Is Email Marketing Dead?

Guest Post: By Neil Stafford

Is Email Marketing Dead? I have been told that since 2004 and I not only don’t believe it, I have proof that it is one of the most effective marketing tools you can use. Email is here to stay and I use it on a daily basis for:

• Keeping in touch with clients and customers
• Sending out information updates
• Providing a monthly ezine
• Mini courses
• Eclasses
• Tips
• Sales promotions
• Recommendations
• Autoresponders
• And more

Does it still work? Well, I am in regular contact once a month with over 20,000 people just by email and that enabled me to sell out in just 48 hours a webinar I set up. Want more? Well in just 30 minutes I wrote an email that brought in 42 sales in the first 36 hours for a Chinese cooking ebook. Yes, it works! That certainly proves to me that email is still a powerful sales tool, but in a more competitive market you need to have an edge.

Here are 6 tips you can use to increase the power of your email marketing.

1. Ask your subscribers to filter your email. I always ask people to filter my email into a special folder for email they want to keep; or ask them to apply a color filter so when my email arrives it changes color and stands out. Make sure you tell them how to filter it in both your thank you and first email and give details for the most popular email programmes.
2. Send out a ‘Gentle Nudge’ Email People get lots of emails, and there is a chance yours will get lost in their spam filter. You can avoid this by putting your message or ezine on your website so people can view it there. It’s goo idea to also ‘remind’ your list of a new posting on your website as they may not have got, or deleted, your original email.
3. Respond to confirmation requests If you have signed up to any newsletter or ezine you always get asked to confirm you want to receive it and are a genuinely ‘live’ person. This avoids junk mail reaching you, and you can turn this to your business advantage. I always reply to confirmation requests because these people have taken the trouble to set up the filtering process and it will be on their primary email account; which means they will look at it on a regular basis. This way I get to build a relationship with them, which then results in more sales.
4. Use double opt in to build highly targeted and responsive lists I’ve used this method to build a highly responsive list of buyers in one niche I operate in. I emailed them first about a product I was launching and to find out more they had to email me back. Once they took that action I then asked them to confirm their request. Yes, this meant I reduced the overall number of people on my list BUT the people who were on it were eager for the information. The result? 31% of that list bought the product. .
5. Use S-P-A-M- filters to check your email before you send it out There are some words that will trigger a reaction in many email filters so avoid that and use an email checker before you send out your messages. This increases the chance of your email being received and you can find filters by just searching on Google.
6. Use additional methods to deliver your information Emails are an important part of your marketing mix, and you can also hook into alternative methods to actually put your message across. You could try, as I have, sending an email to your offering an mp3 recording or PDF report to download. Offering a PDF report means you can offer a lot more information, including graphics.

The great thing about PDF’s is that people tend to keep them longer than emails so you have a longer presence with them. Using an MP3 gives you a VERY easy way to send information out. All you need is a microphone plugged into your PC then record your information and upload it to your website. Then just email your list telling them it is ready to download.

And finally…… Emails are very far from dead, or even sick, but they still remain a very effective way to grow your business online.

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Neil Stafford is Editor and Publisher of the Internet Marketing Review the UK’s longest running PRINTED Internet Marketing Newsletter. ‘Test drive’ the Newsletter for FREE – Visit this special web page for more information: Internet Marketing Review Newsletter

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Is Email Marketing Dead?

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