Effective Email Marketing

Email marketing can be a great way of reaching clients and prospects. Done successfully, it can be an effective lead generating tool and a great way to educate and nurture existing clients. However, done ineffectively, and all of your efforts can end up in someone's trash, spam folder – or worse, you could end up on the "Do Not Email" or "Unsubscribe" list. Don't let this discourage you from sending emails to your clients and prospects, though. Email marketing is also a really powerful tool for keeping you and your business top of mind with prospects and current customers.

What exactly is email marketing?

If you have an email address that you use on a pretty consistent basis, then I'm sure you've seen marketing emails. Martketingterms.com defines email marketing as simply, "the promotion of products or services via email." Marketing emails are usually sent with the intent of educating consumers and prospects through newsletters, announcements and press releases about new or current products, sales promotions or other exclusive time-sensitive information. Most of us are probably guilty of deleting some of these emails before opening them or even allowing them to add to the number of unread messages that sit in our inbox for eternity. However, this isn't favorable for effective email marketing or lead generating. So here are a few tips for successfully sending these emails and getting them read.

Where should I begin?

Build your subscriber list. Building a continuous list of subscribers is key. This can simply be done through an information capturing form located on your website. Just make sure you are upfront and honest about what you are providing the subscriber or what you are doing with the information they provide, prior to submission. Here is an information request form on our sister brand, Displet's website.

Talk with your audience, not at them. Engaging conversation is always more appealing to clients than just throwing information at them. Your clients probably already understand that you are the expert in your field; this is why they have provided their information to you or requested more information from you. Therefore, spitting hardcore facts at them instead of engaging text will likely get your emails unread time and time again.