Why Email Marketing Isn’t Right for Your Business

Email marketing0 comments

As I mentioned in my previous blog, The 7 Deadly Sins of Email Marketing, email marketing is a great tool to connect and engage with an online audience who  you know are interested in your services or products.  However, many people rush into email marketing without thinking about whether it is right for their business.  Because it’s like any form of marketing, you need to have a clear strategy of what you want to get out of it before you start.

So if you’re thinking about using email marketing to promote your business online, then consider these 3 reasons why email marketing isn’t right for your business.

You don’t have the time to do it.  You’ve seen your competitors send newsletters out and you think that you should be doing something similar.  You sign up to an email marketing program and send out a newsletter; after that you find that time slips by and before you know it 6-9 months have passed and you have forgotten about your list.

And if you’ve forgotten about your list, you can be sure that they’ve forgotten about you too.  You need to be emailing out to your list at least once a month if you want them to remember you when they’re looking for services or products like yours.

You want a quick fix.  You think email marketing is a fast route to selling your services or products to a large group of people.  So you upload the details of everyone you have ever met on to your email marketing program and start sending emails out about what you do.

Like any other form of marketing, email marketing takes time and there is no fast route to success.  A clean list of 100 people, who have all opted in to receive emails from you, will be far more engaged with your content than 1000 people who you met once at a networking event and have probably forgotten all about you.

It’s all about you.   You don’t take the time to research valuable content that would interest your target market so your newsletters are all about you and what you’ve done in your business since your last email.

Remember, that most people nowadays are struggling to stay on top of their inbox so an email from you about your fantastic widgets is just going to go straight into the delete or junk folder.  You need to be giving your readers valuable and interesting content that will make them open up and read the email.

So now you know why email marketing isn’t right for your business, you can decide whether you want to set aside the necessary time to set up and manage your email marketing campaigns so they promote your business effectively to your online contacts.
 

How to create a distribution list in Outlook

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Setting up distribution lists are a great idea if you regularly send emails to a specific group of people.  For example, you might be running a project and need to send emails to your team.  Rather than having to type in each person’s email address every time you send a message, you can just select the distribution list and the email will go to everyone on that list.

This obviously saves you a lot of time and effort and ensures that you don’t miss anyone out of important email messages.

So read on to find out how to create a distribution list in Outlook and send an email to it, or click on the image below to view the video in YouTube.

To create a distribution list in Outlook, go to Contacts and select New in the menu bar at the top and then Distribution List from the drop down menu.

Give the list a name.  Now choose the people that you want to add to the list.  For existing contacts click on the Select Members button and choose the people you want to add. To select more than one member at a time, just hold the Ctrl key down when clicking on the name. Then click on the Members button and the names will be added, and click OK.

If you want to add people who aren’t already on your contact list then click on the Add New button and type in their details, and click OK.

Once you have added everyone to the list then Save & Close.  As you can see, the list appears in the main Contacts folder.

To send an email to that distribution list, double click on it in the folder and the dialog box will open up.  Select Email in the menu and you will be taken to a new email dialog box.  Write your email and send it in the normal way.  If you don’t want to share everyone’s email addresses with each other then ensure that you move the distribution list to BCC.

So now you know how to create a distribution list in Outlook and send an email to that list.
 

If you want to get more tips on how to manage your time and work effectively in your business, then download a copy of our guide “How to organise your workload so there’s more time for you“. This guide is packed full of time management tips as well as 10 online tools to help you work more productively. Click on the link to download the guide >> How to organise your workload
 

5 Things to consider when changing email marketing programs

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Very often when people start with email marketing, they just want to send out a regular newsletter to their contacts, build their list and raise their profile.  Now many of the basic programs will do this without a problem.  However, what many people fail to do is plan ahead and pick the right program at the start.

What happens when you want something more sophisticated?  For example, you may want to start using your list to sell products.  If your current program can’t do this in the way that you want then you’ve got to change suppliers.  But this may be harder than you thought…

So here are 5 things to consider when changing your email marketing program.

Upload contacts.  You might have several hundred contacts on your database that you’ll need to switch over but many email marketing programs are very strict about uploading names on to their database.  Most email marketing programs will force people to go through the double opt-in process before allowing them on to their list.  It doesn’t matter whether your contacts did this when they originally signed up with your previous supplier, they will have to go through the process again and there’s going to be a large percentage of your contacts that aren’t going to do this.  Also, some email marketing programs will strip out names that are generic, eg email addresses beginning with “sales@” or “info@”.

Segment lists.  If you segmented your lists according to topics or categories that your contacts are interested in then you will need to set these up in your new email marketing program and ensure that all your contacts transfer correctly to the appropriate list.

Change templates.  Unless you’re an HTML whizz and have designed your newsletter template yourself using an HTML editor such as Dreamweaver, then you’ve got to redesign a new one using the tools in your new email marketing program.   This obviously takes time depending on the ease and simplicity of the design tools.  The branding will need to look similar to the old template so that recipients can instantly recognise it’s from you.

Sign up forms.  When changing email marketing suppliers, you will need to create new sign up forms for your website.  OK, the program will give you the code but very often this needs tweaking so that it fits in with your branding.

Autoresponders.  If you have set up a series of autoresponders to go out to contacts after sign up, then these will need to be recreated in the new email marketing program for each list as appropriate.

So as you can see, there are various things to think about when changing email marketing programs.  It therefore pays to plan ahead at the start, and think about how you will be using email marketing in 12-18 months from now.  You may start off by paying for features that you don’t need now but it will save you a lot of time and stress in the future.

If you need help with setting up and managing your email marketing campaigns, then check out our Email Marketing Service. We can advise you of the best email marketing program to use depending on your requirements, as well as create and schedule your newsletters, add a sign up form on your website, and manage lists. We will help you to use email marketing effectively so you can market to a wider audience and build your list. Click on the arrow to find out more about our email marketing service.

 

5 Steps to Build Your Email List

Email marketing, How to1 comment

One of the best ways to engage with people who are interested in what you do is through email marketing. But before you put together a newsletter, you need to have someone to send it to!  As I’ve mentioned before in my previous blog, Are you making this critical mistake with your email marketing?, you can’t just add people to your list because you’ve got their business card or email address. 

So here are 5 steps to build your email list.

Sign up form.  The best way to get sign ups to your list is to capture the details of visitors to your website.  You can do this by putting a sign up form on every page of your website, preferably at the top of the sidebar.  If you’ve got a giveaway such as an Ebook, then put an image of it next to the form with a big button saying “Sign up now” to attract people’s attention.

Email signature.  Put a link in your email signature which takes people to a landing page on your website with a sign up form.  Include an image of any giveaway in the signature as well.

Social media.  Encourage your online contacts to join your mailing list by regularly posting links to your sign up form on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.  Send people to a landing page which gives details of what they will get when they sign up, eg free Ebook, monthly newsletter etc.

Business card.  Don’t forget that your business card is a marketing tool too so put details of any special offers on to your card with the link to your website.  If you want to get really technical, you can add this as a QR code!

Public speaking.  If you’re someone who goes out and speaks to business groups, then these are great opportunities to get people on to your mailing list.  After the talk, you can offer people a free report, audio or any other offer associated with the topic you’ve been talking about.  NB: People will be more willing to hand over their business card to you if they think that they’re going to get something of value in return.

As with any of the options above, always be clear with people what they are going to get when they sign up to your mailing list.  Also, let them know that you won’t sell, rent or trade their contact details to third parties and add a link to your privacy policy if you have one.

For more information on how to manage your email marketing campaigns, download a copy of our free guide “The Essentials of Email Marketing“. This guide is packed full of information including how to stop your emails from ending up in the junk folder, what kind of content to put in your newsletters, and the best time to send out your emails.
Click here to download the guide now >> The Essentials of Email Marketing
 

Email marketing: The benefit of segmenting your lists

Email marketing, Online marketing0 comments

One of the major benefits of using email marketing is that you can tailor your communications so that your contacts only read about topics they are interested in.

How do you go about doing this?  Well, you do this by segmenting your email lists.

Say you are a trainer who provides workshops on social media, business networking and attracting clients.  When people attend your events they are invited to sign up to your mailing list.  By doing this, not only can you continue to engage with them, but you can do so confident in the knowledge that they are interested in the subjects that you are talking about.

For example, those who attended your event on social media are obviously interested in knowing how to use Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn to promote their services or products online.  Those who attended the workshop on attracting clients want to know more about how to generate leads for their business.

Therefore, when you upload these people to your email marketing database, you can segment them into separate lists according to the workshop they attended.  Then when you come to send out your regular newsletter, you can adapt the content for each segment so the main topics focus on those areas that you know your recipients are interested in.

By doing this, your contacts will come to respect and trust you as someone who takes the time to get to know their challenges and needs.  And by building up this engagement over time, they will start to see you as someone they can do business with.

So the next time you’re sending out your newsletter, take time to see if you can segment your list.  Your contacts will appreciate the time and effort you’ve taken to send them information they really want to receive.

For more information on how to manage your email marketing campaigns, download a copy of our free guide “The Essentials of Email Marketing“. This guide is packed full of information including how to stop your emails from ending up in the junk folder, what kind of content to put in your newsletters, and the best time to send out your emails.
Click here to download the guide now >> The Essentials of Email Marketing