subject: How To Build An Email Marketing Plan [print this page] Most people trying to succeed with online business understand that an email marketing plan can be one of the best tools to have by their side. When created and deployed effectively, you will be able to increase your reach, boost your reputation, produce more sales, turn prospects into customers and much more. Still, you need to know how to actually build a plan for yourself if you want to be able to succeed and take things to the next level.
Building your List
The first thing you have to do for an email marketing plan, besides signing up for a service provider, is building your list. Never buy a list or a database from a company, and never steal addresses from forums or other places on the Internet. All this does is fill your list with worthless, untargeted names who want care at all about what you're saying or offering.
What you want to do is build a list one step at a time, with people who really are interested in what you have to say. These people can be everyone from current customers to potential prospects, from colleagues to employees and much more. You can build this list at all times, and in all situations, and the foundation will be on your website.
One of the most effective tools is a signup button on your website. Be sure to include this in a spot that's easy to see, and also to include it on each and every page of your site. You can increase the results you see by giving people an incentive to sign up for your emails, such as a free eBook filled with useful tips.
Converting Prospects into Customers
The next piece of your email marketing plan will be to take all those prospects on your list and turn them into real, paying customers. Otherwise, what's the point of having a list to begin with? A proven way to do this is to send out consistent messages filled with useful and helpful information related to your topic, niche, product or industry.
When you really provide information of value, you will accomplish several different things. First, you'll be staying in the minds of the people on your list, and you'll increase your reach. Second, you will slowly be winning over their trust and respect, increasing your reputation and raising the chance of completing a sale or transaction from them down the road.
Converting prospects though also requires that you actually ask for what you want. This is a call to action, and you need to have an effective, clear, easy to understand call to action that tells people what to do, how to do it and why to do it.
Improving Results
Now it's time to improve the results you've seen with your email marketing plan. You can do this by segmenting your list into different groups and tracking the results. Send out different versions of the same email to each group and see what performs better. Use statistics like open rates, click throughs and conversions, and soon you'll get a great sense for which ideas, structures, presentations, subject lines and so forth work the best for you.
With the right email marketing plan by your side, you can accomplish just about anything. You'll be able to see some great benefits for your business, and you can see them all for a very low, cost effective and efficient price. So get started with your own plan today to begin producing these great results.
