Continuing with the theme of email marketing, now that you have started to build a great opt-in email list, what are you going to do with it? How will you engage your readers so they form a community of people interested in what you have to say?
A consistent, well-organized, informative or entertaining email newsletter extends your reach while helping you build strong relationships with your readers. Email marketing is a component of your online and social media marketing effort and they work together to:
- Increase your visibility
- Deepen the level of trust your readers have in you, and
- Develop your reputation as an expert in your field.
For email marketing to be effective, you need to determine your goal for the campaign and build a plan to define what you want to say, how often and the resulting benefits to the reader. People on your email list may not need what you offer right now, but they have some challenge that they feel you can help them with or they wouldn’t have opted in.
Reach Out and Touch Someone
Develop a strategy that makes it easy for you to build a six to twelve month plan so you can consistently touch your readers with relevant, timely information. Give your readers quality content that help them solve a problem. Forget about your press releases – your readers don’t really care what’s new about you – they are only concerned with how you can help them. Need ideas for content? Try:
- Case studies – Relate client success stories to provide real world experiences.
- Interviews – Interview industry experts about their tips and best practices.
- Tips and tricks – Help your readers quickly gain one new useful idea.
- How To Articles – Develop quick “how to” articles making difficult tasks easy.
To ensure success:
- Have a content strategy. Your blog, social media content and your email newsletter need to carry the same theme and voice. If they are all different, you confuse the audience with what you are all about.
- Promote your campaign prominently. Make the sign up form visible on every page of your website and include a link to past newsletters.
- Encourage sharing. An email marketing campaign done well is the perfect viral marketing tool, so be sure to incorporate Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and “Forward to a Friend” links that makes it easy for the recipient to share the information.
Email marketing complements your other online and social media activities. By using an email newsletter to point people to your website for useful information, you build your reputation as an expert and thought-leader, creating long-term, lasting relationships with your audience.
How have you used email marketing to build relationships and grow your business?
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