October 29, 2015

How to Build Profitable Customer Relationships Using Email Marketing

Like any relationship, your relationship with your customers is built on trust and communication. Happy customers equal a more successful business. Email marketing can help you get there, but only if you’re doing it correctly.

Here are seven simple ways you can use email marketing to build profitable customer relationships:
1. Be Consistent

Imagine if you went for weeks without hearing from your significant other. You wouldn’t like that, would you? Your customers appreciate consistent communication, too.

To stay connected, send them a regular newsletter. And if you say you’ll send a weekly newsletter, make sure you deliver it weekly. If and when they have a problem that your business can solve, you’ll be the first person they turn to.

Email autoresponders (aka follow up messages) are another great way of staying in touch on a regular basis. The key advantage is that you can automate these so they go out to every new customer at a set interval.

2. Get Personal with Your Messages

Having a relationship with your customers means you know who they are on a personal level. Segmentation is a great way to make your email marketing personal to your customers.

It starts with gaining an understanding of who your customers are, what their needs are, what struggles they experience, and what success looks like for them. A great example of this is Marcus Sheridan, who successfully launched a fiber-glass pool company in the midst of an economic slump, thanks to his ability to understand his clients’ needs and meet those needs with education.

Send your customers highly relevant content that satisfies their needs and interests, and there’s no telling what you can accomplish.

3. Be Clear and Direct

There’s nothing more frustrating that not knowing what someone wants. Being clear and direct in your emails to your customers only strengthens your relationship. When they sign up to receive emails from you, tell them exactly what they can expect to receive from you. When you send them emails, make sure you tell them what you want them to do with a clear call to action. Try to keep your calls to action to a minimum in your messages.

4. Provide Relevant Solutions

This one ties back to being personal. The more you know about your customers, the better equipped you’ll be to provide them with the content they’re looking for.

Before you hit “send,” ask yourself, “Does it serve me or my reader?” If it’s not serving your reader, don’t send it. Find a way to make what you want match with what your customer wants.

Another great way to strengthen customer relationships is to ensure that your customers know you value them. Who doesn’t love to feel important and appreciated. By rewarding your customers with exclusive content, information, discounts, etc., you deepen the relationship you have with them.

October 8, 2015

by TWP Publisher

Five Email Marketing Practices That Need to Die

E-Marketing Email Marketing

More than 122 billion emails are sent every hour, demonstrating that email is a powerful medium that will continue to be a reliable method for companies to gain and retain customers.

With that staggering statistic in mind, marketers must master the art of engaging content when competing with a cluttered inbox.

Unfortunately, some marketers still dilute ROI by engaging in email marketing practices that are hurting business.

When refining your email marketing strategy, consider leaving these deadly practices behind.

1. Hiding Opt-Outs
2. Designing for Desktops
3. Neglecting Visuals
4. Forgetting About Social
5. Ignoring Lead Generation

July 7, 2015

by TWP Publisher

Mobile Email: The “New Normal” for Marketers and Consumers

E-Marketing Email Marketing, Mobile Email

Remember when having mobile-optimized email was special? Back in the day, just being able to send responsive messages and mobile-friendly links was enough to separate the marketing leaders from the rest of the pack. Well, those days are over. In fact, a recent report from Yesmailclaims that mobile is consumers’ “new normal,” and its data backs up its decree.

According to the email solution provider’s “Q1 2015 Email Marketing Compass” benchmark report, 45% of all clicks on the more than six billion emails analyzed in Q1 2015 occurred on mobile devices—a 10% increase since Q4 2014. What’s more, mobile click-to-open (CTO) rates increased 8.5% in Q1 2015, while desktop CTOs fell 8.6%. And this engagement is having a major impact on companies’ bottom lines. The report cites that mobile email revenue grew 12% since Q4 2014 and that mobile emails accounted for 22% of all email-driven revenue in Q1 2015. In fact, Yesmail, the email marketing division of Yes Lifecycle Marketing, predicts that this number will approach 33% by the end of the year.

“When mobile first started to be a huge factor, marketers were not ready for it and they didn’t exactly know how to optimize for it,” Ivy Shtereva, senior marketing manager for Yesmail, says. “They’re doing a better job and investing more of their resources into making this a mobile-[friendly] experience and optimizing the mobile path to purchase, which has considerably grown in the past and is continuing to.”

Therefore, if mobile is consumers’ “new normal,” then it has to become marketers’, too. Here are five tips on how marketers can create a more effective mobile email strategy.

June 11, 2015

by TWP Publisher

10 Ingredients for a Successful Email Marketing Campaign (Infographic)

E-Marketing Email Marketing

If your email marketing efforts are falling flat, you could be doing it all wrong. While there is no one-size-fits-all magic bullet for gaining new customers or better engaging existing ones via email, there are several simple steps you can take to optimize your chances of success.

Lucky for you, the folks at Mailify have cooked up a simple, step-by-step recipe for killing it at email marketing, with key tips on personalization, mobile optimization, text-to-image ratio and, yes, even the option for recipients to opt-out (hopefully they won’t).

The New York-based email marketing software maker covered everything you need to know end to end, from the first burst of text your email recipients will see, to the all-important call to action and beyond. For a fun (and hunger-inspiring) touch, all of the steps are neatly sandwiched in a 10-step cheeseburger rendering in the clever infographic below:

May 28, 2015

by TWP Publisher

Email marketing critical to success, but users are selling themselves short (study)

E-Marketing E-mail, Email Marketing

Email continues to be critical to business, and generates the highest return on investment of any marketing channel.

There are dozens of email service providers and marketing tools available to help businesses leverage the medium, with MailChimp, AWeber, Constant Contact, and Campaign Monitor among the most used. Add to that the swathe of marketing automation platforms that offer email marketing services and you’re looking at quite a complex landscape.

In an extensive report launched by VB Insight today, we learn that 84 percent of marketers think email is important or critically important for loyalty. Similarly high percentages show how important it is for sales, retaining customers, and lead generation.

But all is not rosy in the email marketing garden, as the report also shows only 50 percent of email marketers think their needs are effectively met by current providers. Worse still, email marketers aren’t using these tools effectively, despite their importance.

The study — “Buyer’s Guide: How to navigate the email marketing landscape” — weighs in at 10,000 words and 60+ pages, and it details findings from almost 1,300 email marketers, evaluates 48,000 companies that use email tools, and profiles 21 leading vendors. The author, Jon Cifuentes, an analyst at VB Insight, found some surprises while creating the report.

March 26, 2015

by TotalWeb Partners

The Ten Commandments of Online Marketing

E-Marketing, Marketing Online Marketing

The Ten Commandments of Online Marketing.

Have a strategic plan
Have a strong adaptable website
Have a strong and growing visibility in search
Be social
Consistently produce original written content
Get listed or mentioned on other relevant websites
Produce and distribute original photos and videos
Advertise intelligently
Utilize analytics to track ROI
Be adaptable

Top 11 Advantages of Ecommerce

Business News, E-Marketing, Ecommerce Ecommerce

Top 11 Advantages of E-commerce:

1. Overcome Geographical Limitations

If you have a physical store, you are limited by the geographical area that you can service. With an ecommerce website, the whole world is your playground. Additionally, the advent of mcommerce, i.e., E-commerce on mobile devices, has dissolved every remaining limitation of geography.

2. Gain New Customers With Search Engine Visibility

Physical retail is driven by branding and relationships. In addition to these two drivers,online retail is also driven by traffic from search engines. It is not unusual for customers to follow a link in search engine results, and land up on an E-commerce website that they have never heard of. This additional source of traffic can be the tipping point for some ecommerce businesses.

3. Lower Costs

One of the most tangible positives of E-commerce is the lowered cost. A part of these lowered costs could be passed on to customers in the form of discounted prices. Here are some of the ways that costs can be reduced with E-commerce:

The Importance Of Email Marketing For Small Businesses

E-Marketing, Marketing E-mail, Email Marketing, Newsletters

The Importance Of Email Marketing For Small Businesses.
Some people argue that spam or junk mail essentially killed email marketing. Makes sense, if you think about it. Don’t we all hate spam? Even more so, people are proclaiming that with the ever-increasing popularity of social media and enterprise social networks is the impending obsolescence of email.

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