You have permission to publish this article, as long as
resource box remains intact and content unaltered. If you post this article on a website or e-zine, please ensure that links are set up as hyperlinks and send a mail with URL where article is posted to address below. More articles related to this topic are available at: http://www.e-gnorance.com Thanks Charlz Wachira (charlz@e-gnorance.com)Email marketing 101 By Charlz Wachira According to an article published in Business 2.0, permission based marketing, commonly known as email marketing is reported to earn a response rate of more than 11.4%, easily outdoing banners which reported a mere 0.55% response rate. Based on these statistics, it is obvious that a successful web marketing strategy should embrace email marketing as one of key strategies. In this article I am going to discuss nine basic principles you need to know to apply this result-generating marketing strategy for your web venture. Read on.
1) Do not Spam
In world of internet marketing, SPAMMING is absolute SIN. Spamming is one area in which it is better to be safe that sorry. Spammers get blacklisted and become pariahs in not only marketing world but in any internet related activities. The damage done by spam is deemed irreparable; in fact, only lasting solution to sites that have been listed as spammers is to give up whole endeavor all together and begin afresh under a different name and with a new look, a time consuming and expensive exercise. Send out product offers and newsletters only to those who have opted in for your list. Do not be deluded into thinking that attractiveness of your offer might offset anger of somebody on your list receiving an email they did not ask for. As long as person did not clearly subscribe to your list, then it is spam and you risk being blacklisted as a spammer with aforementioned consequences.
2) Build your own email lists There are numerous companies advertising for those interested in purchasing a custom made mailing list. Beware of these fraudsters. According to most surveys, for any purchased mailing list of about 2000 subscribers, at least 20% will be hostile, another 10% will eventually lead to dead ends and you can expect at least 15-18% to be outdated. This leaves you with a paltry 50% of initial list. Take into account statistics mentioned at introduction and you are looking at less than 5% of list purchased. This leaves you with only one other option. Creating your own home-made mailing lists There are many ways of achieving this but best approach is by publishing your own e-zine and posting an announcement on community sites and related newsgroups and generating an interest before you start sending out e-zine to those who opt in. Initially, you should count yourself lucky to have even 100 subscribers but gradually as word spreads round, and depending on quality of your content this should increase to reflect on your site’s popularity and rating with target market.
3) Acknowledge all subscriptions Subscribers do usually forget what they subscribe to and it pays to send a confirmation of initial subscription followed sometime later by another mail to reconfirm their status before sending any email messages to them. The first confirmation message can be auto-generated text that can be easily created using any web programming language. The second re-confirmation email however should be a personalized mail that will set atmosphere for your dealings with subscriber. Everyone likes to be referred to by their names in any correspondence and this includes email. The purpose of this second email is twofold. On one hand it enables you to confirm authenticity of subscriber’s email address and secondly, and more importantly it gives you a chance to explain and clarify to subscriber what it is that they are subscribing to.
