Create Your Business: Email Marketing

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This article will tell you what email marketing is, who does it, why they do it, and why you should think about doing it yourself.

We're all familiar with spam mail and every one of us has to go through that depressing morning ritual every time we switch on the computer. You know the one. We fire up the email programme we're using, sigh at the titles of the unsolicited mails that have slipped through the net, and spend several minutes deleting. It sometimes feels like the only email you're getting is junk email trying to sell you stuff you'd never buy in a million years.

But don't forget the good mails and newsletters you get. The offers you look forward to seeing from your favourite online sellers. The funny and interesting articles you enjoy reading sent by sites you have bookmarked. We all like getting email, so long as it's email we've actually requested.

That's the topic of this article. It's all about opt-in or permission-based email marketing.

Marketing by email often takes the form of regular (weekly, bi-weekly, monthly…) newsletters. Or you might have offers or vouchers people can use. It's an agreement, you might say, between the sender ('I'm going to send you some good information and you're not going to mind too much the little bit of sales pitch I'll throw in from time to time') and recipient ('I'll either ignore or zip through your sales pitch and won't delete my subscription, so long as what you're sending me is interesting').

Sounds like a pretty good, two-way deal, right? Have you ever thought about doing this yourself? No? Well, maybe it's time.

There are many reasons why you would want to market yourself and your business using email. Here's a quick checklist of some of them:

1. Sending an interesting email with useful content will improve the relationship between you and your customers.

2. Well-crafted emails can, for a very small amount of money, enhance the image of your company.

3. Customers who are loyal to you (point 1) and think you're a company that's going places (point 2) will give you more business.

4. Emails can, in a viral way, spread out and introduce you to a huge number of potential customers.

5. Sending them is free; setting them up professionally is surprisingly inexpensive.

6. They are easy to track. You can tell who opened the emails and what they clicked on. That's extremely useful information.

7. Emails are immediate. You get instant feedback on how well you've done your job by seeing the percentage of emails opened.

8. It's easy to set up 'autoresponder' emails. If you have a seven-day email course on something you're offering in return for signing up to your newsletter, for example, you can set everything up in minutes.

9. Email marketing is earth-friendly. Don't laugh, it's important! If you want to be cynical about it, think of it as a public relations free bonus. Paperless marketing.

10. Most important. Emails push your message out. SEO and having a fantastic website is fine, but websites are essentially passive forms of marketing. You have to wait for people to come and look at you. Emails put you front and centre.

I hesitated for a good 18 months before starting email marketing. Didn't know if I'd have enough content and thought it might be too expensive. But after I finally looked into it, I was surprised at how inexpensive and easy it was.

Why not give it a try?

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