Let’s talk about email marketing. This is a great, inexpensive way to market your business and stay in touch with your contact list. Best of all, you can schedule your email blasts so you can create your marketing for the next week, month or year and schedule it to be delivered when you want it delivered!
A few of the main email marketing companies are: Constant Contact, Get Response and Mail Chimp. Handouts has used Get Response for many years and we are very happy with their products and services. These companies do much more than simply providing an email service, they offer landing pages, auto responders, funnels, website forms and more. Most of the companies offer a free trial so you can be sure you like the way they work before paying for their services.
WHY NOT JUST SEND FROM YOUR EMAIL ACCOUNT
We feel it is important to use an email marketing company rather than just sending your email account because they will supply you with analytics on each email so you can tell what is working and what is not. The analytics will include things like: how many people opened your email, how many clicked, how many bounced, what your open rate was. Email marketing companies also supply you with templates which make it easier for you to create professional looking emails that are mobile friendly. Remember always stay true to your company colors and your company image when creating any type of marketing piece.
HOW DO I TRACK MY RESULTS
The email marketing companies will supply you with analytics, but you should create a spreadsheet so that you make sure that you are taking your marketing full circle – mail, email, social, etc. We have created a very simple to use spreadsheet to help you. Click the button below to download a copy. Remember you should color code in the TYPE column (email, mail, Facebook, etc.) so you can see at a glance that you are using all forms of marketing. If you see too much of one color, make adjustments.
Another benefit to using an email marketing company, you will be able set up different campaigns so you can track other forms of your marketing as well. Ex. if you do a facebook ad with a click through for information, it will capture the email address for you. If you set it up as a separate campaign, you can see how many people sign up through Facebook vs. through your email. When you send an email blast, you can choose to send it to one of your list or more than one. It will check for duplicates and send the message just once.
HOW DO I GET AN EMAIL LIST
If you have your customers in an Excel file, you can import that file. Please remember do not spam. You can add people that you do business with to your email list, you can have people sign up for your email list, you cannot add people without a prior business relationship unless you have their approval.