Email marketing is a great marketing technique for small businesses. Whether used for keeping in touch with existing clients or generating new leads, email marketing can be a cost effective tool in your marketing toolbox.

However, like many new technologies, it can be a case of “easy to do – easy to do badly.”

Planning is an essential part of any email marketing campaign, and here’s a checklist to help you to plan a successful email marketing activity.

Email marketing checklist:

Building Your Email Lists

1. Do you request an email address on every form that your customers and prospects complete?
2. Do you request an email address when visitors register on your website?
3. When asking for an email address, do you also ask permission to email them?
4. Do you have a system and procedure for collecting and storing your email addresses?
5. Do you have a privacy policy stating how you will use email addresses (such as we do not sell lists)
6. If you are considering renting an email marketing list from a list broker, have your reviewed the quality of the list?

Developing Your Email Marketing Content

1. Have you defined the goals of your campaign: examples include generating enquiries, click through to website, downloading a white paper.
2. Does your planned message pass the WIIFM test – “What’s In It for Me?”
3. Could recipients of your planned message think you are just sending advertising or junk?
4. Have you considered the benefits and drawbacks of sending either a plain text message, or one in HTML?
5. Have you reviewed the appearance of your email message in the Outlook Preview Pane?
6. Does your Subject line grab the reader’s attention without looking like spam?
7. Does your From line include your company name or brand, and a genuine email address?
8. Do you have a clear Call to Action?
9. Have you proofread your message before sending it out, checking spelling and grammar?Do you test your message, sending to a friendly audience before you broadcast generally?
10. Have you provided a way for readers to unsubscribe?
11. Do you have a process to clean up your email address list, including bounces and unsubscribes?
12. Have you personalised the message?
13. Have you identified yourself fully in your message, including complete contact details?
14. Have you created a landing page for this email campaign, if required

Measuring Your Success

1. Do you measure how many people unsubscribe to your mailing?
2. Do you keep track of how many people open your email message?
3. Do you keep track of how many people click on the links in your email message?
4. Do you provide a link to forward this email to a friend or colleague?

And of course, once you have broadcast your campaign, learn from your experience and test new techniques in your next broadcast.

We all know about email marketing. It is a cost effective, powerful tool of direct marketing to sell your product, advertise your company or to get new customers and so on. However email marketing in b2b is different from b2c. The main differences are as follows:

1. One of the biggest difference is that in b2b, email campaigns have led to lead generation but not an immediate sale. In b2bc, a click can lead you to the home page, and then within minutes you reach the shopping cart, which is the prime objective. This is not so fast in B2B. There is always a time gap from click to sale in b2b. Often many months are required to close a sale on a lead gathered through an email campaign. The mail must be combined with other communications both online and offline, sales representative’s follow up, a PDF attachment with the mail, a face-to-face meeting etc.

2. In B2B email marketing, the target audience, for example, “you” offer valid information about your company. The B2B email marketer, will provide access to an informative and useful guide or white paper. In B2C, if the email recipient enters name, mailing address and phone in response to a B2C promotion, it is evident that the product can be shipped immediately. In both cases, permission is important. In B2B information may be kept private but in B2B you have to be ready with your answer whether to opt in or opt out.

3. In both b2b and b2c email marketing, you should write the subject line that define a compelling message for your target audience and deliver it in the right voice.

4. The number and quality of rental email lists available also donot match in B2B and B2B . The more targeted and less techie your audience, the less number of B2B lists exist. Here in the list you get detailed information about the prospect and his company, like size, annual revenue, job function etc. Out-of-date email addresses is a big problem in B2B than in B2C. The business email address is untraceable once that person leaves company A for company B if the return path is not mentioned.

5. The more interesting option is always B2B. It is more interesting than B2C. The step-by-step process of forcing a prospect down the path to close on the sale of an expensive product or service is complex. The retail sale is not very exciting.

Email marketing is dead, or so they say. And if you are talking about the kind of email marketing where someone pounds their list with a new offer every day of the week, they might be right. That kind of email is dying the death it deserves.

But if you are interested in serving your list and profiting in the process, then email marketing is alive and very well.

And so to that end, here are 7 Universal Laws for Subject Lines that get your emails opened and read.

The Law of Boring – The very worst thing you can do in a subject line is be boring. Since the subject line is what gets your reader to open your email, a boring subject line will chase them away quickly.

It’s the difference between “I have a new article for you” vs. “Discover 4 Tips You Never Knew for Prospect Pulling TeleSeminar.”

The Law of Benefit – The very best thing you can do in a subject line is include benefits. Your email recipient is asking the question “What’s in it for me if I open this email.” Your job is to answer that question in a way that leaves no doubt.

How about “Come to my next teleseminar on Thursday” vs. “I’ll reveal 4 of my personal strategies for product creation on this call.”

The Law of Numbers – When you tell your prospect how many of something they will get, your email will be opened more often. And it better to use the numeral “4” than to spell out the word “four.”

In the example of above, “I’ll reveal 4 of my personal strategies for product creation on this call” is stronger than “I’ll reveal my personal strategies for product creation on this call.”

The Law of Question – Questions are stronger than statements. Which would you open faster? – “Here are three mistakes most online marketers make” of “Which of these 3 deadly mistakes are you making in your online marketing.”

The Law of Psst! – If you really want to get someone’s attention, say “Pssst! Hey (first name)! Here are your dial in details for the call.”

The Law of Invitation – Let’s say you want to send out a reminder about a webinar you are doing at 8 pm. You could say “Remember, the webinar starts at 8 tonight. Don’t be late” or “Are you joining me tonight at 8”

The Law of Fun – Please have fun with this. The law of fun is the opposite of the law of boring. The more fun you can make your subject lines, the more your emails will get opened.

If you appreciate quick, simple and free marketing tools, you’ll love this solution! One easy, and often overlooked, way to promote your business is through your email signature.

An email signature is the basic contact information about you and your business placed at the end of your emails. It can also be referred to as a signature file or block.

Every email you send should include your “customized” signature file. Most email software allows users to set up a signature so it will automatically display at the end of every email you send. It only takes a few minutes to set up, and puts your signature file on autopilot.

Now that email communication is commonly used and accepted for conducting business around the world, why not turn your email signature into a dynamic marketing tool for you and your business?

In addition to letting your clients and prospects know how to get in touch with you, here are six simple ways you can customize your signature block and turn it into an effective marketing tool:

– Include your tag line. By putting your tag line in your signature file you create brand and customer awareness about you and your company, and what you can do for them.

– Include Your USP. Adding your unique selling proposition (USP) will help your email recipients connect you with your products and services every time they open your emails. This keeps you “top of mind” with your clients, and also helps them identify others who may need your help, resulting in more referrals.

– Include a link to a special offer or product. When you include an active link to a special offer, or product in your signature file it can help increase your sales.

– Include a link to your mailing list. By simply adding the active link to the sign-up page for your newsletter, special report, or other free gift your custom signature can help you build your mailing list.

– Include a link to your website. Besides having your signature file send the recipient to your website, you never know who or when your email might be forwarded to others so there is also the potential for driving new traffic to your website.

– Include a call to action. If you want your email recipient to click through to your website, special offer, product, or mailing list, you’ll want to include a call to action.

A few words of caution: Limit your signature block to no more than six or seven lines. Anything too big and cumbersome might take away from your email message. If you are thinking of including a logo or picture, be aware that some email programs block images. Last, include only one or two active links. Too many links can be confusing for the recipient, and you want to give them one obvious choice.

You might want to update and customize your signature file every 30, 60 or 90 days by alternating promotions, or re-framing your USP. You can even test them to see which one works the most effectively and produces the best results.

How can you use your email signature as part of your marketing strategy?

You may be missing a lot of potential new customers if you bury your email sign-up form in the bottom footer section of your home page.

It's a mistake to underestimate the buying power of a well-targeted subscriber list of people who have given you their permission to send them emails.

Remember, too, that email lists degrade over time as people may stop using their email addresses or un-subscribe from your list. Therefore, you need continuously add new ones to keep your subscriber list fresh and responsive.

Make sure you use a professional email list management program to handle the whole subscription and delivery process while protecting you from spam complaints.

Let's say you already have a growing reputation for writing engaging and helpful information.

And you are amassing a following on social media, too. Why not vigorously build and monetize your email marketing list? That way, you can continue offering valuable content that your audience wants to read, as well as earn money in return.

Here are four easy to implement ways to build your email marketing list:

1. Arrange to cross-market to the list of a non-competitive company that is in, or related to, your industry.
2. Pitch your plan of deploying emails to the subscriber list of another small business. You can offer, sometimes, a percentage of the profit in exchange. What's great about this list-building technique is that your product gets exposed to a completely different market base. Remember to avoid discriminating based on the size of the email list. Network with other entrepreneurs in online forums, and see what other ideas they can come up with in order to get more out of the joint venture.
3. Produce short how-to videos and share them on Vimeo and YouTube. The instructional material should, of course, be in line with your business. Take note that your purpose is to build your list and not to show marketing videos. Educate your potential viewers, and then entice them to sign up to your email list via posting your website URL on the video's description field. The transcripts of your instructional videos can also be turned into articles, and you can post those articles on free e-zine and online article directories. And remember to include a link to the actual instructional video within your article.
4. Write relevant and helpful articles for free e-zines. Submit short and useful articles to free article websites. Place a strong call to action on your author bio and resource box. Offer a free report, a white paper, or an eBook in exchange for the email address. That will drive traffic to your site where you can gather email addresses to build a sizable email marketing list.
5. Run a contest on your site and offer nice giveaways. The people who want to join your contest can do so by registering with their email address on your sign-up form.

So stop hiding your email sign-up form and start a campaign of providing high quality content that will bring you an exciting online income for years to come.

The holidays are now behind us and it’s time to start getting to work on your 2009 marketing campaigns . Depending on your business, there are some very important areas of promotion for you to have on your radar in the first quarter of 2009. A few marketing highlights include the Presidential Inauguration, Super Bowl, Valentine’s Day, and yes, the beginning of spring in March.

If any of these themes give you a chance to build a promotion for your business, now’s the time to start designing and developing some exciting emails for you to send your customers. Here are a few email marketing tips to help you get started:

1. Make sure your email list is up-to-date. Add any emails you need to include on the list and remove any that have unsubscribed from your previous emails.

2. Make sure you are brand compliant . If you changed anything about your company logo towards the end of 2008, make sure all of your marketing designs, including emails, now include your updated corporate look. Update business cards, Web site, in-store promotional signage, and anything else that reflects your company identity. Consistency is important.

3. Review your lead generation systems to make any necessary changes and updates. If there are new places for you to pull leads from, make sure those are going through your system.

4. Try something new or different in 2009. If you did email marketing in 2008, challenge yourself to do something different in 2009 , like embedding video, podcasts or some new and exciting promotional offers. Always challenge yourself to be even more creative with your emails.

Above all else, take the time to make your email marketing a priority . Momentum is the number one aspect of a successful email marketing campaign throughout the course of the year. And with the slow economy, your customers and potential customers need even more reasons why they should shop with you.

How have you challenged yourself for your 2009 email campaigns?

Email marketing continues to deliver the highest ROI of any advertising spend! If you’re new to channel or simply looking for pointers that could improve your results, read on for tips that are known to make a difference.

Less Can Be More

Many brands feel the need to include a lot of information about their product or service in an email advertisement. Unfortunately, this practice can cause people to lose interest. Instead, designing ads that are visually appealing and have minimal text (maybe just a sentence or two) often works better. When a campaign is straightforward but still creates a sense of intrigue, viewers are more likely to click through to the brand’s website to learn more.

Focused

An email campaign is somewhat like a meal. Each of the individual pieces should complement each other. The from line should identify the brand, the subject line should relate to the product or service offered, and the email ad copy and graphics should pull the two together. Campaigns that have a clear, cohesive message will perform the best.

Avoid Spam Words

From lines and subject lines are usually an afterthought once the campaign is designed. However, they bear more weight than you might think. In fact, one recent study showed 33% of consumers open emails based on subject line alone, so the wrong subject could cost you 1/3 of your potential customer before they even see your message. Furthermore, many email providers set filters that automatically forward emails containing certain buzzwords directly to the spam box. Before launching email advertisements, be sure to review spam wordlists and research the keywords your audience uses. Chances are, the right words will resonate and draw in the ideal customer.

Trusted Partners

Whether you work with a few different email marketing networks or decide to give an experienced affiliate exclusive access to your campaign, choosing partners strategically will improve your chances of success. Research the companies you’re considering prior to investing in their services. Also, if you’re serious about expanding your online marketing efforts, attend a few affiliate marketing tradeshows to get a deeper understanding of the tools available and leading companies within the space.

Mobile Optimize

If you’re new to email marketing (or digital marketing in general), you may not know that emails don’t display on mobile devices the same way they show up on a desktop. Thus, creative mobile-optimized versions of your campaign are an absolute must considering how many users check emails on their smartphones and tablets. Responsive ads will not only be more visually appealing to viewers, but they’ll also reflect your company’s technological competency. The brands that realize how important digital advancements are to their overall marketing strategy will likely have better results than those who opt not to make any changes.

Often when doing email promotions, it is easy to overlook the many email marketing tools that are important to the process. Many people think that sending marketing emails is all about having an autoresponder and that's it. The truth is that you need more email marketing tools than just an autoresponder to succeed as a professional marketer.

Let's look at the 4 email marketing tools every professional email marketer should have in their locker:

Tool 1 – Autoresponder Service

We'll start off with the obvious autoresponder service first. If you want to ensure that you are doing the best job possible, you will want to subscribe to a paid professional service like Aweber or Get Response.

Free autoresponders just do not cut it. Their deliverability rates are horrible, ads are often included in your emails and they only allow you to send to a very limited number of subscribers. Professional services, however, boast much higher deliverability rates as they have existing relationships with email service providers that enable most of their emails to be delivered.

Tool 2 – Tracking Service

The second tool an email marketer should get is a tracking service that allows you to track clicks and sales. Although autoresponders provide their own tracking services, these often spew out long ugly links if you are using text emails. Having such long links may reduce your click-through rates with a non-tech savvy audience, who might not like clicking on long links. A solution is to use tracking services like HyperTracker, AdTrackz, BudURL and Bit dot ly. Hypertracker and AdTrackz let you track sales for your own products as well, while BudURL and Bit dot ly only enable you to track clicks.

Tool 3 – Delivery Monitoring Service

In addition to the mandatory autoresponder and tracking service, a delivery monitoring service is an additional tool you can consider for monitoring your email campaigns. These services let you monitor the deliverability rates of your mailings.

The way this is done is that they will have a seed list of emails signed up at all the major service providers, like Gmail, Hotmail and Yahoo. You download this seed list and import it into your autoresponder. From there, you can track the deliverability rate to this seed list, which gives you a good idea of ​​how well your emails are getting delivered.

Tool 4 – Calendar

If you email your subscribers often, maintaining some sort of 'broadcast calendar' is a good idea. You can either create a simple calendar using Notepad or if you are more traditional, use an offline calendar or a notebook. Doing this helps you keep your emails campaigns organized so you do not lose track of when and what you should be mailing out.

“Now that we are doing good on social media, can’t we stop putting efforts on email marketing? This question has been asked several times, either on the internet or in some of our meetings. As a digital agency, it was somehow perceived as an insult, not to the team, nor the agency, but to online marketing in general. Each time a “new” effective platform pops-up, we need to cancel the previous one. Well that’s definitely not the way things work.

We simply answer this question with: “social media can NOT replace emails”. Here are the reasons why it doesn’t replace email marketing:

Emails are more personal than social networks

Either in B2C or B2B, communicating about an offer, a promotion or an update through Facebook, Twitter or any other social network makes the communication impersonal. When a Facebook page or a Twitter account publishes a post, it would be addressed to the general public. While in an email/newsletter, businesses can approach each individual in the contact list with the first and last name. Doing so drives more attention to the content of the email which can also result in better outcome. According to Aberdeen, “personalized emails improves CTR by 14% and conversions by 10%”.

Emails are more effective than Facebook, Twitter… etc.

The ultimate purposes of businesses being online are acquiring new customers and retaining existing ones. Many think that Facebook, being the largest social network out there, is the best place to attract new customers. However, many studies show that emails attract new customers more than any social network. In fact, according to McKinsey, emails are 40 times more effective than Facebook or Twitter for acquiring new customers. Monetate adds to this that email marketing is the channel that drives the most conversions.

Email messages have better chance to be seen than social media

Without a doubt, Facebook is the largest social network ever, and the second most populated website after Google. However, running a Facebook ad for a specific target doesn’t necessarily assure that all users, within this target, will see the ad. Yes, it’s true, this also applies to emails. But according to Radicati, an email message has 5x higher chance to be seen than a Facebook post.

Emails are DEFINITELY not dead

The statement that email subscribers don’t read their emails anymore is a total myth. To prove this, we had to refer to ChoozOn which stated that 57% of email subscribers allocate 10-60 minutes per week browsing marketing emails. A lot of you will say that Facebook, Twitter or Instagram users spend more time checking their feeds. While this statement is true, Facebook users “like” several businesses pages, and with the latest big Facebook update, they are now seeing less and less content coming organically from these business pages. And rarely will Facebook or Twitter users check a business account randomly, without any specific reason. In addition, 72% of people said they prefer to get promotional content through email, versus 17% via social media, according to MarketingSherpa.

With social networks, there’s nowhere to run

Whether on Facebook, Twitter, and recently Instagram, businesses have to run ads to promote their offers, promotions, or simply their announcement. To do that, they have to target people according to their interests, jobs, demographics… etc. Not all users who see the ad, will feel concerned or interested by it. Therefore, their newsfeed might get full of similar irrelevant ads. The only way to get rid of them is to… God forbids… quit the social networks! On the other hand, if users receive irrelevant emails, they can simply unsubscribe from the list, in a click of a button. And poof… no more emails from this sender.

In conclusion, email marketing is a big player in any online marketing strategy. But now that we have, hopefully, convinced you that social networks cannot replace emails, we hope that you won’t look down on social media marketing. Many social media agencies will agree with us when we say that every online channel has its own benefits. Therefore, collaborate with a digital agency to create a successful online marketing strategy and give every channel its right.

Email marketing is a cost-effective solution. It allows taking quick action, assessing results and improving performance over time, even with little resource investment. Taking full advantage of email marketing is possible if your email has content to encourage subscribers and looks good to take action, besides the email should actually get delivered to your subscribers.

Marketers should use email marketing so that they connect target audience. Today, different strategies are open to marketers, yet email marketing is the integral part of such campaigns offering the best ROI. Of course, it is not any silver sword. Thus, there is a need for your efforts in email marketing to be effective. Think marketing strategies and turn it around using customer behaviors. Here are some useful tips:

Personalize your Customers

A lot of marketers fail to pay attention to their customers. Human beings always like to be acknowledged personally and this is easy to do. Simply sending out emails is not going to work. In fact, use the feedback to segment the email list and make sure you segment the list. Thus provide assurance to the customers that you are going through their minds.

Transform the Sales Funnel

The journey of a customer is important within the marketing field. Mapping customer journey involves charting various touch points as to how and why the customers will tell what they are looking for. Combine relevant demographic information and customize the sales funnel depending on the customer type.

Optimize and Re-test

Always optimize and re-test various email campaigns. Effective testing helps in ascertaining the strategies and they remain potent as before. Having an email regular marketing campaign is a magic element and it boosts your ROI, but using this as the opportunity, you must not bother your customers as it becomes overkill. Customers will not always react as you expect and also do not like being bombarded every day with promotional emails. You must give a break and stay at a safe distance without giving the feel of being pestered.

Define a schedule and stick to it. If you promise they will receive a weekly email, make sure you do not cross the limit. Also eliminate the email automation that accompanies the email marketing campaign. Check feedbacks of your customers and respond respectively.

Go Mobile

Staying online is a must and email marketing has its advantages. The fact is that now people make use of the internet through mobile devices. Regardless of the device, ensure your emails are mobile optimized so that as they try reading the email, it gets adjusted automatically to fit the screen. Optimizing email suitable to go mobile is easier. Majority of emailing providers provide automatically with optimized mailing campaigns.

Final thoughts

Email marketing helps staying online and customers also like staying in contact. Remember, marketers though you have the option of email marketing, ensure to do it value. Adopt the practices of big corporate and increase the subscribe rates. Also contact in a schedule time that your customers will not miss your email and you can transform them into leads.