The Art of Selling Online by Fifi Nokoe - HTML preview

Chapter 6: Establish a Long-Term Relationship Through E-mail Marketing

Think about what you like as a consumer, and try to step into your customer’s shoes when crafting your e-mail campaign.

From a cost perspective, e-mail marketing is a tremendous boost to the bottom line. In the recent past, companies had to pay for printing, paper, and postage to stay in touch with their customers. And don't be deceived: off-line mail-order is alive and well today, and there is a place for off-line marketing when developing the long- term strategy of your online business. But, specifically, e-mail marketing is very powerful when managed correctly. There's a reason that people ignore most of their e-mails: They get too much spam.

E-mails getting stuck in the spam folder is the death knell to an e-mail marketing campaign.

Also sending spam e-mails could be the death blow to your financial bottom line. With U.S. government laws increasing the penalty for Internet marketers who send unsolicited e-mails, the risk is just too great for your online business to neglect compliance with this new law. At minimum, you should use your auto responder tool to ensure that everyone receiving your e-mails has opted in voluntarily.

If you would like to research more about the penalties for Internet marketers who send unsolicited e-mails, go to www.fcc.gov/guides/spam-unwanted-text-messages-and-email for more information.

As far as e-mail marketing is concerned, you want to remember that the main idea is to build relationship with your customers for the long-term. Your goal is not to amass a list of hundreds of thousands of people who couldn't care less about your business. Your goal is to stay in touch with your client base and present the latest news about your products and services to customers who may be interested.

With those goals in mind, here are some tips on how to develop an effective e-mail marketing campaign:

1. First impressions count. Craft your first e-mail very carefully. Sign up to receive your own e-mails and look at your message as it comes into your own inbox. How does it look? If you were a disinterested customer, would you click on it? Because your first e-mail will follow closely after the customer opts in to your list, the odds that they will read it are high. However, you simply must grab their attention on this first e-mail and provide them with excellent content, or they'll probably never open another e-mail from you again.
2. Make sure the quality of the content stays high. People read e- mails in order to get information to learn things that will help them in their daily lives or businesses. They do not read e-mails to be sold. Be sure to provide good-quality content so people actually look forward to getting your e-mails. Use subheadings, bulleted lists, and short paragraphs to break up the content and make it more readable.
3. Be careful not to raise the reader's expectations too high. The plan is that you will be sending them lots of e-mails, so don't set a standard for yourself that you can't keep. It's better to under promise and over deliver than to have one awesome e-mail followed by a string of mediocre ones.
4. Try to add value with every e-mail, even if it means giving away something for free. The free item doesn't have to cost you anything. It could be something that you've learned from your experience, like a great website, the free report, a coupon for future purchases. Remember that anything associated with you and your business, even if it's free, has to be of the highest value.
5. Entice people to interact with you in the body of the e-mail. Use hyperlinks and HTML buttons to encourage people to click through to your website.
6. Spend extra time on the title of the e-mail. Be aware of the appearance of the e-mail on the various tools that people use to browse the Internet, such as smart phones and other handheld devices. Your title must grab their attention within the first few words. Make sure that you communicate in the title of the e-mail why they absolutely must open your e-mail and read your message.

Think of e-mails that you enjoy getting. Do you look forward to getting e-mails from a particular business? If so, why? Are there lessons you can apply from that business to your own? Think about what you like as a consumer, and try to step into your customer’s shoes when crafting your e-mail campaign.

Your goal is that your customers look forward to getting your next e-mail and open it the first time.

It's all about the long-term relationship.