Email Marketing—Making “Friends” with Your Customers
Email marketing is vastly misunderstood by many business owners, who either loathe SPAM (and don’t we all?) or by business owners who want to use SPAM to get cheap traffic and attention. Sure, SPAM is a great way to get people to look. Virtually screaming about cheap drugs, sexy products or “books that will change your life” do get noticed quickly.
However, the huge proliferation of SPAM ever since the Internet first launched in the public eye has destroyed the reputation of legitimate email marketing. (SPAM is essentially, cold-emailing people with a business proposal…and especially with hyperbolic text promising the world) SPAM is also associated with overseas scam operations. Luckily, most of us are too smart to respond to these sneaky emails.
Now if you can look past the SPAM approach, and convince your audience that you are not “one of them”, you will be able to generate traffic. The hard part comes in establishing a stellar reputation.
The Difference between Real Email Marketing and SPAM
SPAM is not necessarily an unheard of concept. After all, it’s a slightly less targeted means of direct mail marketing, a long-time tactic used by local companies. The only difference is that it is online. The broad mail marketing approach is comparable to a banner ad or a commercial on TV. You’re taking a big chance by cold-contacting your audience with a “personalized form” pitch. Mail marketing has the advantage of the mail presentation; people have to open the letter and then read the headline. Something that a TV or radio ad does not offer. Usually, research is only limited to neighborhood segmentation; i.e. targeting the poor or the wealthy, or according to rural or urban areas.
However, the online version of direct marketing clearly has some superior technology working for and against it. Online email can be automatically arranged. No real return contact information is required, since fake email addresses can be easily created and IPs can be faked. This has led to many unsavory users creating scam companies and launching huge email campaigns to sell their faux products.
Why is SPAM illegal in some areas? Why is it banned by virtually all webhosts? Why do ISPs go through great pains to separate your SPAM from personal email messages? For that matter, is it really unethical to SPAM somebody?
SPAM suffers from bad associations, having been “pioneered” by scam artists and poor marketers. What truly offends people about SPAM is the robotic nature of the campaign. Messages that are sent are practically soulless, even if they use a customer’s name.
Therefore, if you want to use email marketing to gain traffic, your first order of business is to separate yourself from the rabble of the profession. What is the ultimate customer complaint about SPAM? That these guys are emailing them non-stop all without any consent or the slightest hint of permission!
So, step one is to get that all important consent form, and the best way to do that is to use an opt-in form. True, you can actually cold-email companies and ask for consent. This is a 50/50 proposal, and you may be ignored, or you may be replied to, based on your proposal idea. Before trying the direct approach, be sure to scout the company and make the introduction letter sound as professional and yet as personalized as possible.
Otherwise, the only way to go about serious email marketing for traffic generation is to go the opt-in route. Simply put, you get consent to send email messages to your audience on a regular basis. This has three advantages:
When it comes to opting in, some campaign managers are happy with one opt-in form (usually an email signup box) while others elect for double opt-in signups, which may require clicking a link inside of an email message after signing up, or checking a box before submitting an email address.
Once you have permission to send emails, and actually have their FULL attention (meaning no instantly deleting emails or a software program automatically sending it to a spam folder) then you can focus attention on creating an intricate email campaign that communicates on a personal level with your customers.
Many Internet users actually prefer email communication when it comes to sealing a deal or making a sale. They want that one on one attention if they are to spend their money…they prefer the assurance of a human being rather than a robot auto responding to their purchase. So in lieu of this, though you are going to be using auto responding tools, do not make your email content seem like a form. Instead, take advantage of this secure and private connection and make an attempt to personalize letters and personalize responses to questions if you have the time. After all, many purchases still go through email (using PayPal, or freelancer sites like Elance.com or auction sites like Ebay) rather than social networks or even home websites.
The next step is to create a mailing list so you can email all of your customers (or perhaps just a segment of your total leads) by simply clicking a few buttons. This is sure more convenient than drafting 1,000 individual email posts! You have two options: you can assemble a mailing list on your own, or you can use software that automatically stores all of your new leads’ email addresses for you. You can manually enter the email addresses in a database, or install a CMS site plug-in that stores info for you, or you can use a freeware auto responder program which stores lead information and also helps you organize multiple email campaigns.
AutoResponders are computer programs that answer emails sent automatically. While they are a form of artificial intelligence, they can be personalized and designed to mimic one on one conversation. They can be used to manage new email campaigns, welcome new members to a newsletter, advertise new products or highlight company announcements, or confirm subscriptions (the double opt-in).
These email-marketing tools can be either installed on a user’s own server (a more complex option) or can be outsourced and actually operate on the provider’s infrastructure. That way, users simply access the application from an easy to use control panel.
When choosing an AutoResponder, it is important to choose not only a free product, but also an operational one—one that protects against SPAM and bad SPAM associations. For instance, some outdated autoresponder applications can generate email backscatter, which will instantly label real messages as SPAM, sending it straight into the junk folder.
AWeber is one of many autoresponder programs and lets you access email signup forms (which you can easily install as HTML on your site), auto response mechanisms (meaning your customers will always be contacted quickly after taking an action) and provides easy ways to create and manage multiple mailing lists for various projects.
Users can also choose between various HTML templates, customize signup forms, use RSS to email, and even analyze email analytics. Yes, you can actually track the behavior of your users to see which messages are opened, which campaigns are the most successful, and which campaigns did less than stellar.
Now comes the tricky part. How do you make such an automated approach to business SEEM personal? The personal connection is key…yet, we insist on using automated software to save time and money, don’t we? There is a solution.
You can customize your email messages to fit your target audience, to seem personal and more importantly, to address the customer’s needs.
Your customers are pretty smart…they are not going to think that you are emailing them personally. It doesn’t really matter if you use a personal name or just a generic title.
What matters to customers is how you make the personal connection and if you address their shopping needs.
In discovering ideas for traffic generation through email, it is essential that you do three things:
True, your website presentation probably won’t be as informal as your email messages, especially the “newsletter”, the personal pitch that comes month after month (or sometimes week after week) advertising the latest news from the company. However, you should aim for a smooth transition from the familiar email marketing message (the pitch that arouses and holds interest and then addresses the need) to website sales (the call to action stage).
Besides directing traffic to your website, it also helps to include a signature or “author box” at the end of the message to say a little bit about you as a person and as a businessperson. Avoid using affiliate links in an email, as this could turn off your audience.
Last but not least, just as you study SEO analytics and social networking metrics, study the analytics for email. Determine which messages increase traffic and which themes don’t seem to work. Adjust your campaign accordingly.
Another tip: do not be content with just one avenue of information. Just as with article marketing, you can actually increase traffic to your website by finding more than one newsletter to publish your material in. As long as you’re researching the niches and focusing your content, you can find upwards of 10 or more newsletter sites to post information.
Up until this point, we have only been discussing the mediums for traffic generation. In the next chapter, we are not only going to discuss video and audio content production as a means to produce more traffic…we are also going to discuss the theory behind “Viral” content. That is, what truly makes people stand up, listen to you and decide that you have valuable content worth sharing?
Ultimately, producing lots of “viral” content is the best way to generate an awesome amount of free traffic. So let’s get to the bottom of this mystery…