Five Email Marketing Techniques You Can't Ignore

The world of email marketing may be confusing to newcomers. There's a lot of buzz about how to go about it and what works best. The problem is, it is often difficult figure out what really works. In order to help you sort things out, we've compiled a list of practices that are sure to get you results.

Be Relevant: There's nothing more compelling than relevance. Customers don't like random ads thrown into their face. They want their questions answered. They want to know what's in it for them. If you can show them what they get out of the deal, you've just answered the golden question. Show your customers something that will save them money, time, or provide interesting, valuable information. Offer some tidbit of information that your reader may have not even considered, but could prove extremely useful. Show them how to do things. Try writing feature articles-these often prove more effective than a thousand promo emails.

Get Personal: Perhaps one of the top cardinal sins of email marketers is being impersonal. These marketers send out mass emails that solely hawk their products within any touch of warmth or personality. This type of email marketing campaign is the kind that gets quickly buried. Speak to your client directly. Make your emails personal and inviting. Your client should feel valued. Send out different emails to different groups. Follow up with thank you notes to responders. Make your client feel like an individual you respect. Remember the words long-term relationship.

Create Your Brand and Stick with It: Don't follow the crowd. Be original. If you can't distinguish yourself from your competitors, what's to keep your readers from hitting the delete button? Think about your goals and how you want to achieve them. Once you've clarified your purpose, create a style that reflects that purpose. Be consistent with your design, your tone, layout, timing and message. It should all tie together to form a coherent whole.

Mange Your Bouncebacks: Sometimes your emails will get bounced. It happens. Frequently. Be sure to check your bouncebacks and eliminate records that have bounced more than once. These simply don't serve your purpose. Lessening the number of invalid addresses in your mailing list is crucial. It will improve your tracking results and save you money and time. You don't want bad addresses to bog down your campaign.

Test, Test, Test and Learn: There are many extremely useful email marketing software services out there for your use. Take advantage of them. They will help you determine what strategies work best. Check your statistics often. Compare them to each of your previous email campaigns. Test out different tactics. Test new subject lines. Test different copy and images. Send out separate emails to different recipients and analyze the reaction. Track results and learn from them. When working with an email marketing campaign you have to be willing to learn and change. Carefully study your results and improve from there. You could even add polls or surveys to get input from your clients. Creating a communication channel with your clients is a great way to succeed.

Consider iContact for your email marketing campaigns. It's a powerful platform that generates sophisticated results with the simplicity of a point-and-click interface. iContact is your best choice for email marketing software.