Email marketing helps you save time & money on communicating your products or services.

In the digital age, email marketing is one of the most effective ways to increase sales and your bottom line. Email marketing is a form of direct marketing used to nurture leads, solicit sales, build trust and increase brand awareness.

It is also one of the most cost effective methods to stay in front of your prospects as well as past customers. With over ten years of experience our team at Web Market Pros can help grow your business by leveraging the power of email marketing.

Types of Email Marketing

There are two main types of email marketing, trigger based and direct emails. Both are effective methods of marketing if used properly.

Trigger based emails are emails that are "triggered" based on an action taken by a consumer. For example when you sign up for an email newsletter or order a product you will typically receive an email. These are commonly used to build trust and brand awareness.

They can be used to upsell an existing customer immediately after a sale by offering a complimentary item. They can also be used to make an introductory offer to a new prospect while they are near the beginning of the buying cycle.

Direct emails are used to communicate a promotional message or an announcement about new products, services or other special events. Direct emails are a form of interruption based marketing, meaning the consumer may not have been expecting the email.

With interruption marketing you’ve got to grab their attention away from whatever they were doing before they saw your email. When implemented correctly it can bring a consumer from not thinking about your business to pulling out their credit card and buying.

Both versions can be used on potential and existing customers to increase sales. An optimized campaign will include a healthy mix of both types.

Creating Effective Campaigns

The most important piece of any campaign is the list of email addresses and names. Without a list there is no campaign. That is why it’s so important to maintain your list.

A big part of maintaining the list is to "clean" the list, meaning to remove inactive subscribers. This is important because when sending an email the person receiving it is doing so through a "mail client" (i.e. Gmail, Hotmail/Outlook, Yahoo Mail, etc.) and each one of them works hard to keep spam email out of people’s inbox.

One of the methods they use is to track the IP address of the person sending the email, and then blacklisting the IP addresses of known spam accounts.

The more you send email to people that never gets opened, or goes to dead accounts the more the email providers begin to scrutinize your IP address. After a certain point they begin to deliver your messages to people’s spam folder and not to their inbox.

Once that happens it becomes nearly impossible to get anyone on your email list to open your messages. By maintaining a clean list of people that open and read your email you stay off the blacklists and more of your subscribers will see your messages.

Another method they use is to see how many people mark your messages as spam. While you cannot control what people do once they receive the email, you reduce the chances of them marking it as spam by only sending to "double opt-in" subscribers.

A double opt-in subscriber means they have entered their email on your website, then you email them a confirmation message with a link. By clicking the link they are confirming that they signed up to receive the email.

Using the double opt-in method will decrease the number of people that are on your email list but it will increase the number of legitimate subscribers you have. While it may sound enticing to have tens of thousands of subscribers, it is irrelevant if only a small percentage are legitimate.

Lastly it is important to make sure the email content and the design are appealing to the target market. By branding emails with your colors and logo you can increase brand recognition and trust. It will also help you stand out from all the other junk they typically receive.

Having engaging content is a vital part of every email. We’ve all been on email lists that send a barrage of sales messages attempting to sell something. While we both know selling something is the point of email marketing, overdoing it is a quick path to people unsubscribing.

Instead add value with the emails you are sending. Mix promotional messages with interesting stories, news and entertainment. Give them discounts or access to private sales. Give them something of value because they’ve taken the time to read your message.

Mailing List Hygiene

The same way a person needs to keep up with their hygiene so do email lists. This can include filtering out fake email addresses also known as hard-bounces. When you send an email to these addresses the email bounces back and is marked as undeliverable.

It’s also important to filter out "spam traps". These are fake email addresses that are created by ESPs (email service providers) to catch spammers. When these email addresses are used the ESPs can see who is spamming and block their emails entirely.

Lastly make sure to track who opens and clicks your emails. Any subscribers that haven’t opened a single email since they subscribed are most likely not worth sending an email to. Clean them out so you can keep accurate metrics about your emails.

Compliance with Spam Laws

To combat excessive spam Congress passed the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003. The act authorizes a $16k penalty per violation to the business or individual that sent the email. The laws are relatively easy to stay compliant with but you must know how.

A few of the regulations include emails offering a link to unsubscribe easily, including a physical address and having a verifiable return email address.

Why Choose Us?

Email marketing can be an effective method to nurture leads and turn them into sales. Our team of experts at Web Market Pros has helped businesses of all sizes implement successful email marketing campaigns and we can help you.

Contact us today to setup a free assessment of your digital marketing efforts. We will take the time to understand your business and help you create a plan to boost traffic, leads, and sales for your business.