Have an email list ready? What next?

In our series of posts on email marketing, we wrote about why startups should look at email marketing as an effective marketing medium and how they can optimise their email campaigns. If you missed that post click here to read it now.

Today email marketing has taken a major leap in the way emails are sent, received and how they reach out to a huge audience  – all at once.

With easy access social media platforms like Facebook decreasing the reach of pages, email marketing is one of the most effective ways to reach out to a large audience and also to stay connected with your users. According to a study by the Direct Marketing Association, two out of three (66 percent) consumers have made a purchase online as a result of an email marketing message.

Emails are quick and reach out to the audience quicker than any other means. The best part about this type of this type of marketing is that its longitivity is huge. It stays in a customer’s inbox for a long period, and can be retrieved after a certain period as well.

The first step for the success of email marketing is to create a worthwhile list of email IDs – this list contains the email addresses of potential customers of your business. But, what after creating a list? This is more important because you have to ensure that you make the right use of the list.

The answer to this question is given in the below few steps. You can follow any of these, or a combination of all of them –

1. Personalize the text: Gmail in sync with Microsoft, provides you an option to customize your text. You can add each customer’s name either in the subject or the body of the email. This will give a personal touch to your email.
2. Do not keep “do-not reply” or any such emails as the sender’s name. Make sure that you company name or the founder’s name is displayed in the inbox of the receiver.
3. Before popping in the main matter, it is always better to greet your customers. Have a short welcome message about what is happening.
4. Redirect: Use email marketing to redirect your readers to other channels; to promote a new feature on your website, to read your recent blog post, take part in a poll or anything!
5. Give them an option of “subscriber’s list”: This way you are throwing the ball in their court . They will subscribe to your email list in case they are interested in receiving emails that is actually not available to the general public.
6. Make sure that you always answer to their queries. You can also provide them the link to your FAQ – Frequently asked questions.
7. Always be prompt in replying back, and give them details of easy access to your website and company over the internet.
8. Set goals and Track conversions: As with any marketing tool, it is important that you set goals and track the conversions. If the goal of your email is to create signups, then track the numbers. Look at how many people have read the email, visited the website and actually signed up!
9. Find out what the average open rates and click rates for your industry are. If you don’t get them for the industry you are in, borrow them from the closest possible industry.

These are just a few tips that you can follow to make the most of your email list. Collecting email IDs of prospective customers is one thing, and using them in the right way is all together another thing. Keep following us to hear about more such tips and ways about the right way of internet marketing. If you have more ideas and ways, feel free to share them in the comments.

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