If you plan to do some Internet marketing to promote your business endeavor, you should seriously consider email marketing as at least one tier of your Internet marketing campaign. Many business owners shy away from email marketing because they believe all email marketing campaigns are purely spam. However, this is not true and not partaking in this type of marketing can cause your business to lose out on a great deal of business. By not appealing to potential customers via email, your business may lose a great deal of business to competitors who are using email marketing campaigns to reach customers around the world. However, the first step of an email marketing campaign should be creating an email distribution list. This article will discuss some popular options for doing this and should help the reader to learn more about what is acceptable and what is not when it comes to email marketing.
Once you have decided to start using email marketing to promote your business, you are likely facing the dilemma of compiling an email distribution list. This is essentially a list of email addresses to which you will email your advertising and promotional materials. One common way to gain a list of email addresses is to purchase a list from distributors. However, this method is not very effective at all, and we do not recommend it. The problem with buying an email list if you have no way of knowing whether or not the members of the list would have any interest at all in your products or services. This is very important because while you want to reach a large audience with your email marketing, you also want this audience to be members of your overall target audience.
When you purchase an email list, you may be sending your email messages to some users who might be interested, but this is mostly coincidental and is not likely to be well received because the message was not solicited.
Internet users are very quick to delete materials they believe to be spam without even opening or reading the emails. Some Internet service providers include spam filters which may automatically delete your emails if your messages are deemed to be spam. These filters run complex algorithms on the subject heading and content of the message to determine whether or not it is spam and are quite adept at weeding out spam. Therefore, you run the risk of having your email marketing effort turn out to be a complete waste if the majority of recipients never even read or receive the message.
A far better way to create an email distribution list for your email marketing campaign is to ask current customers as well as interested potential customers to register with your website to receive additional information and periodic updates about your products and services as well as other information which might be of interest to them. This provides you with a database of email addresses from current customers as well as potential customers who have a genuine interest in your products and services and who are interested in learning more about these products and services.
Once you have a list of interested customers or potential customers, you can send emails or create e-newsletter for distribution to the members of your email list. These documents should contain a wealth of valuable information as well as a soft sell pitch for your products and services. The readers will value this information and may help to persuade them to try your products and services.
You might also want to include useful links to either your website as well as other websites which may be of interest to your readers. Your content should also contain a portion which urges the reader to take a specific action such as making a purchase or at least investigating a product further.
Mark Lamplugh is a fourth-generation firefighter and former captain with the Lower Chichester (PA) Fire Company. Mark is President of the board for the Institute for Responder Wellness. Mark owns Influence Media Solutions (https://www.influencemediasolutions.com) which is his own Marketing, Public Relations, Digital Marketing, Branding, Business Development and Social Media company. He advises companies such as Fountain Hills Recovery & Lionrock Recovery about first responder programs.. He just published his first book “Beginners Guide to Digital & Social Media” which is available on Amazon. Mark is a professional advocate for the behavioral and mental health of firefighters and other first responders. He’s been involved in the creation of several responder specific treatment programs and is one of the leading experts in bringing these programs to responders. Lamplugh hosts his own talk show called "Firefighter Wellness Radio". He has published dozens of articles on responder wellness topics and is recognized by the American Acadamy of Experts in Traumatic Stress. He has helped hundreds of responders with getting help for behavioral & mental health issues. He can be reached for comment at ceo@influencemediasolutions.com