocus. However on another note; Should you decide you want to use the email marketing idea, the key to actually having someone read it is to have a title which appeals and makes the potential reader curious.
There is one thing that the human kind can not out will and that is curiousity.
Also, take into consideration that some people do open the newletter emails, but they don’t read them - So having a catchy header is another important must do.
Just remember: If it looks like you care about the customer (not saying you don’t!) then they will take the time to care about what you have to say.
Fantastic Article! thanks
- Malakai
May 17th, 2008 at 10:41 am
On the other hand, it seems to work unbelievably well with old people who don’t understand a thing about the In-tar-nets.
My mom got a spam e-mail at work with her name in the subject line… “Dear —-, thank you for sharing pictures of your…” you get the idea. She thought, “they have my name! It must be legitimate.” She e-mailed these people and gave them an earful, HA! So, if the people you’re marketing to are computer illiterate, perhaps you have a chance. 
May 17th, 2008 at 10:15 pm
Its hard to use email as your primary marketing tool today. I agree with Somnilocus and Malakai. If you want to use email marketing, it has to be interesting enough to get the readers curiosity so they visit your website. I would not however recommend it as your main promotion strategy.
May 19th, 2008 at 9:30 pm
I think email marketing works once in a blue moon. It usually does not get very many clicks and there is always the issue that most third rate mail readers will surely spam it. Newsletters need to attract customers, otherwise everything will be in vain.
May 21st, 2008 at 11:30 am
Email marketing is something I’m skeptical about. I could be wrong but I think most people do not even bother to read it and simply mark it as spam. I have tried it only once before and it wasn’t successful but that was because my server didn’t allow me to send a large amount of emails at once so most of them were never sent. I’m going to try again by setting up a cron job to send a limited number of emails per hour. Will see how it goes.
May 24th, 2008 at 11:31 pm
As a post has been updated, it speaks about the spam filters. So here comes the problem for email marketing. An ordinary user will just push it to spam and delete the contents. I hope this will work at least. No other option to go.
May 25th, 2008 at 10:55 am
It’s also important to have an Opt-Out that works, and don’t give them any 3-4 Business Days bullshit. It can be set up to automatically remove them from the list by clicking the link and you know it.
Don’t forget the laws about giving a legit contact method as well.
June 22nd, 2008 at 10:20 pm
E-mail marketing is not the best method unless you are doing it in a newsletter form. Too much mail now days is being sent to junk folders and even if you are not spamming, your service provider is really the one that is going to determine what it considers is spam. So you have to be very careful that you just are not wasting time sending emails that are going to junk folders or are not being thrown away without being read.