According to the Direct Marketing Association, email marketing can have an ROI of more than 4300! Email marketing allows you to stay in touch with your clients and potential clients even after they have moved on.

An excellent example of the importance of utilizing email marketing is the sales funnel.  It details the process by which your lead is turned into a paying customer.

As you run marketing campaigns, you will reach a specified number of people who are thrown into the top of your sales funnel as potential leads.  From there, they will be qualified and if they are interested in your product or service they will make their way down and become qualified prospects.  The last stage is to turn these prospects into paying customers.  What happens to the hundreds or even thousands of leads that never turn into prospects?  Do you just ignore them?

With email marketing you can hold onto to these leads and work with them until you can move them onto the second stage and then onto the third stage.  Not everyone will be ready to purchase your product on day one.  It may be a month or even a year before they are ready to buy.  However, with email marketing you can keep your company fresh on their minds when they are ready to finally take the plunge.

When you start on your email-marketing journey you will need to purchase a subscription to an email marketing service (Awebber, iContact, Constant Contact, MailChimp, etc.).  The greatest benefit to getting one of these services is their agreements with various ISP’s.  If you were to send a mass email out from gmail or Hotmail account your email would hit an instant brick wall and fall to pieces in your recipients spam folder.

Using a service gives you the piece of mind of knowing your email is sent and received.  Furthermore, it gives you the ability to setup a custom themed email as well as providing you with invaluable tracking information, telling you whether or not your email get’s delivered, opened, and how many actionable clicks you receive within the email.

There are 3 things that you need to ensure your email campaign is effective.

Number 1: The subject line.

The subject line is the first thing your recipient will see.  Your subject line has to speak to them and answer the all important question, “How can you solve my problem?”  Avoid subject lines that sound like spam, as people will often ignore them outright.  You want to make sure that your subject line stands out and that it speaks to your recipient.

Check out this subject line: “To People Who Want To Write, But Can’t Get Started”.  If you were a business owner who understood the necessity of blogging but struggled to write consistently, this headline might jump out to you.

Speak to your audience in terms of answering their problem and position yourself as the solution.

Number 2: The Headline

The headline is just as important as the subject line.  This is the next thing they will see after they click to open up your email.

Make sure that your headline matches your subject line.  If you are talking about how to write in your subject line don’t shift gears and talk about winning an all expense paid trip to Disneyland in the email headline and content.

Continue to talk about how you can help them get started writing.

Number 3: Don’t push your luck

The end goal of sending out emails is to make money, right?  The last thing your email should do is to invite people to take an action.  Don’t be pushy.  We have all had those emails that are very sales oriented and push and push and push us to make a purchase.

The first thing I do with those emails is scroll to the bottom and click the unsubscribe button.  Make your emails informative.  There is a principle in marketing called “Reciprocity”; it states simply, when I do something for you, you are obligated to do something for me.  If I give you valuable information that helps you be more successful, you are obligated to return the favor when I ask it of you.

So, send out your emails with useful free content and at the bottom of the email add a single line, “To get started…” After a few months, send out a sales email asking them to buy; however, be sure to do this sparingly.

If you aren’t currently using email in your marketing efforts, it’s a great time to start and can be a great way to increase your business.  By the way, if you aren’t on my mailing list, click here and sign up to get some free valuable info each month.