Email Marketing Plan For A Small Business

A few years back, email marketing was about sending bulk mails to a list of prospects

. Folks found it irritating and dismissed it off as spam. Today, it is much more than sending out bulk mails. Email marketing has become an integral part of every small business's marketing plan. Here is a guide that can help you set up an effective email marketing campaign:

Determine email marketing events Decide on the situations that call for email marketing. Typically, you want to send emails to people in the following situations:

1. Auto responding to their queries.

2. Sending "Thank you" notes when they leave a comment or send feedback.

3. Sending special offers to customers based on their buying patterns and demographics.

4. Sending customers product keys and invoices upon successful completion of purchases.

5. Following up with prospects that have not completed a purchase.

6. Sending newsletters and whitepapers to opt-ins.

7. Sending emails to prospects (Note: this can be considered as spam, and every unsolicited email must comply with spam laws).

Choose an email marketing system

A few reputed email marketing system providers are Aweber.com, ConstantContact.com and VerticalResponse.com. These providers can integrate social media into email marketing campaigns and their analytic tools are top class. These systems can be used for one-way marketing to existing customers or prospects. Note that these sites have very strict rules about mailing to prospects.

Now when it comes to sending automatic messages to your customers and visitors, then you must choose a reputed CRM solutions provider. There are certainly plenty of providers to choose from that provide email marketing support for shopping cart and sales transactions and auto-responders.

They provide the seller with customer details, order history, payment plans, marketing sequences and responses, lead tracking, and other services. These services are not very expensive, but you must compare and choose the company that can provide you with a relevant package at an affordable price.

Opt-in solutions providers enable people to opt-in for newsletters and other collaterals and also provide them with an opt-out mechanism. Newsletters can be created easily using their software and can be sent at scheduled dates - everything is automatic.

It is important to check whether the server you intend to use has been red-flagged by a spam monitoring like SORBS, and, do not mail prospects more than twice in a month.

Get a list of prospects

Here're some list mining secrets: Employ undergraduates at very cheap rates to mine lists of prospects from websites, social networks and forums. Enrol in associations and get their list of members. If you have money to spend, rent lists from a list broker.

Get copywriting help

Are you a professional copywriter? If the answer is no, then get a pro to write your emails and auto-respond messages. Your marketing copy must be subtle and not in-your-face and the emails must be short, simple and to-the-point. Get 5-6 different automatic messages written so you can keep rotating and adapting these.

These pointers should help your small business marketing plan get working on an effective email marketing campaign. Analyse your results: how many opens, how many clicks, how many visitors, how many conversions, etc., to determine how well your business marketing campaign worked, and evolve accordingly. Good luck!

by: Michael Griffiths

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