Avoid Poor Contact List Managment

Have you ever received an email or postcard and thought to yourself. "why would I be getting this"? It's something that I've noticed more and more of lately and felt it was something worth addressing. Email list/contact list management is extremely important, especially when doing any type of mass emailing or mailing.

Grouping your contacts:
It's extremely important when you are running a business that you group your contact lists. Make sure that your customers are in one list, your vendors in another, and your family and friends in yet another. You don't want to be sending sales emails to vendors and funny jokes to customers. The best and probably easiest way to do this is to group your contacts by well defined roles such as customers, vendors, friends, wholesale, etc.

Segmenting your groups:
Now that you have your groups you'll want to look at those groups to see if they can be further segmented. For example if you have a group called customers you may need to further define those customers by type. Lets say you are a sporting goods store you may segment them into indoor, outdoor, male sports, female sports, water, hiking, biking, etc. It's not that people can't be in more then one group but you don't want people in groups they aren't interested in.

Why go through the hassle?
Why not? By grouping and segmenting your contacts you are giving yourself a better chance of matching your emailing/mailing message to the correct person. Now that you have the right message in front of the right person you stand a better chance of converting that person into a repeat customer. Think about it, if you are really into fishing and you get an email talking about the 50% off sale for all fishing gear aren't you at least somewhat interested in what they are offering? I would be. Now think about the opposite, if you get an email about swimming gear and you don't like to swim, that message is completely lost on you.

Won't it take forever to group my contacts?
It may not be a 5 minute process, but after you have the initial grouping done moving forward should be fairly painless. You can also utilize mass emailing programs that allow your visitors to select what information (group) they want to receive.

It's about good customer relations:
Grouping and segmenting your contacts is another way of making sure you are serving your customers in the best possible way. You aren't hassling them with information that doesn't make sense to them, and you make them feel like you really understand their interests.

Remember: It's about providing relevant information to customers, not bombarding them with offers they'll never use.

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Ignite MediaLLC, Ignite Your Site™
http://www.ignite-media.com/
Website Design & Development eCommerce Development Search Engine Optimization
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Is Email Marketing Effective?

Email marketing can be one of the most effective marketing campaigns that your company does. You have a captive audience that most likely has expressed an interest in your products/services before. With email marketing you are connecting to the people who want to hear from you and hopefully attracting them to purchase from you again. However there is always a right and a wrong way to do things.

How is email marketing done wrong?
Maybe wrong isn't the correct word, but not effective. One of the biggest things that I hear from clients is "Can't you just buy a list that we can email to?", and I always say "Yes, if you want to be seen as spamming and annoying!". Even if that list is suited just for you, the chances of you seeing a good response is not good. The people on that list don't know who you are, don't have any brand recall of your company, and may or may not be interested in your products/services.

Another area that tends to be a problem is the frequency of the emails. Many customers want to send out emails everyday, or every hour (ok, maybe not that often). Lets think about this for a second. How many times have you received the same email day after day after day? How many times did you just hit the delete button or the opt-out link because you were tired of seeing the emailing? I would venture to guess that is what most people will do, I know I do.

So how is email marketing done right?
Ok, again probably should use the term more effective rather then right. The most effective email campaigns are going to be those sent to people who have subscribed to your list. These people have expressed an interest in your products/services. They know what they want and they know your company already. The chances of them reading your email and taking action are much higher then that of a "cold lead".

There are some really good companies out there that offer great email marketing tools. One of them is Constant Contact. They have been around for a while and have made their product easy to use, and feature rich. When you send out a campaign using Constant Contact you can get a real time look at who has opened it, who click the links inside and who opted out. With this information you can see how effective your emailing is.

Another way to increase the effectiveness of your emailings is to specialize them. For example, lets say that you run a home goods store and you have departments for Lawn & Garden, Kitchen, Painting, and Bathroom. You can create groups within many email marketing programs so when your website visitors sign-up for your emailings they can tell you exactly what they want to get information on. You now have an even more qualified contact. This person has told you exactly what they want to possibly purchase in the future, so you can send them and all the other people in that group an email specific to that department.

Email marketing is only as effective as the time you put into it. Make sure you have a qualified list and you know what they want to get information on and your email campaigns will be very effective.

Remember: Marketing TO THEM not AT THEM.

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Ignite Media LLC, Ignite Your Site™
http://www.ignite-media.com/
Website Design & Development eCommerce Development Search Engine Optimization

Email Blasts - Do they work?

Email blasts are usually thought of in one of two ways. 1) A great marketing approach that is easy to implement and measure results or 2) Spam that people think of as a headache!

Sure, email blasts are certainly both of these things, but you ideally want people to think of your email blast as the first not the second. Done correctly email blasts can keep your customers informed and help increase business while not annoying them.

5 suggestions to keep in mind when sending an email blast:

1) Short and sweet:
Email blasts should not be filled with text about your company or anything else for that matter. They should be straight forward and to the point of the special or deal that you are pushing at that time.

2) Use a service:
DO NOT try sending out an email blast from Outlook or another email program on your own machine. Typically when you are sending out email blasts they are to more then 10 or 20 people and this can be caught in spam if not done correctly. Services such as Constant Contact are great for sending them

3) Light on the graphics:
With spam filters checking very little bit of an email these days you don't want to leave any room for error here. Images can be good, but should be used sparingly with an email. You also do not want to rely on the image being your entire message. Text is best with email, images should only be used to support, not to convey!

4) Stick to one or two offerings:
Don't fill your email with tons of savings and offerings. One or two really good specials will be more appealing. This way the email is focused and you can even segment your customers to those who have bought this type of item before.

5) Follow the Can Spam Act:
Using a service as mentioned above will most likely keep you in compliance with this act. You have to make sure people have the option to OPT-OUT and that they wanted the email to begin with. You will usually see a better response with people who wanted your email anyway.

There are certainly more things you can think about when sending an email blast, but these should get you going in the right direction.

Remember, think of how you receive emails and what you open and what you don't.

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Ignite Media LLC, Ignite Your Site™
http://www.ignite-media.com/
Website Design & Development eCommerce Development Search Engine Optimization