Email Marketing Made Simple
We’ve received a number of questions lately about simple email marketing tools. I like that: “simple”. Email marketing strategies and list segmentation can be quite complex, so absolutely – let’s keep the actual email marketing simple. Once you have the contacts, segmented your list, determined your messaging and frequency, then really the hard part should be behind you. What you need now is a simple email marketing tool. A number of eCommerce tools come with integrated email marketing tools or easy to integrate add-ons. The challenge with many of these is user-friendliness and customization. If you aren’t an experienced online marketer with some HTML editing skills these can be just too difficult to navigate.
Some of the things we look for in email marketing systems include:
Single Optin Forms. I keep reading how great double optin is to make sure a list contains only legitimate and truly interested contacts (MailChimp and Vertical Response love double opt-in and don’t even offer single optin). I largely disagree. To address the spam contact issue – of all the clients and email marketing systems we work with only rarely do we see spam email addresses entered, and when they are entered they are usually very obviously spam. It’s a slight nuisance to delete these, but it happens so rarely it’s no big deal. As for “qualifying” people who sign up for a list I object to this for several reasons. One, people tend to sign up for a list to learn more about a company. Why would you want to test someone who expresses any interest in your business before they even have a chance to learn more? Let them receive the messages and they can decide to opt out if the content isn’t relevant to them. Second, many times people never receive the email optin confirmation. Why? Because of spam filters, and as I’m sure you’ve noticed, we’re all busy. People skip emails they think they’ve already dealt with or they don’t want to take extra time to confirm an email subscription they already took the time to sign up for in the first place. I say make it easy on your prospects/contacts. Make it easy for them to sign up and easy to opt out if the info isn’t for them. Third, with double optin forms the email marketing service usually direct people to a URL letting them know an email confirmation will be sent to them, and frequently this is a set URL that can’t be customized. This is really uncool. What works best is as soon as people sign up they get directed to a custom URL you create just for them to thank them, let them know what they can expect and present them with any special offers for having signed up. This is why you want single-optin forms. Make it easy and give people what they want!
Customizable Forms. We’ve all seen tacky sign up forms that are just the boring black and white and sometimes even the logo of the email marketing tool gets plugged in there. You will get many more people opting in if your form confirms to your brand identity and includes some specifics about what they are signing up for. “Enter your name and email to receive our monthly ezine” is a lot more effective than “Sign up for our mailing list”. People are far less likely to sign up for a mailing list because they don’t want to be bombarded with emails. Consumers are more vigilant than ever about protecting their email inboxes.
List Segmentation. This is a biggie. The whole point of email marketing is being able to send out specific messages to target audiences. If you go with one of those email marketing services (like Constant Contact) that puts all sign-ups in one list you then have to manually segment you’re bound to have errors and huge headaches. It’s much better to choose a solution that lets you create lists that contacts can opt in to so that you can deliver targeted messaging just for them.
You can compare some of the simpler email marketing tools out there at http://email-marketing-service-review.toptenreviews.com/. Make sure you think about what is important to carry out your email marketing strategy and check if that’s provided by that service. You can usually sign up for a free trial or submit your question to support if you don’t find your request in the feature comparison tool. One tool that isn’t mentioned in the list, but does provide a very good email marketing service is 1Shopping Cart. They are comparable in cost and offer an autoresponder only option so you don’t necessarily need to be selling products online.
If you have questions about an email marketing service, let us know. We’ve probably used it and can save you some time by answering your question in our blog.
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With e-mail marketing, you are always able to reach your target audience in a personal manner and in the shortest amount of time. No other method will allow you to achieve these results on a constant basis and with minimal expenses.
SEO melbourne
Thanks for this great article. I would like to add here that email campaigns are considered to be one of the most cost-efficient forms of advertising. Direct emailing is much cheaper than advertising with mass media. There are no printing or postage expenses typically associated with traditional direct mailing. It requires investments into an email marketing software if you intend to send emailing campaigns by yourself, or into an email marketing service provider that will do the sending for you.
Lara William
http://emailmarketinggold.com/