Success Secrets of Email Marketing
Email marketing is a huge and profitable tool for sales process and feeding qualified prospects into your sales funnel. How you go about it is as important as what you choose to offer at any given time to your list. You never want to alienate anyone from your email marketing campaign mailings if you plan to harvest that list for financial gain repetitiously. Learning to used these success secrets of email marketing effectively will have a huge impact on your success in email marketing.
An important key to success in email marketing is building a segregated list for a particular campaign is to first qualify those on your list for whatever you are wanting to offer. This is done through a well written email campaign that builds the credibility of what you are doing to your audience without actually pitching them on the product or service directly. It’s more of a short series of educational mini-infomercials, using the EMV (Emotional Marketing Value) approach in how you inform.
HINT: Bookmark this link for future reference. It will allow you to refine almost every sentence that you write to someone for any campaign that you do, but use it especially in your subject line for maximum affect.http://www.aminstitute.com/headline/
When considering an email campaign, determine exactly what you want to see happen in detail by writing it out. If you can verbalize it articulately, you can better structure an effective strategy to accomplish whatever your goals are for your campaign.
Depending on whether or not you already have a contact list, how you go about either building one or refining the one you already have, you still must follow some important guidelines in your planning. Here are a few ideas to keep in the back of your mind as you consider the steps you want to take in starting an email campaign. They can be used on an individual prospecting basis just as well in building a list through a lead capture system, although the campaign might be written a bit differently for a lead capture system versus an existing list that is already partially qualified.
- The best place to start is by writing the vision you have for your campaign as you see it in an ideal world. The vision is the big picture navigational tool for your project.
- Write out the mission statement for your campaign. The mission statement is the daily guiding light that keeps you focused on what you need to be doing daily to stay on course with your goals to accomplish the vision you have for your company, i.e. in this case your mailing campaign.
- Outline your strategy for your campaign and how you want your campaign to unfold. Do you want a direct and immediate pitch on your product or service or do you want to lay a foundation for what you are intent on offering before you lead them into your sales funnel? Detail the way you want to choose your targeted market, how you want to introduce, educate, and appeal to those you are targeting.
- Depending on your contact list and how refined it is, you may need to do some preliminary communications with the list, i.e. an updates inquiry on what they are doing, how they are doing, what needs they might have in their efforts, and asking how you might be able to better work with them in their success. This is sometimes referred to the re-acquaintance stage of a campaign. This step can open up a world of opportunity when you can engage your prospect to a place where they feel completely comfortable in sharing what they are doing with you and their needs. Honestly, this is huge!
- If you have a highly qualified prospect contact list already in place that you KNOW will be eager to hear from you one what you are doing and you KNOW that your relationship with them is solid, you may be able to move more quickly towards the ‘close’ or your desired end. I tend to always err on the side of caution since every prospect is a vital asset in my long term success goals and worth far greater than just a single campaign to sell them on something.
I do not have a large contact list. At least not in comparison to some of the top names in email marketing who have upwards of 1 million names on their contact list. My list however is highly refined. I use a proprietary analytical system that I have personally had developed for my own use. I know the who, what, why, and how much of each one of them that has in some instances taken five years learn on many of my prospects.
I have also carefully groomed my list so that when I us a particular demographic of my list, I know I will have a greater response by far than the average mailing campaign for most email marketers. Typical sales conversion off of an unrefined list is much the same as blind direct mail through the postal service, i.e. 1.5% to 3% for most email marketers.
While my total contact list is not huge (just over 54,000), I have built it over more than 15 years and it is highly refined into very specific niche markets based on an ongoing comprehensive needs analysis that is done through regular email campaigns. My list KNOWS that I do not take lightly that they are willing to receive email from me.
When I write to them, they are not apt to delete my email before they have read it, because they KNOW that I have useful information that I am not trying to sell them, but rather to help them in their success. They also know that when I have a product to offer them or a paid service, that I know and understand their needs as much as they do and I have built the Know, Like, and Trust Factor with them to a point that they trust my advice when I give them advice on what they are best suited to be using or what I think might work well for them in the way of an opportunity when one comes along.
When I do a niche market campaign, my sales conversion rates are continually in excess of 20% for my targeted audience; howbeit that my campaign may only be going out to 7500 people from my list.
My point in all of this is to say that when you consider doing an email campaign, you really want to see your list (or future list that you are working to build continually) as a very valuable asset to your future success. Never treat a person on your list as if they were a number and always take the time to learn about what THEY NEED over everything else that you seek to learn about them. When you can meet the needs of others, you become a valuable asset to them!
The end game with being wise in how you build, maintain, and harvest your contact list for profits is that if you have done it right, when you have something that they NEED, if they have the money and you recognize the importance of proper timing within your ongoing, long term email communications with them, that they will most likely purchase what you have from you and not your competitor. Make sense?
ONE FINAL AND IMPORTANT TIP IN BOTH LIST BUILDING AND HOW YOU WRITE AND USE EMAIL CAMPAIGNS IN YOUR MARKETING EFFORTS!!!
Never take for granted a single person that has given you permission to add them to your mailing list or to send them something via email. With email marketing being so competitive and the overwhelming nature of information overload and ‘offer overload’ in their inbox, you must protect every relationship you start online (social media and email) as if they were your next door neighbor … a next door neighbor that you really liked!
Very nice article and easy to understand. Why aren’t you selling this information? It’s all very important and others charge to give this sort of training. Thanks for sharing. Looking forward to getting my first newsletter from you and learn more.