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Email Marketing

Email addresses are the asset of your business!

You would have probably bought something off of the Internet at some stage, or asked for some free information, and in return, you offered your email address.

You may have also noticed that at some later time, you’ve received further emails from that company, or even a similar company.

These are called Opt-In Emails, because you have opted to give your email address, in return for something that you found important at the time.

Opt-in email lists are important because they are targeted. If you’ve released your email address for some information, it generally means you have an interest in that topic, and so a list of email addresses simply means, a list of people interested in that one topic.

Because of the targeted nature, Opt-In email lists can sometimes be sold to other companies who which to have access to people who have already shown an interest in a particular area.

This also means that, you as a business owner can purchase Opt-in lists for yourself. This is not ‘Spamming’ because the email address owners have already asked for information in that topic.

Buying Opt-In lists can be expensive however, so it is best to build your own.

The first task to tackle, is what you are going to offer your visitors to get their email address?

Generally, most web sites offer a newsletter, that is sent every month, two months, or so on, and is sent via email. This newsletter can provide all sorts of information on upcoming events, product specials and usually provides some free information and some sort of entertainment.

A good way to get a feel of what to use is to check out your competitors. Sign up for their newsletters and check out what you like and dislike, and what you could use in yours.

Another good way to get email addresses is to offer free competitions or free reports on subjects that would interest a visitor to your site.

A free competition could simply be a free give away or a voucher, once a month.

A report could be something like, ’10 things you should look for when purchasing a fishing rod online’, if your site is about fishing.

Use your imagination, but ensure that what the visitor gets is of benefit to attract them to offering you their email address.

The next task is how to capture their emails. With some e-commerce packages, they will provide you with features such as allowing your customers to become members with a registration form. When they next visit your site, they can log in and then have access to things that other visitors wouldn’t, such as discounted shopping and so on.

They will also capture the customer’s emails when they make a purchase, and because of this, you will always have records of your customers online.

Another method to capturing email addresses, is to use an auto-responder. An auto-responder will do several things –

1. Supply you with a small piece of code that will look like an entry form for your visitors, simply asking for their name and email address.
2. Keep track of all your email addresses
3. Allow you to set up follow-up emails that are sent automatically after a set period of time.
4. Allow you to send spontaneous emails when you feel the need.
5. Create great looking newsletters.
6. Track your emails so you can see how much of a response your getting and so on.

A great company offering all these is AWeber.

The code is easy to set up on your site. You have access to and control of all of the email addresses generated.

If you want to send follow up emails to people who sign up, such as a thankyou email, it will do it automatically for you. You can have an instant thankyou email sent out, and then maybe after a couple of days, another follow up email offering a free bonus they weren’t expecting.

You can also sent out broadcast emails such as an upcoming sale that would not otherwise be possible with automatic follow-ups.

Now that you have an idea of some free information to send (such as a newsletter) and way to capture a visitors email address, you now need to look at some other ways to use the email addresses you get.

People like free stuff. There is no getting away from this, so the more free stuff you can give your customers and visitors, the more comfortable they will feel with you, and the more likely they are to buy off you in the future.

However, you need to make sure you do not bombard them with so much stuff, that they then see you as a nuisance.

Try and find a happy medium where by you offer one or two free bits of information a month, or some form of written entertainment that you know will interest them, and then every two months or so, send out a newsletter offering some discounted products.
Ultimately, if you build trust with your visitors, they will buy off you before anyone else, and the best way to do this is to show you care!

Free information, without overdoing it is one of the best ways to do this. For more information on how to market without spamming (and other info) visit www.wilsonweb.com

Tasks:

1. Research your competitors for ways to offer free information and to see how they build their newsletters.
2. Decide on how you’ll best capture a visitors email address.
3. Sign up for an account with AWeber or another autoresponder company and start building your follow-ups and emails.
4. Visit www.wilsonweb.com and study all the relevant subjects.

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