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Get better results from email newsletters and promotional emails

Guest post by: Sarah Haines

Article Overview: There are different types of email marketing but unfortunately too many people don't realise this. We look at two of the main types of email marketing.

Get better results from email newsletters and promotional emails

What immediately comes to mind when you hear the term email marketing? Probably a promotional email. You might be buying a holiday, for example, and at some point in the process you agree to hear about new deals. After that you get a message telling you about some really cheap holidays to Croatia or something similar. Not a thing wrong with that. I like going on holiday and I signed up for information about holiday deals. This method has been proved time and time again to work. There is more than one way to communicate with your customers though and if you do this in the wrong places it can go wrong. Email newsletters are the best example of this.

With a promotional email you are looking for a specific action from the recipient. The whole design of the email is focussed on that call to action. The sale; the sign-up; the download; the registration; essentially whatever the purpose of that email was. This email isnt intended to influence future behaviour from the reader, they either take the immediate action or the email didnt work.

An email news letter though is a very different prospect. This is intended to influence future behaviour and the primary goal is to build a long term relationship. The newsletter is particularly suited to customer retention or gaining long term purchasing from an existing customer. That doesnt mean you cant include an immediate call to action too; why not promote sales, deals and new products in your news letter? You do need to include more than those deals if you are going to get the real benefit of a newsletter; longer term customer trust.

The real problem for marketers comes when you get these two different types of email marketing mixed up with each other. You cant expect to sign people up to a newsletter and then send them nothing but promotional emails. If you dont deliver what the reader expects they will unsubscribe. That will then leave the marketer frustrated with a belief that a newsletter doesnt work.

It doesnt necessarily matter which approach you choose. The underlying message has to be that you need to meet the expectations of people who sign up to your email marketing. A newsletter is a newsletter, dont offer it if you dont plan to send valuable content.

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Article Tags: email marketing, email newsletters, marketing



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How to Manage Your Emails - I'm posting this because I'm not very good at this stuff... Does anyone here have an empty email box? You know, where you don't have to wade through hundreds of emails to find that one important email that you're looking for? My wife does... and it makes me envious... On the flip side we could have a contest - How many unopened emails do you have in your inbox? I have exactly 800 - most of these are junky and forgotten about - and those are just the 'unopened' critters. I'm guessing this is low compared to some people out there... My strategy in dealing with emails is to use the sort command and find what I'm looking for, but the sheer volume of mail that I have to deal with is keeping me from cleaning up this mess... and it keeps building up. Any tips? ..
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