3 Email Secrets to Help Your Small Business Marketing

Is there really a secret to using an email marketing autoresponder system for your small business?

I have been a user of autoresponder systems for over ten years now and I admit that the first few weeks that I operated my own autoresponder system, I did not understand most of its uses and benefits. After two months of use, I started to see how surprisingly they helped my business. I had increased sales and an increased number of site visitors who were in turn converted to subscribers.

Autoresponders allow me to automatically send messages to my subscribers in my own predetermined time. I can even greet them on their birthdays or during other special occasions. All I do is set the system to do this. It gives me a greater chance to connect with my subscribers - to make them feel special. With this, I have gained and retained more and more customers.

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I really believe that each entrepreneur in whatever business he is undertaking should use this system. Let me share with you some autoresponder secrets - what they are and how you use them.

Goals - What does an autoresponder do?

1.) Builds a long-lasting relationships with your customers and subscribers.

2.) It allows you to send the most unique and engaging emails about your business.

3.) It heightens your sales and the number of visitors.

How To link Your Small Business Email Marketing to a Marketing Funnel

What is a Marketing Funnel?

The idea of a funnel is used to illustrate the process a potential client goes through as they become familiar with your products or services.

Visually, clients enter the funnel at the widest part, the top, then proceed to descend, stage by stage, leaving at the level they lose interest.  What you end up with at the bottom are the final few who have purchased and love your product or service.  These are the clients that will keep coming back

Your goal is to raise the number of potential clients that enter the top and lower the number that loses interest at each stage.

To accomplish this, you will need to have a conversion tactic for each stage.

There are a few different Funnel maps out there that vary in their vocabulary but each basically means the same thing, for the sake of this article, we’ll go with the following terms:

• Awareness
• Engagement / Interest
• Discovery
• Purchase / Conversion
• Loyalty / Retention
• Advocacy

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Using Email Marketing to Get a Client All the Way to the Bottom

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.

Why Email Marketing is good for Small Businesses

Email happens to be among the most effective ways of marketing which in the end bring outstanding results. 

The best thing about email is that apart from being effective, it does not cost much therefore suiting even small businesses. It is actually the most used methods of marketing among small business owners. 

The main advantages it has for small businesses include the following:

It is affordable

Email marketing is cost effective and enables you to reach a wide number of potential customers at once. It does not require any postage expenses or materials to make it happen and you can easily do it and within a very short time. For instance, after creating a precise but attractive message, you can then send it to all the targeted people at once.

It is effective

Email marketing is effective in the manner that you are able to make proactive communication to existing customers as well as potential ones without having to passively wait for their response at the storefront. Email also allows you to target the right interests, lists and sources to make sure you achieve your full potential.

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It is easy

Email Marketing: The Benefits of This Small Business Marketing Method

In this digitalised world, technology has made it very easy to reach your targeted audience.

Small business owners are always looking for marketing that is credible, measurable and cost-effective!

Email marketing is imperative for the success of a business. What problem most businesses face? Simply said, most businesses don't know how to do it right. Picking the best online marketing software for mass email has a direct impact on the success of your marketing campaign.

What is Email Marketing?

Email marketing is a term defining the action of businesses sending a message. This message is sent to a group of people through the electronic mail. It includes advertisements, sales or solicitation. Any email that helps in generating customer loyalty and trust in the product. Therefore, email is an efficient way to stay in touch with your customers and promote your business.

Moreover, with the help of small business email marketing, you can easily reach a wider range of clients. This saves money and time and provides a go-to database you can tap into when you have a special promotion or product announcement. It can be said that there is no guarantee that your message will reach 100% of your targeted audience, but then again no online marketing can guarantee that.

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Let's take a look at 10 reasons why sending email tops any form of online marketing. 

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.

Email Marketing: Are You Actively Engaging Your Customers?

In today's marketplace, you need to be a bit more creative than your competition to ensure you're driving sales. Let's face it, if you're selling tangible goods, from a retail storefront, you've got to do all you can do to make certain, those customers return.

Honestly, pretty much anything you sell, could likely be found online. And, quite often, the price of the goods will be less than what you are selling for, and can be shipped to their doorstep in a matter of days. So, other than instant gratification for the purchase, what are you doing to bring them in and keep them coming?

You may have an appealing looking establishment, great products and a friendly staff, which is all good, but, what else do you have going for you? You really need to engage your customers. One great way to do that is have an email signup sheet on the counter. Let them know that those on the email list will get special promotions, early notifications of sales and, at times, special discounts. Make certain that they know that you protect their privacy and will never share their information with anybody.

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Email Marketing: 4 Tips for Effective Emails

Just like social media, email marketing has become a staple in how businesses drive sales and retain customers. Creating an effective email marketing campaign can result in significant increases in sales, retention, and customer satisfaction. 

>Want to know more? Join our live email marketing training webinar on Wednesday 23rd August. Click here for details<<

Follow these four tips to start sending effective emails today:

Catchy Subject Lines 

Deliver Powerful Sales Messages for Your Business with Email Marketing

There are a lot of marking platforms out there that small businesses have used and embraced. It really depends on what type of SME you are running to determine what works best for you. We recommend Email Marketing.

WHAT IS EMAIL MARKETING?

Most businesses email customers from time to time, usually when they have a special event or just to answer queries or respond to complaints.

Customers need to be taken on a journey from the customers’ point of view, from telling the new customer about the range of products or services you offer through to thanking them for a purchase and updating them on offers or promotions.

>Want to know more? Join our live email marketing training webinar on Wednesday 23rd August. Click here for details<<

YOU NEED TO ASK YOURSELF THE FOLLOWING QUESTIONS:

7 Reasons for Small Businesses to Embrace Email Marketing

1.       THEY WANT YOUR EMAILS!

·         Research shows that 72% prefer to be contacted via email rather than any other marketing method.

·         As long as your content engages your readers they will be happy to receive your messages, if not, there has to be an ‘unsubscribe’ option at the bottom of your messages.

2.       EMAIL MARKETING IS COST EFFECTIVE!

·         Yes, you may have to pay for using the chosen autoresponder system such as AWeber, you may have to pay a copywriter to put together your email sequence but you don’t have any advertising or postage costs! Once set up, you can send a daily email if that suits your business.

>Want to know more? Join our live email marketing training webinar on Wednesday 23rd August. Click here for details<<

3.       IT HELPS BUILD YOUR BRAND! 

7 Ways To Make Your Subscribers Love Your Emails

Email marketing is still the single most effective form of online marketing. People check email frequently throughout the day and read, respond and buy things due to emails sent.

Email addresses are special and personal. When someone gives you their email address use it wisely. When you have a specific email list, you can add value to the lives of your subscribers very easily by delivering them information that is important to them.

But email inboxes are busy. You want your emails to be read and for your audience to actually look forward to getting an email message from you. Here are 7 ways you can create effective email marketing messages.

30 Free email templates here ow.ly/5U0l30daA29

1. Personalise

Putting your subscriber's name at significant points in your email message can bring the information home in new way. You want each email to sound personal to the recipient instead of like a mass email. But don't over use personalisation as it can get a bit creepy when you read it.

2. Invite Your Subscribers To Other Channels

33 Tips For Increasing Profits From Email Marketing

Speaking to someone through an email message is the next best thing to calling them. Used correctly, it's a way into their heart and can bind them to you for multiple years and transactions to come.

But sadly, most marketers are truly terrible at email marketing. That's why I've compiled this list of the 33 best email marketing tips to double and possibly even triple you profits - sometimes overnight.

1. One of the goals of the very first email is to set the tone of things to come.

Let them know how often you will be emailing, what you'll be sending and what's in it for them. If you're going to be selling, tell them up front by making it clear you will from time to time be recommending products you think will be tremendous assets to them. Basically, you want them to know:

A. You'll be sending great info they can use and will enjoy

B. You'll be sending recommendations, and if that is going to blow their minds, they should unsubscribe now. This will save you aggravation later and sets the stage to allow you to sell (in the right way) to your heart's content.

2. From the very first email, try to get replies. 

The Advantages of Email List Building

Marketing is essential for today's small business owners to survive. Email list building is now considered one of the most important tools used for Internet marketing. Nothing is more cost effective and instant like sending an email. Building data lists can be defined as the process of creating a database that consists of potential individuals who are interested in the same niche of your website.

Therefore it can also be considered as gathering contacts as much as possible, "that are interested in your product or service". Email list building is recognised as a process which consumes a lot of time and money. However, there are some methods to engage in list building without large amounts of money for services.

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7 Tips For Great Email Subject Lines

Writing relevant email headlines are crucial for getting people to read what you have to say. Get these wrong and your open rates will be very poor indeed. People need to open your emails to read and gain value from what's inside. So, here are seven tips to help you to come up with powerful and effective email headlines...

Tip #1: Keep the line length short. I've played around with subject line length and have concluded that the longer they are the less effective they become when it comes to email open rates.

Here's what I've found: the ideal subject line length is between two and five words. Five words are at the top end of subject line length. If at all possible, use four words rather than five as that tends to be more effective.

In fact, a subject line length of just two words is often the most effective in boosting email open rates.

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Tip #2: Use lowercase instead of capitals.

Email Marketing Etiquette to Get Yours Opened and Read

You can reassure your prospective customers that the emails you send are safe and reliable by following a few simple email marketing etiquette rules:

1. Don't Sensationalise the Headline

The default setting for Yahoo, AOL, Gmail, and the other popular email providers is to show who the sender is and the headline. In some instances, the first few words of the email text itself will appear on the user's email queue.

That makes the headline the first important element of your email. If it is overly exaggerated, makes extraordinary claims, or is otherwise sensational, there's a better chance that the email will either be sent directly to the "Spam" folder or deleted by the user without being read.

How To Build An Email List Using Nothing But Blog Posts

How to build an email list?

A question asked by both seasoned and "newbie" email marketers alike. After all, if your email marketing is going to be successful (in other words, if it's going to make you a lot of money) then you're going to need an email list full of genuine prospects. If you fail to build an email list like this, then whatever email marketing strategy you planned on using will fail.

Now, there are numerous ways in which you can build an email list. Some involve paid advertising methods; others involve methods which allow you to build an email list for FREE.

And it's one of these free list building methods that you'll be learning about today. Specifically, how you can use a simple WordPress blog to get a ton more subscribers join your list.

What you need to do is this:

First, you need to write your daily email to your list. Once you've written it, you should then do the following:

Top 10 Internet Marketing Tips for Beginners

1. Make a YouTube channel

A YouTube channel is not only very easy to make but also easy to manage. According to most internet marketers, video is the future of traffic as it continues to grow at a rapid pace year after year. So if you are not into blogging yet, you may begin your internet marketing journey by opening a YouTube channel. Additionally, you can repurpose things to your blog from your YouTube channel when your blog is up and running.

2. Build social media presence

Facebook alone has over one billion active monthly users and other social media such as Twitter, Google+, Instagram, Pinterest have hundreds of millions of users as well. Social media allow you to connect with your target audience on a whole new level.

3. Create your personal blog/website 

The Power of the Email Marketing Pivot

If you have an email address, you're probably very familiar with e newsletters. And, as we all know, familiarity can breed contempt, which is why so many of your email marketing missives are routed directly to the spam folder. Audiences are tired of seeing the same old thing presented in the same old way. Which is why we suggest pivoting away from the traditional "two column" format to a more accessible and easily digestible "links only" newsletter.

Most email marketing efforts involve a very traditional newsletter in the two-column format that allows you to tell a few brand stories, offer a content marketing resource, and maybe include one of your popular blog posts, space permitting. But, imagine if you radically overhauled your format, moving away from the standard design to what can best be described as a "links only" format.

5 Tips For Successful Email Marketing For Small Businesses

As the owner of a small business, it is extremely important to keep in touch with your clients. Email marketing is a great way to maintain a good relation with your customers and to build your business. Consider the following tips for successful email marketing:

1. KEEP A VERY DETAILED AND SEGMENTED LIST: 

Maintaining a proper list of all the email addresses is extremely important for your business. Email addresses can be key to the success of your business, losing them is the last thing you will want. If you are just starting out and new to email marketing, then it is advisable to maintain an Excel sheet. Also make some categories in the lists. Different kinds of customers may require different kind of emails. If you have some customers who have signed up for a free trail on any of your products, then they will need different messaging from the ones who have already purchased something from you.

2. WRITE A CONCISE AND ENGAGING CONTENT: