Email marketing image Email marketing isn’t complex or new. But the same mistakes are being made over and over by the marketing executives, sales professionals and owners of small businesses.

Used correctly, email marketing is a very effective medium to generate new leads, and build continuous contact with your customers and prospects. It will help you yield new sales and increase the popularity of your site.

Here are the top 10  mistakes.  Avoid these and you are on your way to increased sales!

1. Never under estimate your Current Customers List – This is by far the biggest mistake you can make.  Marketers just disregard their current customer”s, and leave money on the table. Even worse, many have not set up a way of capturing their customer’s email and contact details in a common list.

A  customer email list can be easily used to market new products to existing customers or to get repeat orders. Existing customers have seen your product and service before, and by maintaining a good relationship are more likely to buy from you again.

2. No specific Niche Target – One big, long message for everyone is no longer smart or effective. Nothing works the fast way. Now the trend is to do personalized, 1 to 1 marketing. If your standard message is for all prospects in all industries, chances are that it does not address anyone needs.  Use all of the email marketing tools at your disposal to locate those interested in your niche.

Here is one of Email marketing tips .

It is best to send several small, targeted emails to niche groups, which you can track to see what works in which industry, and who opened which mail. With this potent arsenal, you can focus your efforts on those chosen few to spend your time upon, and generate sales with a much larger payout.

3. Never use cheap lists – Using 300,000 emails from a $100 CD is bound to fail. These email addresses are mostly defunct, and most are acquired through snooping and email extraction from forums. They will almost never by focused on your niche email marketing groups.  Never send a blatant marketing message!  This is a sure-fire way to get yourself banned from major Internet Service Providers.  I don’t know about you but I do not deal with businesses that fill my inbox with junk.

You can buy a good list of your niche target group from reputed list broker.  This list is focused, fresh and interested in your product.  The very best method is to start compiling your own list of  prospects and customers to the effectiveness of email marketing program.

4. You need a system to measure response – Marketing just continues to send out message after message: No  measurement of efforts, and no mechanism to evaluate the response of past messages will leave you clueless as to the effectiveness of your messages. Without a method to measure responsiveness you are shooting in the dark, wondering why these efforts hardly bring in any results or prospects.

A good measurement system is very important.  With emails, you can tag each and every link, email account and email sent, so that when it is opened or clicked, you can immediately know who is interested, who is keen to buy, what product, and how eagerly.

A good measurement, system allows you to know who has spent time with your message, or on your website, and by knowing who they are and what they are interested in, you can customize future messages for them. Market something that they have shown interest in, and you are closer to another sale.

5. Set a clear goal or strategy – Start with the right goal and marketing strategy. Your first goal should be to establish trust and credibility within your target market.

Secondly, get the prospect interested enough in what you are selling, so that they are willing to give you their contact information.

Thirdly, your marketing message should be sent out regularly so that the prospect expects it, waits for it, and it shows that you are consistent, reliable, and trustworthy.  Build name recognition in your initial emails by providing solid fresh content concerning the problem your product solves.

Remember, marketing exists to generate leads, prospects and help sales.   So focus, and concentrate on these goals to build a solid email marketing solution.

6. It is vital that you adopt the philosophy of “Say what you will do and then do it”  The internet business world is full of empty promises.  Money back guarantees, worthless bonuses, fantastic claims, etc and not fulfilling your promises is a sure way to make an unhappy customer and  there goes another lost sale.

7. Keep your Marketing message consistent -  If you are selling widgets concentrate on information that is relevant to widgets.  Be sure your information is properly linked to your company’s website and always provide a telephone number, fax number and contact information. Just giving an email address is not sufficient to build trust and prove that yours is a genuine offer.

8. Avoid Boring Marketing Messages or Ad copy – A long repetitive message is no way to capture the prospects attention.  Statistics show that your prospect is going to view your message only long enough to determine if it interests them.  About 3-4 seconds, which means your subject line must interest them and the first couple of paragraphs must be good enough to capture their attention.

Short and simple is the rule here.  Most people market themselves and very few prospects are interested.  The key is to market a solution to THEIR PROBLEM. Very few are interested in how long it took to develop your product, how much you spent to bring it to them or which how many gurus are tripping over each other to buy it.  They want to know how it is going to make THEIR problem go away.

Once you establish a bond by acknowledging that you know about their problems, they will be more amenable to your message, and products.

9. Patience is the key to developing sales – It is a proven fact that a new prospect will take an average of 5-7 different interactions before they build enough trust in you and your products or services before thinking of buying from you. So if you stop marketing to prospects after sending messages to them once or twice, thinking that they  do not seem interested, you are losing sales.  Remember each lead you have developed has cost you time and money develop them as a key resource to your success.

Continuing to hand hold them and stay in constant contact will help you in the long run, as you will be familiar to the prospect. People love to do business with people they know, and not strangers. Email is the most cost-effective way to stay in touch.

10. Demonstrate a willingness to Educating the prospect – The marketers are so focused on sales, that they do not spend enough time with their prospects to educate them. Remember that if you service a prospect well, they will most likely convert to a paying customer sooner or later.  Have patience.  Use email to market to them regularly with information, education, free offers etc. until they build enough trust to buy from you.

Conclusion:

Email marketing has been proven time and again, if done correctly.  Big companies like IBM, Amazon, HP are using it effectively, and smaller companies are depending upon it to build dependable, profitable and reliable prospects.

With its lows cost, and effectiveness, email marketing helps to build long term relationships with your target audience. Use it wisely, and you will continue to reap its rewards.

Jerry

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