E-mail Marketing For Beginners - Another Way To Reach Your Prospects

Many beginners are hesitant when starting out. There is so much to know and learn regarding online marketing.  What is the easiest thing for a beginner to focus on? Where do I start? How do I do it?  I'd like to suggest adding email marketing to your online marketing strategy, if you're not already using it. Everyone knows how to send e-mails. And even though it's one of the more basic forms of internet marketing it is still it's still a viable strategy for someone just starting out.

Below are my top 5 reasons for including email marketing:

1.It helps you stay in touch with your prospects
2.It enables you to establish your brand and (or) reputation
3.It helps to build trust and rapport
4.It allows you to promote your own or other peoples products & services
5.Your competition is already doing it

E-mail marketing is used by both large and small businesses alike. Whether you're a day spa owner, mechanic, dentist or other service professional,you can benefit from this strategic marketing tool. I'm sure you've received e-mails from Pizza companies (Pizza Hut, Dominos, ect...) letting you know their current specials or Airlines announcing their sale fares. These are examples of e-mail marketing. These powerful tools help keep you top of mind with your prospects, as long as you don't overdo it. Think of ways you can incorporate your products or services in an e-mailing to entice your customers, but don't be discouraged if they're not" busting down the doors" after one e-mail. Studies show that it takes an average of seven touches before a prospect will buy but all these contacts do not have to be through e-mail. E-mail marketing is just one component.
Before you begin to send out these marketing tools to your prospects, there are a few things you need to do first.

Develop a strategy for the kind of content you want to mail out. Do you want to offer advice, articles, promotions, tips or what you're up to? Do you want to offer it in the form of a newsletter or individual emails, perhaps both? Will it be in HTML or text? Do you want to send out original content or other peoples? How often will you send something out?  Take some time to develop a plan around these issues before you start.

Before you start you also want to build a list of prospects to mail to. You can do this by having people sign up for a newsletter, promotion, teleseminar or product on your website and capturing their name and email address via an autoresponder such as (Aweber, 1shoppingcart, I-Contact or Constant Content). You can also gather subscribers at live events or through offline mailing lists. Just make sure people are giving you permission to add them to a list to receive information from you. You don't want to be accused of spamming anyone. A first name and e-mail address is all you need and most people are willing to share that.

Do your homework before you start. Look at various email marketing pieces. Investigate what platforms others are using and any pros and cons each might have. Check out competitor's emails and newsletters to see what you like and don't like. You can always borrow ideas as long as you're not stealing content. You don't need to reinvent the wheel but make sure that you put yourself into it. People want to know who they are dealing with and you want them to know, like & trust you. Develop a plan and set a date to implement it. Done well email marketing can be a power tool in your online marketing arsenal.