Small Business Email Marketing Applications For the Do It Yourself Type Business Person

Building a successful relationship with your customers and potential customers can be handled with ease by using email marketing applications. Small Biz Trends has complied a list of 30 applications to help small business owners who are “do it yourself” type people.

Check out the list here.

Tips For Effective Email Marketing For Small Businesses

There are many benefits of e-mail marketing for small businesses: low costs, high conversion rates and detailed tracking are all notable features. Consumers are becoming increasingly savvy on the differences between spam and permission-based emails, and more and more of them are accepting permission-based e-mail marketing as a positive replacement for direct mail.

Jupiter Research reports effective email marketing campaigns can produce nine times the revenues and 18 times the profits of broadcast mailings. But crafting an effective business email is both an art and a science. Here is a list of factors, potential problems and effective solutions to keep in mind:

Spam!
No one likes to open their inbox to email upon email of spam. So how can you avoid spamming your subscribers? Remind your subscribers to add you to their “safe senders” list. The second, and most important, tactic is to make sure your email marketing service provider has a good relationship with ISPs. This will ensure that your email marketing campaigns go into your subscribers’ inboxes, not their junk mail folders. When choosing an email marketing software, make sure the company has strict anti-spam policies and complies with the guidelines of Can-Spam.

Images and formatting
Some subscribers will not be able to see your images or their email provider may have images and HTML coding blocked. With many email marketing service providers, you have the option of sending the email with images and HTML coding or as plain text to avoid this problem. Also pay attention to the number of characters per line to avoid causing your subscribers to have to scroll from left to right to read your email.

Personalization and relevant content
In a business e-mail, one size does not fit all. Personalize the email to your subscribers and give them content they are interested in reading. Always make sure your company name is in the “from” field so subscribers know the email is being sent by you and your business. The subject line is also very important. Subscribers are more likely to open your email if the subject line contains discount offers and interesting news as the most compelling subject lines, or new product announcements and free shipping offers.

Click-through and conversion
So the user has opened your email and read the content. Great. But where’s the sale? There’s good news here. Consumers are increasingly likely to make purchases as a direct result of a business email campaign. This is especially more likely to occur when you have built a relationship with your subscribers.

Stats tracking
To know how effective your email campaigns are working, you need to have statistics to track. Real-time tracking is now an industry standard, and it’s highly valuable, as it allows you to see the exact moment a user opens your campaign, clicks on your link and makes that purchase. Studying your users can help you improve your communications efforts, so each campaign performs better than the last (several email service providers also let you compare the performance of your campaigns).

Following these essential rules of play, you should soon be reaping the same major results as so many other online and offline businesses.

Dynamic Web Options can provide customized online marketing solutions to help your small business marketing needs. Contact us today to find out more. Whatever your business goals may be, Dynamic Web Options can help you combine the power of internet marketing with offline marketing to increase sales and profit.

3 Benefits To Using A Newsletter For Your Small Business Marketing

Your small business can reap many benefits from having a newsletter to offer to your current customers or potential clients. See the top three reasons why you should offer an ezine (electronic magazine) to your mailing list subscribers to help increase your profits and utilize this effective form of small business marketing.

Continued Contact

Without your customers, you would have no business. Keeping in contact with your clients enables you to continue your relationship with them. You will also have the opportunity to easily offer discounts, coupons, special subscriber only sales, introduce new products or services, and encourage referrals.

Gain New Customers

Using an ezine can assist in turning a one time visitor to your web site or store into a client for life. People tend to shop around and compare companies, products or services before deciding to purchase. If these same people see that you offer a free newsletter, you are giving them an opportunity to learn additional information about your business and products or services. Once you have shown them how great your company is, you will have them hooked.

Show Your Expertise

You know your business inside and out. No one else knows more about this than you. You are the expert. Grow your relationship with your clients by sharing some of your knowledge and win over potential clients by showing you have the answer to their problems.

Running your business does not leave you with much time for an additional marketing technique; however, offering an e-zine for your subscribers can be very profitable. Just keep in mind the following tips:

• Keep it short – include a tip or two, some information about a product or service, and offer a coupon or discount.

• Send it out weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly. More often than that will tend to aggravate your subscriber base and possibly cause them to unsubscribe.

• Write several ezines at one tip and set them up to be sent them out automatically on your desired dates. You could even write a year’s worth at one time.

• Offer easy sign up form on your website for your subscribers.

Begin using this effective small business marketing technique and realize the potential increased profits you could be receiving.

Dynamic Web Options can provide customized online marketing solutions to help your small business marketing needs. Contact us today to find out more. Whatever your business goals may be, Dynamic Web Options can help you combine the power of internet marketing with offline marketing to increase sales and profit.