By: Monica Peña (@MUNDUmedia)
E-mail marketing is a great way to build loyalty, trust, and/or brand awareness. If used correctly, sending e-mail messages will cultivate long lasting relationships of a merchant with its current or previous customers, encourage customer loyalty, communicate updates on new products/services, and help create repeat business.
Tips to getting started with your online marketing or to improve an existing campaign are:
- It is important to use an e-mail marketing provider, so that there is an opt-out option.
- Add sign up form on your web site so that your contacts have the option to sign up to receive your information. Let potential subscribers know what and how often information will be shared.
- Remember branding and make sure to add your company’s logo prominently on each communication.
- Follow a certain format or theme so that contacts can easily find information and for branding.
- Stay relevant and current with shared information. Remember e-mails are an extension of your customer service. Think about answering your customer questions, new offerings, or what information they most want to know about.
- Use images when possible to make the newsletter visually appealing. Short and to the point with message e-mails are the most popular.
- Add “Send to Friend” option as a way for interested readers to easily forward the information to their contacts.
- Include social share features and add newsletter to updates on social media sites.
- Segment your list when possible to customize communication for a certain purpose to a particular group of viewers.
- Reroute readers to your web site for search engine optimization (SEO) perks and call to action purposes.
- Check analytics to see which links have been clicked through or what information is the most popular. Evaluating results helps the correspondence get better each time.
