Bill McRea

With so many competing forms of media and advertising, you might be thinking that email marketing is losing its effectiveness, but that is not true. When it comes to building trusting relationships with your customers and maintaining top-of-mind relevancy with them, nothing really beats email marketing. As times change your email marketing strategy must evolve or you will certainly lose subscribers. Here are five tips for evolving your email marketing practices in 2012:

1. Focus on the human touch

Your audience is bombarded with impersonal marketing messages online, on TV, on the side of the bus in front of them and now even on their mobile phones. You can counteract this by making your emails more personal and by giving them an unmistakably human touch. Write your messages to one person, use the personalization features in your email software carefully (test messages before they go out to avoid anyone receiving an email that says, Hey there, {NAME}!)

2. Keep mobile devices in mind

Since so many smart phones have email on them, many people are catching up with their email while they are on the go. Format your messages for the small screens of mobile phones, keep them short, concise and to the point to prevent too much scrolling. Keep images small and to a minimum.

3. Integration of email and social media

In a new study released by GetResponse, an email marketing firm, they showed how email messages that included the option to share the content on social media sites like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn got significantly higher (30%) click-through rates than emails that were sent without them. The more sharing options provided, the higher the average CTR.

4. Test, track and improve your results

Take a look at your current email marketing metrics and work towards trying to improve them. Look at things like your open rates, click through rate and conversion rate and then as you test different subject lines and calls to action, measure to find any improvements. Keep testing and you will find what works for your market and your audience.

5. Leverage list segmentation

Carolyn Gardner, from the email marketing service, Constant Contact, says, “It seems obvious that when an email is targeted and relevant, the recipient is more likely to read it and act on it.” The best way to target your email messages is to carefully segment your email marketing lists. You can segment your lists by behavior, such as the ones who almost always open your emails, and the ones that rarely open them. You might craft specific messages to each group and see what kind of results that generates.

When subscribers have been hanging out on your list for awhile and they’ve gone dormant, you might ‘scrub’ your list by sending them an email asking them if they are still interested in staying on your list, or invite them to unsubscribe if they no longer have an interest.

Try these tips to spruce up your email marketing campaigns this year. As you know the money is in the relationship with your list regardless of its size.

For more email marketing tips to grow your online business, visit http://mcreasite.com/blog today.

Email marketing is the foundation of almost every successful online business, yet you can’t sell a thing if your subscribers aren’t opening your emails. If your email open rates have been dropping you are not alone. Your email messages are competing for your subscribers’ attention with all of the increasing amounts of spam and other marketing messages that they are bombarded with at every moment of the day.

But there are specific steps you can take that can help boost your email marketing open rates, which can lead to better conversions. Here are five tips that will help boost your email open rates.

      1. Effective subject lines

The subject line of your email message is the first line of defense. It’s got to be relevant, compelling, and enticing enough to stand out from your subscribers’ crowded inbox to get them to click on it and open up the email message. Experiment with different subject lines. Keep your own ‘swipe file’ of email subject lines that you like and that have worked for you.

Tips for subject lines that spur action include:

• Using  you & your
• Pique curiosity
• Be controversial
• Spark a bit of confusion
• Ask compelling questions  

2. Timing for sending email

Extensive testing in the Internet marketing industry has shown that early morning (before 8am) on Tuesday-Thursday morning yields the best open rates, however this will vary according to subject matter, industry and niche. Test to find out which day & time yields the best response from your audience. Once you find a responsive time frame, be consistent with when you send your messages so your subscribers will expect them at a particular time.

 3. Make it personal

When you write your email copy, speak to one person because you are in fact writing to just one person at a time. Include details about your life and show interest in what is going on in their lives. Sign your name to your email messages and provide a way for subscribers to offer feedback.

 4. Build a strong relationship with your subscribers

You probably hear this a lot, but that’s probably because it’s true, but people don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care. Don’t just spam your subscribers with offer after offer. Add value. Contribute to their lives in a meaningful way and they will respond in kind.

5. Congruence between landing page copy & email copy

Keep the content, tone and theme of your email copy consistent with the content and copy on the landing page that they joined your list from. If you switch things up you will confuse subscribers and they may report you for spam. Set clear expectations about how often you’ll be emailing them and what kind of emails you’ll be sending them and then stick with that.

At the foundation of all of these tips is the need to create and cultivate a mutually beneficial relationship with your subscribers. When your emails consistently answer that age-old question that’s on the mind of every subscriber, “What’s in it for me?” in a favorable way, they will keep on opening your emails and remain on your list.

Email marketing can be an effective way to build a rapport with your audience and sell more products and services. For additional tips on growing your online business visit http://mcreasite.con/blog today.

The holidays are traditionally when most businesses make a large portion of their annual profits for the year. Most small businesses take advantage of the fact that this is a high-volume buying time of year for their customers, but it’s also a time when those customers are bombarded by marketing messages from every direction. As you are executing your holiday marketing campaigns this year, try to think creatively and find ways to be seen and heard above all of the noise of the season.

Break from tradition

If you want to stand out from the crowd you have to zig when everyone else zags. When you are doing your holiday marketing, break away from tradition and do things differently. This will attract attention and make your customers sit up and take notice. Don’t hold the same holiday sale that you hold every year.

Reward customer loyalty

Surprise your loyal customers by sending them special, private discount coupons to reward their repeat business. Tell them how much you appreciate their patronage of your business.

Encourage your loyal customers to send you referrals by offering them a fun incentive to do so. You could offer gift certificates for your products and services, or gift cards that they can redeem anywhere as a reward.

Publicly announce the customers who have referred the most people to you on your website. People love to be recognized in this way, so it may inspire other customers to refer more friends.

Make them think of you first

Your goal with all of your marketing efforts throughout the year is to maintain top-of-mind awareness with your customer base. If your product or service is not the first thing your customers or clients think of when the need arises, then you are not doing your job well. You holiday promotions should serve to both generate those holiday sales, but to also remind your current customers that you exist, and inform new customers about what makes your products and services exceptional.

Tie promotions in to social media

Encourage your customers to ‘Like’ your company Facebook page for special savings, or re-tweet your offers for a special coupon.

Add mobile to the holiday mix

We’ve talked about creative uses for QR codes, so why not make a special QR code that will reward those who redeem it with special savings?

Use email marketing to spur additional sales

Create a holiday-inspired email auto-responder series with gift buying suggestions and reviews. Add in holiday stories, tips, and decorating ideas.

Don’t forget post-holiday shopping 

Do you always get everything you want for Christmas? No? Chances are your customers don’t either, so be sure to offer some post-holiday, year-end sales specials.

Remember to keep your promotions creative and unexpected so that they spark interest amid all of the other marketing messages that your customers are being bombarded with this season. Take the time to show your gratitude to your loyal customers, and those customers who refer you to their friends.

For more useful tips on building and growing your online business, visit http://mcreasite.com/blog today to discover how fun and easy Internet marketing can be.

When you are trying to build an opt-in email list for your website, one of the most common strategies for encouraging more visitors to become subscribers is to offer a valuable, free product for them to download when the subscribe to your email list. This product must be stellar, and offer a real solution, or actionable information to visitors, while also giving them a preview of what they might find when they purchase products from you.

But creating this giveaway product can be quite challenging. You may be stuck for ideas about what kind of information to offer your audience. The purpose of this article is to give you some ideas and an action plan for creating the perfect giveaway product that best reflects you and your website, that will meet the visitors’ needs and create a sense of curiosity in their minds so that they come back to your site to find out what else you might have to offer.

Get interviewed

A quick search on your favorite search engine will help you to locate several Internet radio shows on dozens of topics. Find an Internet radio network such as Blog Talk Radio and then do a search on our topic to find shows whose audiences would be interested in your topic. Contact the hosts and arrange for an appearance on their show. You will dial in on the phone and they will ask you questions about yourself, your business, product, or service. These shows are recorded, so after the show you can download a recording of your appearance.

You will have to help generate some publicity for your appearance, but depending on how well known the host and the show is, you will gain some positive exposure just from appearing on their show, so make the most of the ‘bump’ in traffic that you should get as a result of your appearance.

Here’s what you can do with the recording:

• Have the recording transcribed and format it into an ebook or a report

• Add whatever additional information you might need to in order to make the ebook or report useful to your prospective subscribers.

• Create an opt-in box and put it in a prominent place on your website

• Upload an image of the cover of your ebook and create a short, one sentence description to encourage people to sign up so that they can grab the free ebook.

• Offer the audio recoding as well for those who would prefer to listen to rather than read your information.

Be sure to blog about your new report. If you have colleagues in your niche with an audience that might enjoy or benefit from your report, ask them to send an email to their list promoting your free giveaway product. You, of course, will return the favor whenever they release something.

When you write blog posts, include a call to action for your visitors to download your new ebook or report. Make sure that you have included a link back to your site in the footer and at the end of the ebook. Publish it on free ebook directories online, and be sure to use lots of appropriate keywords in the description so that when people do a search for your topic at these ebook directories they will find yours.

Getting interviewed and having that interview transcribed and converted into a downloadable ebook is a great way to gain more exposure, and build your opt-in email list.

If you want more tips for using email marketing to build your online business, visit http://mcreasite.com/blog today where you will discover lots of ways that you can use Internet marketing to find success online.