Email marketing includes much more than just sending email newsletters to website visitors. Email marketing is an important type of Internet marketing, and allows webmasters and online business owners to use inexpensive direct marketing and relationship marketing tactics quickly and efficiently.
Here are some uses for email marketing:
1. Email newsletters
2. Email offers and coupons to past customers or visitors
3. Email surveys for market research and to measure customer satisfaction
4. Additional income stream with email advertisements or email list rentals
5. Marketing through ads purchased in others’ email marketing campaigns
Spam laws put restrictions on email marketers, from how email marketing lists can be built or gathered to the rights of email list subscribers to unsubscribe from future mailings. Follow these email marketing tips to stay out of trouble with anti-spam laws, and to build an email list with the best potential for conversions to sales, ad clicks, or more, by focusing on subscribers genuinely interested in the message.
1. Make the email list double opt-in (subscribers will sign up for the email list from a form on the website, and will have to confirm the subscription through an email before the subscription becomes active).
2. Include an ‘unsubscribe’ link at the bottom of every email sent to the email list. Never make it difficult for someone to unsubscribe from the list.
3. Try to gather the email marketing list independently, through on-site subscription forms or subscription options being included in the online order process for customers.
4. If purchasing or renting an email marketing list, purchase only from reputable email list distributors, and purchase lists highly targeted to the site’s target market to improve the rate of interest in the email campaigns.
5. If subscribers are slow to come naturally, offer an incentive, such as a free e-book, articles, reports, software, or something similar of interest to the target readership that can be included with a welcome email or in a download.
6. To increase the probability that email newsletters and similar mailings will be read, offer both an HTML and a plain text version to account for readers who use non-HTML email providers or programs.
7. If using email newsletters for email marketing efforts, try to keep email campaigns regular, but not so often that they become a nuisance to the subscribers.