The relationship that you have with your target market is the cornerstone of your company’s success. And there’s no better way to build a relationship and provide great customer service than growing and nurturing an email marketing list. Email marketing provides you with a direct channel to create a relationship with your market and become the “go to” service or product in your category.
Just before revealing the secrets of the trades, here are myths and fallacies that have to be cleared before one indulges into building an opt-in list. These advertising misconceptions could pose so much of an obstacle towards your profiting well from your enterprise.
Not a whole lot of people use email
Email marketing is one of the most effective advertising strategies nowadays basically because virtually practically all people use email. Check on those email fields or blanks required to be filled up on various forms required in processing distinct transactions. An individual without an email address is tantamount to an individual with out an on the internet home, which is one big shameful truth for this generation.
Email marketing campaigns can offend a lot of folks
The not-so secret way to surmount this dilemma is through permission-based advertising. There’s no harm in trying after asking for permission.
It is stupid to send email to all of the individuals
The key to this predicament would be to have a quite discerning eye on who to email and who to not email. Much better look for some metrics on the best way to know which group of folks would give you high ROI or return on investment.
After clearing the fog regarding email advertising myths, here’s how one can benefit from employing the power of email advertising campaigns – building an opt-in list.
Even so, building an opt-in list isn’t a piece of cake especially for the uninitiated. Here is really a roundown of tips on the way to succeed in this type of marketing endeavor.
Marketing through email is a very effective method to communicate with your customers. Generally it is very economical, and if properly done, can help create brand identification and dependability. At an average of just a few centavos cost per message, it is definitely a great bargain in contrast to traditional 'direct mail'. Furthermore, email marketing has a strong response rate which ranges from 5-35 percent depending on industry type and format.
One advantage of marketing email is the amount of information that clients supply when registering for your subscription email. By learning who your clients really are, including their gender, age, income and specially their special interests, you can target your services and products to accommodate their needs.
Use the five buyer decision stages to optimize your message.
We B2B marketing professionals think about our target audience practically every minute (It’s kind of an obsession). We know their revenue, number of employees, titles they hold, their budgets, their hobbies, and most importantly, their decision roles. This is static lead info, and we try to know as much as we can.
But what about dynamic info, that changes over time? For instance, when are people ready to buy?
That’s where decision stages come in. A decision stage is a unique point in time a B2B prospect is in during the lead cycle. It’s another way to segment leads, because they have such different needs in each stage that we may as well treat them like different people. This affects how we find them, how we evaluate them, and how we craft our message for them.
B2B marketing has a reputation for being austere, traditional, somehow more serious and - dare we say it? - a touch too stuck in its ways. Most of the techniques used, from CRM to Direct Marketing, incentives to conferences, are well established. Most business-to-business practitioners agree on the best strategies and there exists a happy consensus of opinion.
Frankly, consensus is boring.
With everyone in agreement with each other, the garden may be rosy but it is also terribly dull.
Rejoice then for new technology. Rejoice even harder for marketing challenges brought by new technology. And rejoice till your head hurts for email marketing.
Email marketing is a nascent medium that B2B marketers are struggling to conquer. Around each corner lurks a new problem and in each agency a novel approach as to how it may be solved.
This is all perfectly normal. Email marketing is new, the technology keeps on evolving, the marketers are continually learning and the recipients are becoming more mature, more cynical and harder to win over.
What this means is that there is everything to play for. And in B2B marketing terms, that is exciting.
