Tweet

5 Must Dos To Grow Your Business Using Email

Written by: Michael Della Penna

Article Overview: Few mediums come close to matching email marketing's ability to grow sales and customer relationships. However, doing effective email marketing is hard - VERY hard. If you're a small business using or looking to use email marketing, here are 5 key things you should know.

5 Must Dos To Grow Your Business Using Email

As we watch the layoff count grow, many individuals may be considering starting or joining an existing small business. If you are looking to grow your new business or contribute to an existing business, email marketing is probably on the top of your list of things to do. Few mediums come close to matching email’s amazing ability to help companies grow their relationships, response and marketing ROI. In fact, according to the Direct Marketing Association email marketing’s ROI in 2008 was $45.06 for every dollar spent – more than any other medium measured. But doing email marketing well is one part art, one part science. For small businesses getting serious about email marketing, take these 5 recommendations to heart.

1. It’s List Quality Not Quantity: While small businesses are anxious to leverage the power of email marketing, many fall into the trap of renting or even purchasing so called “opt-in lists”. Buyer beware! Besides from assuring the list is in fact opt-in, these lists are often over mailed and typically face major deliverability issues across the leading ISPs and email clients. Instead, I recommend focusing on building your house list or customer list – nearly always the best performing. Leverage existing relationships to understand the intended recipient’s needs and build an email communications program that delivers on those needs and offers value (i.e. discounts, exclusive content, etc.). To maximize collection, use all existing touch points to encourage subscriptions including your sales team, website, customer service department and marketing efforts – such as trade shows. Finally, if you’re still set on renting lists, make sure you use a reputable list provider.
2. Think Technology: Powering relevant and timely email communications and marketing is hard, really hard, given today’s anti-spam and filtering environment. Leverage existing email marketing tools and expertise to help assure delivery. New email marketers and small business owners should consider subscription based turnkey solutions such as Constant Contact. Larger, more experienced small business owners who are typically delivering higher volumes and are price sensitive may be best served considering an on-premise email application like StrongMail Systems.
3. Build A Lifecycle Communications Program: If there is one word that will define marketing in 2009 it would be “Customer.” If it is all about the customer, it is essential that the entire organization be aligned toward an effort that not only is focused on understanding their needs, but improving how the organization communicates and interacts with those customers throughout the purchase process. Using that knowledge, small businesses can begin to plan appropriate email communications throughout the lifecycle (acquisition, retention and win-back) to create a relevant and timely dialog that builds a real competitive advantage and long-term loyalty.
4. Optimize Efforts: Remember every interaction is an opportunity to learn something. Analyze campaigns and test individual email components to improve results. Also remember your best customers can be your biggest advocates. Include forward-to-a-friend capabilities when relevant and remember to follow CAN SPAM requirements. According to Jupiter Research companies that consider viral marketing and customer satisfaction when identifying and targeting customers can reduce customer acquisition costs by 27% and increase average order sizes by up to 60 percent.
5. Promote Participation: There has been a lot of talk about social media as an incredible tool to help spread the word about your brand or product. Well social media is not just for big businesses. Remember all media including email has the ability to encourage participation and be social. Start a company page on a social network, encourage recipients to add your messaging to their individual pages and watch your visibility and sales increase as you dramatically extend the reach and success of your marketing messages.

Last but not least – be a student of the marketplace. Consider joining industry associations that share best practices and provide educational events that can help you evolve, imporve and optimize your marketing programs. Lots to do but all worthy efforts to help your small business prosper in 2009 and beyond.

Related Articles
  Why email marketing is the right answer for your business
  Your Guide To Email Marketing
  Small Business Email Marketing - Finding Gold in a Down Economy
  Twelve Strategic "Grow Goals" To Grow Your Business According To Your Strategic Thinking Business Coach
  “Six Strategic Steps To Improve Your Emails, According To Your Strategic Thinking Business Coach”

Article Tags: anti spam, business email, communications program, customer service department, direct marketing association, email clients, email communications, email marketing tools, heart, isps, marketers, marketing efforts, mediums, new business, relationships, science, small business owners, small businesses, subscriptions, website customer



Related Forum Posts
My entry - 1. The Best Business Books Ever: The 100 Most Influential Business Books You'll Never Have Time to Read - this is a fascinating book about the history of Business theory, and I'd recommend it to anybody. 2. The Big Book of Small Business: You Don't Have to Run Your Business by the Seat of Your Pants, by Tom Gegax. Ditto. 3. PADI: The Business of Diving Book Okay, so this book won't be of use to anyone who doesn't want to start a scuba store, but I did, and this book was of course invaluable to me in reaching that goal.
Web magazine publisher - My duties 1) Research the articles that goes into each of my webzines - science fiction in all media, various sports (Yay, Lady Vols, 8th championship in 2008, by the way!) 2) Write the articles 3) Format and upload them to the web 4) Email and network various contacts to get out the word that new articles are available. 5) Email authors, actors, etc. etc. to see if they want to do interviews. 6) Advertise for more contributors - and then edit and upload their material!
Re: My 3 best business books - 1. Think and Grow Rich - Napoleon Hill 2. The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People - Stephen R. Covey 3. Permission Marketing - Seth Godin Think and Grow Rich seems more powerful each time I read it or dip into it. The 7 Habits not only offers some very effective ways to organize your life (which I have yet to master!), but also some great quotations and thought provoking statements including this by Nazi concentration camp survivor, Viktor Frankl: [i:2naxzsom]Between stimulus and response, man has the freedom to choose.[/i:2naxzsom] Seth Godin's Permission Marketing is a good read for anybody seeking to understand how to approach doing business on the Internet in the right way with regard to winning people's trust.
Re: My 3 best business books - It seems that Napoleon Hill works help a lot of business men. He had done a really good job. I bought Think and Grow Rich many times.
Why should I hire a virtual assistant for SEO purposes? - Do you find it hard to find time for rest because of promoting your business or your website all by yourself? Well, perhaps it is the right time for you to hire the services of an SEO virtual assistant. Virtual assistants for SEO services will help you on the process of improving your rankings within search engine results to achieve an increase in natural traffic. The higher your site in the search engine results page, the more traffic and sales conversions you will obtain. Using the services of virtual assistants (VAs) certainly is the best method to move in order immediate results and in reduced operational charges. This provides a great answer especially for a small business owner whoever company is actually considerably expanding, and the jobs have normally doubled. Here are some of the services that a virtual assistant can do for you: • Traffic Geyser • Main Street Marketing • Data Entry • Web Research • Market Samurai • Managing Facebook • Managing Twitter • SEO • Local Business Listing Robot • Traffic Revolution • Infusionsoft • Senuke • Angela’s Banklink • Linkjuicer • Blogging • SMM • Virtual Assistant • Personal Assistant • Article Writing • Spinning Article • Press release • Email Response Handling • Online Order Processing • Word Processing • Forum/Comment Posting • Social Bookmarking • Video Editor • Internet Marketing • Email Marketing • Link Building • Powerpoint Presentations • Web Development • Other Administrative Support


Share this article with your friends. Fund someone's dream.

Leave a comment below or share on the left and you'll help support entrepreneurs in Africa through our partnership with Kiva. Over $50,000 raised and counting - Please keep sharing! Learn more.

Tweet

Newsletter

Get advice & tips from famous business
owners, new articles by entrepreneur
experts, my latest website updates, &
special sneak peaks at what's to come!

Name:
Email:

Popular Articles

Five Daily Marketing Habits to Increase Sales

Ten Steps to Go from Idea to E-book for Sale

TRADE SHOW FOLLOW-UP: HOW MUCH IS TOO MUCH?

Suggestions

Email us your ideas on how to make our
website more valuable! Thank you Sharon
from Toronto Salsa Lessons / Classes for
your suggestions to make the newsletter
look like the website and profile younger
entrepreneurs like Jennifer Lopez.