Email marketing is one of those things that doesn’t have directions. meaning that each email marketing campaign is going to work differently for other companies. Companies have different goals in mind with each campaign so if you have a competitor that sends out emails to their list of emails one way doesn’t mean that you have to do it that way also.

Your email marketing campaign doesn’t always have to be selling something or pushing a product. it really depends on what kind of business you have. I have seen some companies that have very strong customer loyalty that can virtually put anything into the email marketing campaign and it would be a success. Take a look at your email list and ask yourself do your customers enjoy everything about your company? Are you store that launches a new product and gets people camping out in front of your door 24 hours before so they are the first ones in the store? Or do you have a B2B business that could careless about your business and just wants information? Once you answer these questions you can figure out what kind of items you would like to include in your email marketing campaign. Some companies just want to brand their company in emails and some just constantly push a product for purchase. You have to be careful when trying to sell too much because you can quickly see your email list unsubscribing to your emails.

Are you a business small or large that has not started an email marketing campaign yet? Have you been contemplating whether it is right for your business or the right time? I will say no matter what your business is email marketing is a must but you should ask yourself if you want to grow your business or not. Growing an online business requires communication from as many different angles as possible. Email marketing is one important angle that should not be over looked.

It is no shocker that more and more customers are tightening up their budgets. This means that when they do spend it will only be with someone they feel very comfortable with and trust. If you collect email addresses as part of your business model you can stay in touch with these people through a simple email marketing campaign and build that trust. Even if you are not selling or offering anything the process of staying on people’s radars is important to any growing brand or business online. In today’s economy all businesses need to be aggressive in branding and communication. Email marketing is one of the oldest forms on online marketing and has gone through many transformations but there is a reason why it is still around, because it works. many different online marketing tools have come and gone over the years but email marketing has continued to grow in power. In today’s market place you have to be visible in every corner.

When you get to a point in your business that you start collecting email address making different lists might be a smart idea from the beginning instead of down the road when your list is so large you have a hard time even looking at it. Dividing up your email marketing list in different characteristics will allow you to really target your email marketing campaigns down the road.

There are many ways you can divide up the list.

Inquiries: Anyone that has ever inquired about your services and products in one list can allow you to send special first sign up or product purchase offers to get that person to make a purchase or start up another purchasing conversation.

Products: You could separate your list into purchasing habits and which products people buy. This will allow you to market specific products depending on purchasing habits of your current customers.

Geographically: Depending on what type of products you sell and where if you notice that a certain number of people are buying a specific product in a geographical area you can then market products related to that area that might likely use or enjoy.

These are just a few examples of what you can do with your list in order to maximize your email marketing efforts. If you are a business that collects emails frequently this will be very important to do early in the game.

Are you a business that seems to have many spam complaints recently with your email campaigns? If you have noticed many spam complaints lately you have to ask yourself a few import questions.

1. Did you recently buy a list from a list broker?

From our experiences we have realized that purchasing a few hundred thousand emails and dropping them into your email marketing providers database and just firing off advertisements tends to piss people off. You might not offend everyone but you will get some people wondering why on earth they are getting your email when they never wanted it in the first place. This can quickly get some to roll across the spam button and hit submit.

2. is your content stale?

You might just find out that your recipients are getting sick of your material. If you have peddling the same stuff for many years people right now have less patience for anything so they might just not want your emails anymore. Try giving them a fresh new look or take your email marketing campaign in a whole new direction. Instead of selling try offering help to solve a problem or solutions to problems in that industry that people might find very useful.

3. are you always selling?

Sometime if you sell sell sell people just get a bad taste in their mouth. It might take them a few months to hit the spam button but eventually they will hit it. The hard sell is good but when the economy has hit rock bottom all that selling could very well back fire.

Email marketing is probably one of the oldest online marketing methods to date but it is still a very effective tool if used correctly. I have seen some pretty poorly designed email campaigns and I have seen some really great campaigns as well. Here are some clearly defined don’t for your future email marketing campaigns.

1. Don’t Always Sell: You shouldn’t always be pushing a product to sell in your newsletter. People don’t always want to be hit with a sales ad.

2. Don’t Spam: Don’t just stuff any email address you get your hands on into your email list. make sure they are opt in email otherwise you might get some spam complaints.

3. Don’t Use Graphic heavy Emails: if you start putting flash banners and animated gifs in the email it might send them to people spam filter or even worse, they will open it and it will not look anything like it does on your computer at home. Then you got a branding problem.

4. Don’t Email Everyday: There are companies out there that I really enjoy hearing from but not everyday. A few times per week is fine but when I see an email everyday it really makes me want to unsubscribe.

5. Don’t Assume: Never make assumptions about how your recipient might react to your campaign. Look and analyze the numbers and plan accordingly.

With the way our economy is shaping you can take trends and throw them out the window because patterns don’t really exist right now. Right now most businesses are just trying to figure out exactly how to adapt to what is occurring in the market and those that can figure it out will ride out the storm, those that don’t want to adjust will end up closing their doors. Now is a good time to do some basic house keeping to your entire email marketing campaign.

1. Design: Take a look at your design, if you haven’t changed the design in a few a years or 12 months it might be time to throw a new header onto your email or change the layout of it. It might just trigger some new inquiries from your email list. People don’t want to stare at the same thing every week. make sure your email campaign has the same branding as your company. I know email marketing 101 but you wouldn’t believe how many emails I get where the branding in the email doesn’t even come close to the corporate site or just doesn’t have any branding what so ever.

2. Clean your List: If you haven’t been cleaning your list you might be paying for your emails being sent to email addresses that don’t exist anymore. Cleaning out your dead email addresses will also tighten up your email statistic numbers, if you look at them.

3. Offer Something Fresh: If you have been offering nothing but the same information in your email campaigns for a great deal of time you might just be ready for something new in your email campaign. Change is good, embrace it.

When it comes to email marketing it is difficult to tell someone or a company exactly what the frequency of email distribution should be. Each business and audience will react differently. It is really up to you to figure out what that perfect frequency is.

The only way to really figure this out is to do as many tests as possible for a certain amount of time. keeping track of all statistics on opens and unsubscribes will be important. You will have to keep track of what time your email goes and and then analyze the data. Your best bet is to put all the info in a spreadsheet and do this for either three or six months to be able to make an accurate decision. After you have decided on a time frame to analyze this information make some small changes to your distribution schedule and then analyze the numbers to see what type of significant changes that occurred from the changes that you had made. This type of testing is very important so that your business is not missing out on any opportunities. Before you do this you will need to figure out if you want to send one or two emails out per day. Once you have made this decision then you can start to perform these tests. You could also as part of your test include increasing from one to two emails per week or the other way around.

Email marketing comes in many different shapes and colors and as a business you should really test as much as possible so you know what works and what doesn’t. By using an email survey periodically you can isolate information you are trying to look for.

Email surveys can allow you to find out information regarding your audience that normally would be difficult to dig up. There is a great deal of information you can find out to help clean up your marketing efforts. Just asking your email recipients will not get them to act. You have to offer something in order to get them to stop what they are doing and respond to your survey request. usually a free give away of some sort like a t-shirt, and iPod or Laptop will work, depending on your budget of course. When an email recipient or customer gives you detailed information on how large their family might be or any personal interests they will expect something in return. People in general will not divulge personal information if the chance of something coming there way doesn’t exist.

Here are some items of information that a survey can reveal:

Industry:This could be a very powerful piece of information. If your product spans across many verticals but you find out one is very top heavy that leaves room to either further target that industry or pick up slack in others.

Company Size: With this information you can target products in email campaigns that could isolate specific attributes of specific company sizes

Specific Marketing Efforts? If you can understand what type of marketing efforts your email recipients are currently executing you can target products and services according to those needs.

Now more than ever you have to be visible in from of your customers. With the holidays behind us sending out a series of emails promoting and after holiday sales would be a smart choice. Email campaigns will be vital to any companies success right now.

Consumer confidence is at an all time low and it will take the effort of every business across the board in order to bring this confidence back to a healthy level. Keeping in front of your email list weekly will be important to keep sales moving along and keep everything a float. This is no time to pull back on your email marketing campaigns. This is the time to march forward and hit that campaign harder. Customers are not really thinking about buying things they don’t need right now until they are reminded about that specific item or service. You must remind your email list weekly on all products and services offered by your business. Now is a good time to run after holiday sales and promotions on a weekly basis in order to keep inventory moving.

Hiding from customers or pulling back on spending is not a recommended choice of action. Email marketing is relatively inexpensive compared to many other online efforts and should be the last path to go.

Many local businesses go about each day doing their daily routines ignoring their online audience not knowing they could be sitting in gold rush of customers if they online tapped into their client email list. Email marketing is relatively inexpensive compared to other forms of marketing and is a great way to stay in touch with any audience. Here are five reasons as to why it is important for any business that requires local business to take advantage of email marketing.

1. The Recession Is Here: 2009 is going to be a strange year for all businesses large and small so it is important to use every piece of marketing ammunition you have at your disposal. Now is the time to stay on everyone’s radar screen.

2. Quick: Launching an email campaign is quick compared to other forms of marketing. Most email marketing providers offer a customization tool in order to brand it to your company with very helpful guides on how to build it. Once it is done just schedule it and it is as easy as that.

3. Your Competitors are Probably Already Doing It: Chances are you have competition no matter what you do and it is most likely that some of that competition is already emailing your audience. If you haven’t started it’s ok, just start now.

4. It is important to be Heard: Local business needs to be heard just as much as national ones do. If you are launching a promotion that you know will work it just needs to be heard dig into your email list and send out an email campaign. A proper email marketing campaign is the voice for your business. People will buy from perceived value so if your email company makes your business seem bigger than it really is the likely hood of someone picking up the phone and calling is high.

5. Online Is the Future: Online marketing is the future and it is here to stay. If you think your business does not need it you are most likely in denial. Get on board now rather than later because you will have much more to learn then.

Well this is it. One week left to get as much promotion out as possible. many online retailers are not guaranteeing deliveries before Christmas anymore but you can still push it hard with your email marketing.

Now is the time to pull out your secret weapons and really offer some great deals and promotions. I have seen retailers dropping 40% off everything coupon codes this last week in email campaigns to pull in some last minute shoppers. You really only get one time of year to justify a promotion that steep and it is in the month of December. With recent economic events its is better to move product at a fraction of profit than no profit at all. Right now who ever drops the larger discount in from of email recipients will be victorious in the race to the checkout button. The holiday season combined with the economy and people are not willing to pay full price for anything anymore. Email marketing is the quickest way to let everyone around you know just how much you are will as a company to reduce your prices. If you haven’t used your email list you to reach out to your clients than you need to climb out from under the rock you’ve been sleeping under and put together some promotions so that your client base still realizes you are a business.

People seem to really like pictures and graphics when they look in their in box so it is important to carry your company brand right into your email marketing campaign as much as possible. If a recipient opens an email and the email has poor design quality or the connection between your email and your brand is very loose than you might start to get people unsubscribing to your email campaign or newsletter.

Your email should posses all traits and characteristics of your companies brand in order to keep peoples attention. Every single marketing effort should always be an extension of your company. Regardless whether it is online or offline. If you see that an email marketing campaign is not working like you want it to don’t be scared to make changes. When allowing an email marketing campaign to mature it will go through many tweaks and changes over it’s life time. Your email marketing campaign is like any other part of your business, somethings will work and some won’t so it is important to consistently make changes so that you can make accurate decisions as to what might be working and what you know you will never try again. Sometimes giving it a personal touch is what the campaign needs. Once in a while include a letter from your self or the president of the company to give the recipients more of a personal touch allowing them to feel closer to your brand. If your email recipients feel like you are speaking directly to them they are more likely to act on something. Whether it be visiting your website or picking up the phone to call you. Putting a little personal branding in your email might allow you to further your connection with your recipients and it might just be the extra push your email campaign needs.

So you have launched a company and you are ready to tackle your online audience. Where do you begin? There are many different areas to begin but just starting somewhere will put you ahead of many others. At some point of your online marketing you will want to start collecting email addresses.

Many of your website visitors would be more than happy to give you their email address so it is important to be able to supply them with the opportunity to do it. Never assume anything in online marketing and make sure to spell out everything for your traffic. You can sometimes put an email field right in the middle of the screen and they still won’t know where to submit it. Make sure it is not hidden also on the page as well. Nobody is going to search through your website as to where they can give you their email address. make sure when building or tweaking your website you offer a field in plain view where they can give you their email address. If you have it located on one page your website your visitor will not necessarily navigate back to that page. It is important to lay it down very clearly for your visitors on every page. having fields located on every page of your website will allow your visitor to not have to back track to a previous page to submit their email address. Often times if a visitor has to click around too much they will just end up leaving from frustration. Taking email addresses during a purchase is just a given. If you have a brick and mortar business it is important to ask your customers if they would like to give you their email address. If you haven’t been doing this you should start. It is pretty safe to say that anybody making a purchase from you can assume to receive an email at some point in time down the road.

Make it clear for all visitors where they can submit their info on your website and always ask for email addresses. Your email marketing campaign will be very important in the future to stay connected with your customers and clients.

Boston email marketing firm, Brick Marketing will be conducting a network of email marketing and internet marketing related workshops. Along with email marketing these Brick Marketing workshops, conducted by president Nick Stamoulis, will be touching upon various aspects of online marketing including search engine marketing.

Nick Stamoulis will present to aspiring business owners looking to final make the big break into online marketing different techniques that will allow them to be online marketing superstars. Nick will be presenting at the Boston email marketing workshops every must have component to a successful email marketing campaign. Everything from execution, to top notch content to what it will take to get your subscribers too really open your emails and continue to read them each and every time.

For more information on Brick Marketing’s Boston email marketing workshops please visit the workshop page at the following link:
http://www.brickmarketing.com/internet-marketing-workshops.htm

There are many ways to communicate with your customer base these days. With more and more online platforms popping up every month it is sometimes difficult to keep up with everything. Between the holidays and the economy you will see more and more companies really getting into their email lists and taking advantage of all the contacts they have. Here are some tips that can help you with your email marketing campaign.

1. User Experience: an email recipient will be more inclined to read through your email and actually take interest in it if you give them something to do. A survey with a prize is always a good way to get your recipients to interact but thinking outside of the box like inviting them over to your Facebook page or Myspace and entice them to connect with your profile will help also.

2. Don’t Sell to Hard: If they open the email and they are bombarded with a hard sell technique chances are you will scare a few off to hit the unsubscribe button which is something you don’t want to happen.

3. Relate to them: Relating to your email recipients will allow them to relate to you. By offering them products and services to help them with they might be going through they will be more likely to respond to your email in a positive manner.

4. Don’t Sell: Sometimes just a resource email is the best email. By not pushing that hard sell in your email and by simply offering information that could help your recipient your email subscribers look at your company in a whole different light.

5. Think Outside The Box: Offer something that others don’t. If you have a regionally targeted business offer your email subscribers a networking event so others can meet other people and learn from each other. They will look at your company as a leader and the potential to bring in new clients will increase.