Business Email Marketing- What Is The Source Of The Confusion
While email has been around for a number of years, there still seems to be a fair amount of confusion surrounding business email marketing. Some ways of business email marketing are better than others, but it still essential for businesses to understand how to make the most of this powerful marketing tool. We will take a quick look at some of the basics before moving on to how best to use email for your business.
Email marketing is done, as the name suggests, through email. A business can either gather email addresses when a person places an order online, when someone contacts customer service, or by asking for it directly (usually by filling out a form online in exchange for an incentive). While each of these methods results in the collection of an email address that can be marketed to, each one is slightly different and requires a different approach in the marketing message:
Marketing to customers is a great way to get repeat business. After all, these are the people who have already bought something from you, and that increase the chances that will buy from you in the future. Your business email marketing in this case could focus on offering special deals to customers only, giving them something for free just for being loyal, or inviting them to a special event. Anything you can do to let them know that you appreciate them will help. However, you should be careful that you never take this relationship for granted, otherwise your efforts could backfire.
Another way to get addresses for business email marketing is to gather them when people contact your business. They may contact you with questions about your products and services, or they may wish to complain about something. You can send a series of informative messages to the people who have inquiries about your company. This series may be pre-written and ready to send out to each person as needed. Marketing to people with complaints is a bit trickier, but it can be done. One way to handle complaints is with an email message apologizing and then offering them something special to make them happy again.
The next main group of people for business email marketing are the ones that voluntarily give you their email address. If you have a physical location for your business, you can simply ask people to give you their email address when they come to your store. Collecting their addresses online can be done in several ways, but usually involves offering an incentive of some kind. Remember, we are talking about people that would not otherwise be contacting you, so you need to give them a reason to share their information with you.
Those who give you their email address directly typically need some form of incentive for sharing their email address with you. Remember, these are people who have nit purchased anything from you, and they have not contacted you. However, these are the people that make business email marketing one of the most important things you can do for your business. Learning how to market to them is a major key to online success.
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