Email Marketing - What I've Learned

I taught a seminar on email marketing to the Kent Chamber of Commerce in January 2009. Here is what I've learned about it.

Email Marketing
The easiest way to increase your sales is through email marketing. It only costs a few dollars a month to get an email program like www.constantcontact.com. They take care of the legal stuff and prevent you from accidentally spamming. Email marketing helps build:
1. Customer Loyalty
2. New Customers
3. Word-of-Mouth Sales

Studies show that most people only buy after repeated exposure to your marketing message or ads. You are reminding people of your company and keeping your company top-of-mind with your existing clients.

But what do you put in an email?
1. List tips for using your products
2. Offer a review of a website or product
3. Answer a reader's question
4. Reprint relevant articles

How do you grow your email list?
1. Cross promote with other businesses. Feature other businesses on your email and they will promote you on their email. It can help build both of your lists.

2. Believe it or not, almost every person who is on facebook has an average of 150 contacts. If you can get your customers to say nice things about you on facebook and refer your website, it gets out a lot people. Twitter.com is getting a similar response. There are a lot of social media marketing methods which we will talk about later.

3. Another great way to build your email list is through networking if you are a business to business type business or hosting special events for customers if you are a business to customer type business.

There is so much more to say. Hopefully this will get you started. Of course there are many blog posts and websites that can give you more information.

The important thing is not to hesitate. If you are not making full use of email marketing, it should be your number 1 priority. Most of our clients who use email marketing get at least 1/3 of their sales because of their email marketing. You should too.