Email Marketing

Email marketing has grown so fast, especially with the rapid growth of technology in the 21st century.

With this development, it is now easier and quicker to reach your target markets without the need to acquire bulky quantities of printing space, radio and television time or the intricacies of high production costs.

However, this growth of email marketing came with a new twist into the equation; users began to block out email content with filters provided through email blocking programs from the email service providers. Therefore, to effectively get contents across to target markets, content must be put through to targets with an effective marketing campaign that involves laid out email marketing plan without being cut off by spam software or automatic filtering systems.

Before we proceed, it is important that you ascertain:

- what email marketing is all about.

- whether or not email marketing is the right channel to boost the product you are selling or the service you are offering or the awareness you want to create.

- if you plan to build a campaign yourself or engage professionals to do same.

- the email service provider you will be using or whether creating a customized email for that purpose will be better.

- will i require the services of an app development company? Will it be feasible to create a specific app for my services in the long run through mobile app development companies? What type of autoresponders should app developers create for my campaign?

- the advantages of email marketing to your product

What then is Email marketing?

Email is short for electronic mail. It is just like the normal everyday mail we send through the post office, but the difference is that it is sent electronically with digital contents. To use an email, you have to open an email account. Tech giants like Google provide free email services to everyone, so its actually very easy to own one yourself.

Email marketing therefore involves sending electronic mails, usually in form of commercial messages, to a group of target markets. In other words, any email sent to an already existing customer or potential customer could be regarded as email marketing.

How is Email Marketing Achieved?

It is done by using either the email services provided by email service providers or creating a customized one for yourself. After that, you can now use it to send advertisements for a product, solicit sales, request business. Aside that, you can also use it to build trust, loyalty, or create brand awareness.

Emails to be used for marketing can be sent to the current customer base or a lead list already purchased for that purpose.

Care should be taken though to make sure you do not purchase unproductive emails. Unproductive emails here means emails that are no longer in use or emails that are dormant, but used to add to the numbers.

No one can actually be sure, but you can always involve an app development company. This mobile app development companies can create an algorithm that will help you detect such bogus emails. Even when you don't involve them, you can also decipher an unproductive email list with its unresponsiveness. It is either the owner of the email is not interested, the service or product is not attractive, or it is a dormant email.

Building an online campaign through Email Marketing:

Before starting your email campaign, it is very important that you understand the following questions which runs through a client’s mind before subscribing to a mailing list:

- will i gain anything from giving you my email address?

- how often will you email me?

- will i be spammed?

- what discounts will i get?

- will i be sent essential offers or more trash?

1) There are a lot of ways to achieve this. However, it has been noted that the best way is usually to start with a welcome email that appreciates the new contact for subscribing to your newsletter or whatever form of subscription method you used to get their attention. This welcome email should also provide company details, create an avenue to request specific information about the new client in order to enable you categorize them accordingly for future marketing purposes.

2) Ensure the customer adds you to their mailing address:

If you are using an email service provider, they cannot guarantee or control whether or not the emails will hit the spam box or inbox of the target customers. Therefore, it is important that you request the customer to add the email address to their mail address. This is called whitelisting, and it makes you a friendly automatically. One of the best ways to achieve this is by providing instructions for the customer to do so in the initial 'thank you' email or your first follow-up email for the customer.

3) Make Follow-Up Efforts:

It is good practice to add a sustained follow up strategy to your 'to do' list after sending the first mails to your target customers. Usually, this will depend on what your expectations are.

Make it consistent if you must, and never disappoint on any follow up promise made. Consistency is key here. If you assured one email per week but sent daily mails, then you are arranging your own failure.

You should send the first follow-up email immediately as a way to introduce yourself and specify what you intend to do with your new subscriber’s email address.

4) Use Segmentation based on Customer preferences:

With the emergence of effective email marketing tools, it is now easy to maintain an email list, which is categorized based on many factors such as a customers likes and dislikes, their spending habits and other important criteria. Armed with this key information, emails should be created in this regard and sent out to target members of your email list, providing personalized email, specifying detailed information of things they are interested in or have requested. This strategy enhances loyalty and trust as well as increase sales figures.

5) Make Use of Autoresponders:

This fact need not be overemphasized. Autoresponders can save you even when you forget.

An autoresponder is a program that replies e-mail sent to it automatically. Due to the intricacies involved in it, you can also approach an app development company to help set it up and water down the complexities.

It helps keep in touch with your customers even when you do not have anything to offer at the moment.

Therefore, when you eventually want to let them know of a new product or sale, you know that you have already been in touch and are less likely to get them annoyed.

Other additional email marketing strategies include:

- Sending announcements on your products or services to customer email list.

- Sending out a newsletter about your company as well as its products and services.

- Handing out Coupons for future purchases.

- Sending out incentive programs that provide promo code to collect discounts on purchases should also be utilized when necessary to monitor how effective the campaign has been and to see what your mail contacts are actually interested in.

Finally, ensure that every email you send should contain the company or firm’s information at the bottom. This will allow potential clients to know more about the company and subscribe to get future emails.

Author's Bio: 

Kenneth Evans is Analyst and Content Marketer of top app development companies. As a Content marketer, He has been contributing to various blogging platforms and forums.