Are you being asked to spend less on marketing, because your marketing budget has been slashed?
Despite the need to trim your marketing budget, you must maintain a dialog with your customers. It’s especially important during a sluggish economy, when your customers are also looking at ways to cut their costs.
To communicate with your prospects and customers, you should consider using e-mail marketing. If you do, you’ll see real, measurable results – right away – without investing a lot of your time and money. E-mail marketing is a very effective business tool.
It costs little to maintain and use, and keeps customers engaged, even when they’re not buying. E-mail is part of your customers’ daily routine and allows them to immediately act on your delivered messages.
E-mail is far less expensive on a cost-per-contact basis than other advertising options, such as banner ads, print advertising and telemarketing.
One of the greatest benefits of e-mail marketing is that your message is delivered very quickly. And, reader response times are generally within 48 hours. It’s fast, inexpensive and quite easy to use as a marketing strategy, which is why companies of all sizes use it.
E-mail marketing builds brand awareness. Keeping visible to your customers continues to build your brand. This assures that when they are ready to buy, they will think of your company.
It’s important to remember that a successful e-mail campaign requires that you create a message that is compelling to those that receive it. Show your customers that you care for them, and they will be even more likely to stick with you if the going gets tough.
For your existing customers, send them service reminders, special offers, updates about new products or services. And, sending an e-newsletter is a great why to stay in front of current customers and reconnect with your customers that haven’t bought from you in a while. For your prospective customers, let them know who you are, what your business is all about, what you stand for, what you offer, how you work and the products or services you offer.
I’m sure you’ve heard that a customer needs to see your message seven times before he or she will buy from you. With e-mail marketing, you can create marketing campaigns consisting of a series of e-mails to reinforce your message. E-mail creates an interactive connection and helps to nurture customer relations.
Your e-mail campaign’s open-up and click-through rates from recipients can be easily measured. By being able to quantify the success while in progress, you can adjust your strategies to improve results. It can also drive traffic to your Website. Using links embedded in your messages, customers can quickly be directed to your Website.
If managed properly, e-mail marketing is very effective. But, you have to get the primary steps right. This includes building a contact list of people who want to hear from you (called permission marketing), crafting a strong title message and ensuring the e-mails get through to those on your list.
Once you have done these initial steps, many other methods can be used to drive further the success of your e-mail marketing.
A well-planned e-mail marketing campaign is a win-win marketing strategy. What more could you want? Once it’s set up, it’s easy to do, cost effective and measurable, and you can track results.