The following is a guest post by Barry Barnes. The opinions in it are his own.
This post was arranged via http://myblogguest.com, a community for guest blogging. If you would like to write for 2HelixTech or one of our other sites, please contact us.
As they look for new and improved ways of reaching customers, more and more businesses are turning to email marketing and using a variety of software solutions to this end. When used correctly, email marketing can be a powerful and extremely economical form of marketing, however many businesses fail in their efforts because they fail to observe the correct etiquette when sending out their email.
The companies who are successful with email marketing are those who follow simple rules and plan their strategies properly, and with the correct planning you and your business could be enjoying the same success.
Inconsistency
One of the major problems with poorly thought out traditional marketing is that it appears to be inconsistent. A company comes up with a great idea and then does little with it or is infrequent with the amount of advertising they do. In email marketing, this tone and frequency are powerful tools. If a customer starts to see a pattern of an inventive or informative email which arrives from you promptly on a Tuesday morning, they start to believe that they can trust you and the products or services you provide. However, a disjointed or poorly written email which arrives at some point during the week does little to improve your relationship with the customer or give them any reason to trust you or your services.
If you don’t have the time to dedicate to your email marketing then the best way to continue is to either find software which can automatically send your updates at a pre-programmed time, or alternatively to pay a professional service to ensure your emails are sent promptly. This second method can be expensive and many find that much of the new software is just as user-friendly as well as reliable.
Links, Viruses and Pop-ups
One of the reasons why emails from unknown sources are often blocked by the recipients’ spam filters is because they are not trustworthy; that is to say that they have other attachments such as links, viruses and pop ups which can damage the hard drive of the receiver’s computer. It almost goes without saying that sending an email to a potential customer which could damage their computer is not the best way to ingratiate yourself with them and as such, it is absolutely vital to ensure that whatever you send out to your customers is safe for them to open and use as well as ensuring that any links you provide them with only come back to you and your closest professional partners.
Don’t Spam
One of the worst things you can do when using email marketing is to spam or be accused of spamming your customers. in trying to build their trust in you, you want to be as clear and trustworthy as possible and this involves asking their permission to send mails; you can do this quite easily by asking customers to sign up to a mailing register and giving them the option to opt out if they no longer want to receive mail from you; it might sound like the last thing you want but few willing recipients are better than many disgruntled people who simply file your message in the trash.
Barry Barnes is interested in all things digital, and blogs at Email Marketing UK on marketing strategies, email software and digital news.