Email marketing remains one of the most cost-effective marketing tools for businesses of all sizes. It’s important to stay in contact with your customers and keep them engaged. More than ever, it’s crucial to consider email marketing as an essential part of your overall marketing strategy.

Your email or newsletter should be professionally designed—so make it visually appealing. A mistake that many companies often make is relying on cookie-cutter template or relying on a third-party copywriter to generate content for them. Be sure to write a strong headline. The subject line is also one of the most important parts of an email so it should be informative and engaging. Add value by providing tips, advices, insights and news about your products or your industry.

The success of an email campaign can be gauged by data/metrics analysis, businesses have to do more than analyze their click-through and open rates. You can use the campaign data from the campaign reports to improve the future email marketing campaigns and build upon them. There’re plenty of email marketing tools and service providers that you can use to blast out your email or e-newsletters and track the campaign success. Some of the email service providers we’ve used for our clients are Constant Contact, MailChimp, VerticalResponse and StreamSend. Each of them offers a rich user-interface that is powerful yet easy-to-use.

Once you’ve gotten a chance to review your data on the campaign reports and have learned that you have gotten little or no response to an offer or promotion, it may be a better idea to adjust your campaign to offer something different or tweak your message accordingly to make it more compelling and engaging. However, if you get an overwhelming positive response in a certain promotion, you should capitalize on that and continue to develop a more narrow email marketing campaign that really focuses on that promotion.

Stay educated and comply with email marketing and anti-spam regulations. Here are a few pointers for planning successful email marketing promotions that won’t get in trouble with anti-spamming laws:

• Only send email to people who have previously subscribed or consented to receive it from you.
• Use a subject line that accurately reflects the email content.
• Include a full physical mailing address.
• Be sure to include an “unsubscribe” link to allow the recipients to opt out if they’d like.

When preparing your next email marketing campaign, remember that people buy products and services from companies they trust. One email promotion will not be able to fully establish the relationship just yet, but it can be a first step. Be consistent and send your email or e-newsletter regularly.

If you ever need help with your next email marketing campaign, contact us.