How to craft an email marketing campaign and measure results
Establish Yourself as an ExpertBefore you begin your marketing campaign, you should take some steps to get yourself established as an expert in your field. You can do this through offering high quality information on your website, writing articles and submitting them to directories, participating in forums, and building a blog and a social networking page. Offer your expertise for free and help people out without expecting anything in return. This will build a trust relationship and help you to build an email list of subscribers. Build an Opt-In ListOnce you begin to establish yourself as an expert in your field of business, you can build an Opt-In list of subscribers. Although email marketing has been abused in the past due to spam, your audience will be receptive to your emails if you provide a way for them to volunteer to receive your information. There are several different methods you can use to build your Opt-In list. If you have created a website you can provide a way for your visitors to Opt-In when they arrive at your site. This is accomplished on the home page or a landing page, where you create an invitation for your subscribers to Opt-In to receive a free newsletter by entering their first name and email address. It is also a good idea to have a privacy policy in place to help build trust with your audience. Email Marketing PlanOnce you begin collecting Opt-In subscribers, you can implement your permission-based email marketing plan. The plan should include elements that will be appropriate for your targeted audience. This means that you have to have a handle on who your target audience is, how they think, and some of the problems they are looking to solve. Depending upon who your target audience is, your plan should be designed to meet the needs of your readers. The email marketing plan will include some or all of the following elements: ObjectiveDecide on what you want to accomplish with your newsletter and then create the layout of the newsletter based on that information. For example, perhaps you are trying to win the trust of your customers, so your plan would be to offer high quality information that helps them solve a specific problem. Maybe you are trying to generate website traffic. Whatever you are trying to accomplish make sure this goal is reflected in your newsletter.DistributionYour email strategy should include a plan for how you are going to circulate your newsletter. Are you going to do it once a month or every other week? Do you plan on offering special editions? Whatever your plan is, make sure the plan includes consistency.ContentYour newsletter should contain content that is relevant to your product or service. It should be high quality information that your customers can use. It should not pressure your customers into a purchase or be filled with advertisements. Remember the idea in the first place is to offer high quality free information.ToolsYour plan should contain an outline of what tools you are going to use to run your email campaign. Although some of these tools are free, some of them also charge a small fee, so you will need to plan for this expense. For example you may decide to use autoresponders, list management tools, templates, freelance writing services, or email management software such as Mailloop. All of these components should be included in your email marketing plan.These are a few of the elements to include in your email strategy. An email campaign can be very effective if you plan it out carefully and follow the rules for good email etiquette. The time investment is well worth it and your business will flourish as well. Want more help and information which will assist you in creating an effective email marketing campaign and be able to measure the results? Check out our in-depth instructions on how to
build your list.
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