Email Marketing - What Software Should I Use?

E-mail marketing is a great way of reminding your customers who you are, getting your brand in front of them, providing them with useful information and helpful tips as well as great deals you might be offering. How do you implement it though? That’s where a great software program can be invaluable. HIT Web Design has an easy to use and easy to understand piece of software we can install on your site called the Stay-N-Touch. After researching different options out there on the web I would have to say this is definitely the standard that all software should be judged by.

The Stay-N-Touch software tested successfully with 300,000+ mailing lists. All known e-mail lists file formats are supported so compatibility isn’t an issue. The Stay-N-Touch Marketing program includes advanced reports on mailing campaigns, click-throughs, new subscribers and more stats. It also gives you the ability to create custom forms for any mailing group, use custom fields, and custom design- the advanced online editor allows you to build cutting-edge newsletters and emails using both HTML and Text.

I will list the qualities of Stay-N-Touch and say that any software you decide to go with to help you with your e-mail marketing program needs to have these functions to be of true use to you.

• Create and manage highly targeted mailing campaigns
  Mailing list builder, newsletter editor, subscription forms, auto responders, tracking, reports and more. All in one place.
  
  
• Customization and Personalization
  Send personalized and customized emails to all recipients, groups or to custom mix of mailing groups.
  
  
• Custom fields
  Create multiple custom fields and use them in the newsletter body, mailing lists and subscription forms.
  
  
• Advanced tracking and reports
  Track mailing campaigns, click-throughs, and get detailed mailing reports.
  
  
• Automatic bounced emails
  The system will automatically move bounced email addresses to a special folder. You can make these emails active again or delete at any time.
  
  
• Multi-language support
  Supports over 50 main world languages. These include European, Asian, Arabic, Chinese, Japanese and other languages.
  
  
• Advanced auto responder
  Create a series of unlimited follow-up auto responder tasks. Choose basic, multiple or mailing campaign auto responders. Choose a start point: any date/time or deliver emails once a user joins your mailing list.
  
  
• Full support of huge mailing lists
  This software tested successfully with 300,000+ mailing lists.
  
  
• Easy-to-use interface makes administration a snap

For more information as well as a complete demonstration, please visit http://hitenhancements.com/stayntouch.shtml or call your customer service representative at 1-866-211-0743.

E-mail Marketing - Tips On a Successful Campaign

You’ve decided on an e-mail marketing campaign through your double opt-in, offering bonus services, discounts, helpful information and tips to all your customers. This can be very successful or it can be downright frustrating, and a lot of what happens with it depends on you and avoiding some common pitfalls that can take the energy out of your campaign before it even begins.

One of the first things you want to do make sure you’ve put an obvious “call to action” on your e-mail that cries out to the customer as soon as they open your e-mail; this is the same concept we talked about when creating your website. You want to make it as easy as possible for your customer to buy from you so in order to capture their attention you need to provide them with an easy to understand opportunity to buy as soon as they see your message. If a customer doesn’t see what you want them to do they usually won’t search; they will close that email and go on to the next one. Also make it easy for them to understand what they are getting out of doing what you’ve asked them to, otherwise, what is their motivation?

Another tip is to make the e-mail (if it is an HTML based e-mail especially) consistent with your corporate look, website and other marketing, no matter what media it is. This helps with branding and helps your customer understand immediately it is message from you. Inconsistency in marketing messages can look ‘messy’ and can have a detrimental effect on the message you are trying to convey as well as an overall harmful effect on your corporate image. It makes you look unprofessional, inconsistent and can portray you as an entity that can’t be trusted. A unified look in marketing efforts provides instant branding as well as a sense of security in the reliable look.

You should also be consistent with the times you send out e-mail messages. If you do it too frequently you will run the risk of alienating your customers, but not often enough and they forget who you are. There is no real rule about it but putting your name out there in front of your customers at least once a month should be considered your minimum. Any other kind of time line will have to be determined by you and how often you feel your customers need to hear from you or can tolerate yet another marketing message.

For more information, please visit http://www.hitwebdesign.com or call 1-866-211-0743.

E-mail Marketing - How To Do It Right

As I mentioned in Friday’s web log, E-mail marketing is an extremely efficient means of keeping yourself in touch with your customers. You can use it to give your customers helpful hints and tips, answer frequently asked questions, as well as provide you with opportunities to get your products out there in front of your customer base, introduce new products and generally keep your brand in front of them in a helpful, non-intrusive and generally inexpensive way. But how do you get that list of customer e-mails to begin with? If you’ve sold to them, as part of the process you can ask them for their e-mail address, but it is critical that you ask the customer if it is OK for you to send them e-mail messages from time to time, otherwise you run the risk of alienating them. But how do you get e-mail addresses from people who haven’t purchased from you but may be interested in what you have to offer? There is a simple way that is easy to implement on your site and relatively inexpensive; it is called confirmed subscription opt-in, or, the “double opt-in”.

Confirmed subscription opt-in or double opt-in is a method for those seeking information from you to confirm with you that it is actually them asking to be included on your mailing list. The customer or potential customer fills out a short form on your website asking to be included in your mailing list. Once they submit the form, the form sends them an email that they have to respond to in order to complete the subscription. They are confirming, twice, that they actually want to receive the e-mails from you that you send out, be it informational, marketing or otherwise. This prevents anyone from posing as someone else and entering their email address as one that wishes to receive the information you send to your email list, be it marketing information, FAQ’s, a newsletter or sales opportunities. The potential abuser may put in a second parties email but doesn’t control that person’s email address therefore eliminating this particular scam. Not only does it confirm that they want to receive information, it is also a way of confirming that someone is likely to spend money with you and is genuinely interested in your products or services.

For more information, please visit http://www.hitwebdesign.com or call 1-866-211-0743.

E-mail Marketing - What It Is

E-mail marketing is an enormously effective tool to keep yourself in touch with your customers when utilized in a legal (non-spam) way, and can benefit your customers as well as provide you with opportunities to get your products out there in front of your existing customer base, introduce new products and generally keep your brand in front of them in a positive and cost effective way. Depending on how effective and helpful you make the message you’re trying to get across you can significantly increase your bottom line. In reality e-mail marketing is so inexpensive even if it doesn’t have a significant return; almost any amount of return becomes worthwhile.

The great thing about e-mail marketing campaigns is it doesn’t matter what size business you are, it is just as effective for a small business as it is for a large business; in fact, sometimes it benefits a small business considerably more. A good e-mail opt-in database can be worth infinitely more than what you spend on it to begin with as it can be used in so many different ways. Not only can you use it to get a marketing message across, you can use it as an ambassador of good will to your customers, sending them out helpful hints and tips, as well as utilizing it to follow up with customers who have purchased from you lately. It can have many, many different uses. However, with all that said let’s examine and define exactly what a decent e-mail marketing campaign is, and what it isn’t.

Wikipedia defines E-mail marketing as –

E-mail marketing is a form of direct marketing which uses electronic mail as a means of communicating commercial or fundraising messages to an audience. In its broadest sense, every e-mail sent to a potential or current customer could be considered e-mail marketing. However, the term is usually used to refer to:

• Sending e-mails with the purpose of enhancing the relationship of a merchant with its current or previous customers and to encourage customer loyalty and repeat business,
• Sending e-mails with the purpose of acquiring new customers or convincing current customers to purchase something immediately,
• Adding advertisements to e-mails sent by other companies to their customers, and
• Sending e-mails over the Internet, as e-mail did and does exist outside the Internet (e.g., network e-mail and FIDO).

You can find that definition at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-mail_marketing. This definition pre-supposes that you are not e-mailing people that haven’t asked to be included in your mailing list. Sending unsolicited e-mail is called ‘spam’ - so what is the difference between e-mail marketing and spam? E-mail spam is defined loosely as unsolicited, bulk, commercial e-mail. Most people find e-mail spam to be distasteful at best.

HIT Web Design offers an easy to use email marketing program called Stay-N-Touch. For more information on Stay-N-Touch, please visit http://hitenhancements.com/stayntouch.shtml or call 1-866-211-0743.