Make Emails Work for Your Small Business

Cold emailing is not as awkward as cold calling, but it still can be a frightening thing to do. A well-written cold email could be the key you need to get into contact with employers, celebrities, speakers, and just about anyone else you want to contact. You might be trying to reach out to one particular person you want to partner with or you might be trying to sell your product to two dozen people you met at a conference. Either way, cold emails are a fast and simple way of communication.

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Unfortunately, it is often very difficult to find a way to get somebody to notice your email amongst dozens of other messages. Most people have countless spam emails in their inbox that they never read and they might disregard your email in the same way. Here are some tips you can use to make cold emails work for you:

Keep it Short and Sweet

Re-Engage Your Email Subscribers

The point of an email list is to engage with the people on it, and to build a relationship with each person. Ultimately the point of the relationship is to make sales - either to the person on the list, or through them to people they know.

That said, if a person on your list is not engaging with you by at least opening your emails (hopefully reading the content and clicking on the links) at least some of the time, you're wasting your effort and their time by continuing to email them. You should periodically "wash" your email list by attempting to re-engage with the individuals and, if that doesn't work, removing them from your list. A small, dedicated and engaged audience is better than a larger audience that doesn't give a damn about you.

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This describes a re-engagement sequence. I use this sequence for my own lists, as well as the lists of my clients. You can build a sequence in every major Email Service Provider/list management tool.

Effective Email Marketing in Seven Steps

Email marketing is an effective way to keep in touch with your existing customers, prospects, and networking contacts. When partnered with a strong inbound marketing program (including local SEO and social media), it's a great tool to generate new leads and revenue, thereby growing your business.

However, in order to be as powerful as it can be, you'll want to design your email marketing campaign in such a way that it 1) gets through the spam and junk filters of your recipients, 2) is compelling enough to be opened and read, and 3) incites action and qualifies a lead (i.e., a phone call or email reply).

Below are seven easy steps you'll need to follow to make your email marketing campaign a success:

7 Easy Steps for Successful Email Marketing Campaigns

1. Define your campaign objective(s) as clearly as possible.