Email marketing is considered one of the foundational principles of any internet marketing strategy. It is often said that “The money is in the list“. This is very true, as many studies over the years have shown that it is more expensive to acquire new prospects and customers, than to gain repeat and new business from existing customers and current prospects.

For the notion of the money being in the list to be truly accurate, respect for your prospect and customer lists must be at the core of your email marketing campaign. This will guarantee that you build and maintain strong relationships with these contacts. A sure way to gain and keep the respect of your your target audience can be acheived by regularly sharing relevant and targeted emails with them.

Examples of content you could share through this method of marketing includes helpful/topical articles, tips, products, services, event invitations etc, with those who have requested to receive your email messages.

Just don’t bombard them with pitches and offers in every single email! This will just lead them to unsubscribe from your list, leaving them unlikely to do business with you in the future.

Email marketing can deliver amazing results while being very cost effective and simple to use, with the benefit of keeping you fresh in the mind of your loyal contacts.

5 Benefits of Email Marketing

1 Affordable

Email marketing is a very cost effective and affordable marketing method. Compared to direct mail, there is no paper, printing materials or postage expense. In addition you can easily create the campaigns yourself cutting out any design fees. Further, no wasted cost due to typo’s, change in contact details, time sensitive offers etc. Just edit the info and send. Email messages sent to your customers and prospects can dramatically improve the return on investment of your marketing budget.

2 Effective

Email marketing allows you to effectively communicate with your current customers and prospects rather than waiting patiently for them to return to your website or business premises. You can easily send emails targeted by location, gender, interest etc, depending on the information you ask for. Resulting in campaigns that are laser targeted and reaching the very people who will find them of most interest.

3 Instant

With do-it-yourself email marketing software tools, you can simply create, edit and send your own powerful email newsletters in advance [known as Autoresponders] or add topical emails easily on-the-fly. Email marketing generates an instant response because of the simplicity and ease of directing readers to clickable images/links in which to take advantage of your call to action. As most people check their email accounts often, response usually occurs within a matter of hours of the email being sent.

4 Results can easily be tracked

Unlike offline marketing campaigns where results are often difficult to track, email marketing results are very easily measured. Most analytics can track the following: 1. How many emails have been delivered/opened: 2. Click through rates show how many people clicked on the links contained within the email message: 3. Details of who opened these emails. This information is invaluable as you can follow up further with these people as they have shown interest by opening the email.

5 Simple

There are many web based email marketing products available for local small business. Most include professional HTML templates, leaving you free to concentrate on your unique message while the rest is done for you. As stated before, there are many different email marketing providers and you alone will be able to decide which provider and package will suit your business needs best.

Things to consider are:

• Your business objectives to use email marketing for your local small business.
• Pricing plans – be sure to choose a pricing structure to fit your needs and budget.
• Detailed analytics – track as many usable metrics of your campaigns.
• Customer support - easily contactable eg, email, live chat, ticket submission or via the phone.
• Customer training – ensuring you get the most value out of the tools.
• Current contact list size – most companies allow you to import your current contacts via .csv files.
• Additional features – some providers intergrate additional marketing features, eg: Mobile Marketing, Video Marketing, Social Media Marketing, Affiliate Marketing etc, these can be invaluable to your business.
• CAN SPAM Act complient – to safeguard the deliverability of your emails.
• Split testing – the ability to test different versions of your email to find what works. i.e your email content, subject line, etc. to see which version gets the best results.
• List Segmentation - narrow down your target audience to a specific demographics, geographic or psychographics.

With many different email marketing service providers available, each offering slightly different services, you will need to decide what your own business requirements are.

A final, but significant consideration is whether you will manage your own email marketing campaigns, or would you require the expert services of a email marketing consulting agency?