Companies are still utilizing e-mail marketing to enhance their business. Pew Research Center recently reported that more than 90% of adults send and receive email, making it the most used online activity. Email marketing is effective to announce promotions, broadcast sales, follow up with leads, and publicize events to your customers.

Resurrecting Email Marketing – 4 steps to improve your e-mail marketing campaign:

Testing & Defining Metrics
An e-mail campaign should be approached similarly to buying a new car. Start with a test drive and track the:

• title and subject line to see what gains the best response
• date and time to determine successful delivery
• appeal of the content to ensure the message is clear

Once testing has commenced you can target your sales efforts towards the response received. Through testing and metrics you will gain insight into best practices for your campaign and uncover your greatest customers.

Message Targeting
Relevance is the difference between an effective e-mail campaign and one flagged as spam. Targeting your e-mails towards your customers will increase relevancy and decrease the percentage of unopened or opted out e-mails. Customers have different interests and are at different points of involvement. Give them what they need for where they are in their journey. Your message should be an extension of your customers’ one-on-one experience.

Design
Don’t ignore the appearance of your e-mail, your customers won’t. Whether you choose a graphically engaging visual format, or a cleanly formatted, informative, text layout, demonstrating creativity could be a major factor in differentiating yourself from the rest.

Social Media
Social media has made a splash in the marketing world and can positively influence your e-mail campaign. It can provide another avenue to connect and add to your group of contacts. Social media also provides an opportunity to gain insight into your customers’ interests via ongoing conversations, further generating ideas for your next e-mail and increasing the opportunity to remain relevant in your message. Using social media’s viral nature to alert and build interest around your message will ensure the success of all your efforts.

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Natalie Stanczyk is a social media specialist at Starkmedia, a web design agency based in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. If you would like to discover more innovative ideas that could enhance your business, please visit us at http://www.starkmedia.com or contact the author at nstanczyk@starkmedia.com

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• Advertising, Opt-in Leads, Email Marketing service helps small businesses market their products more effectively. We provide everything you need, http://www.madviral.com Phone: 256-778-8350 (9am-5pm CST M-F) MadViral Enterprises, LLC 171 Early Rd. Hartselle, Al. 35640