Create effective email advertising messages.
The differences between effective email advertising and ineffective messages can be glaringly clear. After all, one needs only to check the SPAM box of their personal email folder to see all of the email marketing and advertising messages that have gone wrong. If you want to legitimately promote your business, product or service, learning a few basic guidelines about what makes email advertising effective can make a huge difference in the results that you see.
Build Your List Legitimately
Effective email advertising begins with a legitimate list, which means a list of names and addresses that you gathered individually and with permission. Buying an email list can seem tempting, but a huge list of addresses that don't know who you are and aren't interested in what you're offering will not be successful. Avoiding the SPAM filter and converting prospects into customers begins with a list that was legitimately grown with interested individuals who gave you their address with permission.
Identify Yourself
Every email marketing message that you send has to be easily identified. That means that the name that appears in the "from" category is very important. The name listed should be the name that your customers and prospects are most familiar with, as opposed to your personal name or the name of the employee sending the emails. Additionally, the subject line in your email should also make it easy for recipients to recognize who you are, what you're about and what the message contains. Otherwise you can easily get marked as SPAM.
Have a Purpose
It's easy to repeatedly send email advertising messages out to your list with no real purpose or reason in mind. However, your list can grow weary of random messages that do not provide them with value. Therefore, it's important to establish a true purpose behind every message that you send. That purpose can be anything as long as it's legitimate and useful in some way, from a one-day sale that your company is offering to a news update about legislation affecting your industry.
Test Your Messages
Testing messages is an easy way to help improve the efficiency and overall success of email advertising. Simply break up your list into several, random groups, and then send each group a slightly different version of the message. Then you can compare how they all fared, including open rates, click-throughs and conversions. Take the best elements of each and then your email marketing will be much more fine-tuned to the interests and desires of your audience.
Make the Pitch
Don't forget that the reason you're engaging in email advertising is to get your list members to do something. That can range from buying a product, to making a phone call, to signing a petition or making a donation. Whatever it is that you're looking for, be sure to have a call to action that directs people to do just that. Make a strong pitch for people to take the action that you want them to, and don't assume that it will be obvious or that they will do it regardless.
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