Email Marketing Lists
Email Marketing Strategies for Small Businesses
Using your own email marketing lists to get the word out on your business could be the most profitable and the most effective way with the least risk to market you, your services, or your products.
Hold on now, I am in no way referring to purchasing a bulk of names of people who have no clue who you are and then blast them with sales messages hoping that at least a few will buy your stuff. Promoting anything to someone who has not given permission to email them is SPAM and should never be tolerated. As a matter of fact, there are Federal and state laws prohibiting this behavior.
However, what I do allude to is what is an email marketing strategy known as Permission Based Marketing. This is when in exchange for their contact information, you give them some type of valuable content in your niche in the form of a special report, video, audio, etc. It is an incentive and there becomes an expectation to continue receiving more information from you, both free and paid offers. The individual has given you this permission to contact them until they unsubscribe (opt-out of your email marketing list).
Here are four guidelines to help you to use your own e-mail marketing lists more effectively to grow your business:
1. Always ask for someone's explicit permission first before contacting them. Once it has been obtained, be sure to honor and respect what has been entrusted to you. Never do to them what you do not want done to yourself. Make it clear to them that you will never give away, rent, or sell their contact information to anyone, period. Be sure to maintain complete control of this list at all times.
2. Respect the wishes of those who no longer wanted to be on your email marketing list. Make it a very easy task to remove themselves. Besides, do you really want to market to those who do not care about what you offer?
3. Be sure to have a privacy policy in place stating exactly what is done with the contact information collected. Oh, and actually honor it! Simply posting a link to it on your website is enough of a psychological relief signal that it helps to pave the way for a prospect to sign up for your email marketing lists. And make sure you have a simple anti-SPAM statement right under the contact information request box. Look at mine to the right there for an example.
4. Lastly, all messages sent out must comply with the CAN-SPAM Act. By using a reputable email provider, compliance is not a hard task. As a matter of fact, it is a seamless integration. However incredibly steep are the penalties for ignoring this law.
Using email marketing lists effectively include offering an electronic newsletter for free to these prospects allows your name, product, brand, etc, to stay at the top of their mind for when they are ready to purchase. It allows you to regularly provide them value as well as developing a lasting business relationship. You may not get their business now or even next month or even this year. However, you will be there when they are ready or when they refer somebody to you.
Well, what do you think of these email marketing strategies? Have I at least peaked your interest in trying to build email marketing lists yourself? Let me know if you need any coaching help to get you started. Please share this article using the buttons below or the top right of this page and be sure to sign up for my informative and free newsletter above on the right there. Thank you.
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