Email Marketing - Email Database Management

"Email Marketing......

                 …the secret to keeping your customers ......                       .....and turning them into repeat business"

" ....... It is always surprising how often a website is used solely in the creation of new business while completely overlooking the fact that it also provides the perfect medium through which to exploit the potential for repeat business!"

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What is Email Marketing?

Email marketing is exactly what the term implies. It involves the use of email to create revenue generating business. However email is a dangerous animal and if used incorrectly, can be responsible as much for repelling customers as it can be attracting them - and so it is a Tool that should be used wisely and with to generate a particular type of business.

Being the very powerful tool that it is, an Email Marketing strategy should be included in any online marketing plan. We reccomend to our clients that it should be used primarily to capture repeat business rather than risk losing customer that might categorise your efforts as spam.

Why is Email Marketing So Effective?

Email Marketing is particularly powerful because it allows you to cost effectively maintain a one-on-one relationship with all of your existing and previous customers. It provides you with the medium through which you can continually remind every single one of your previous customers, of who and where you are, and the services and products that you are able to provide them with, which of course is an absolutely essential part of building the customerbase and goodwill of your business.

Gathering Customer Data:

To maximise the effectiveness of your Email marketing strategy, an effort should be made to collect name and email address of all customers and not simply those that arrive via your website. A simple customer information form should be used on your website accompanied by encouragement for your customers to submit their contact details. Bear in mind that few website visitors will readily submit their details online unless your company is known to them, and so it is wise to encourage them to submir their details as part of a promotional or some other similar offer.

Email Marketing Tools:

There is a wide selection of cost effective Email Marketing Tools available on the market that will simplify the process of collecting customer details on your website, and then emailing them as and when you choose to. When selecting the product that meets your needs it is wise to select a solution that offers full opt-in and opt-out functionality for those siging up. There is nothing worse than having a customer complain about the receiving emails from you, when they do not wish to receive them any longer.

The choice of Email Marketing Tools that you will be able to select from will generally include either:

• Those that you buy as a stand-alone package which you buy and install on your own server or;
  
  
• Those that provide an online service where the Third Party supplies the solution on their server and you simply place the data-form on your website and the customers information is caputured in their database to which only you have access. You can then broadcast emails to your customers as and when you wish using the variety of email services that they provide.

Personally we tend to prefer and reccomend the latter, simply because it is generally a far easier proposal to run and maintain, and the range of email functions that these services offer is not only quite cost-effective, but they also offer a level of functionality that would only otherwise be available to you if you purchased a reasonably high-end product.

For more information about a selection of these Email Marketing Tools, take a look at our page on Online Marketing Tools.

Effective Email Marketing

How effective your email marketing will be, comes down to what exactly you offer in your emails. Your emails could be a regular monthly newsletter or they could simply include exclusive promotional and seasonal offers. Whatever it is, the secret lies in providing them with something of tangible value that they will look forward, to and read, otherwise they will become quickly bored and will press the Delete button without even opening your email.

Email Marketing - a great idea .....but have you the time?

In a situation where you cannot dedicate the time to implement an Email Marketing strategy ....them maybe you should contact us.

While on the surface of it a Email Marketing might seem relatively unimportant, but for every one of your customers that you do not work to keep, there are several other retailers or service providers that are lining up to grab them from you. It should therefore form an important part of your overall online marketing strategy. And if you haven't got the time, then find some one who has.