You’ve fired up your email marketing client, banged out a couple of hundred words of interesting, useful content to dispatch to your email subscriber list and your finger’s hovering over that “send” button. Hang on. Slow down. Ask yourself: what’s the point of this email? What am I hoping the reader will do as a result of the words of wisdom I’ve spilled here? How is sending this email going to help me build relationships, encourage conversion and eventually make sales?

If you can’t answer these questions, then cool your jets. Let’s talk about how to really make email a marketing tool instead of a communications tool.

  • Have a goal. All great marketing starts with knowing what you want to get out of each and every piece you create. If you don’t really understand what purpose a piece serves, you are wasting massive amount of time and money running after a phantom. Every single thing you do should have a clear purpose that feeds back to making more sales, improving customer experience and helping you be more awesome. For email, maybe that’s a “buy now!” link in a sidebar. Maybe it’s a clear call to action at the end to pick up the phone and call. Maybe it’s a link to your blog that gets people into the conversion cycle. There are a thousand things it could be–just make sure you know what it is.
  • Be clear about what the goal is. Don’t clutter your email with so many calls to action no one can figure out what your goal is. Make the call to action compelling and prominent. Don’t make people search for ways to contact you, buy from you, learn from you. Ask someone else to read the email–can they identify the goal? If not, back to the drawing board.
  • …but don’t push your luck. Yeah, yeah, I know I just said email marketing is all about selling, but that doesn’t mean you should be giving a hard sell. Don’t focus the entire email on why people have to buy from you. Instead, educate. Entertain. Be smart and earnest and real, and people will run down your sales funnel.

Email marketing is one of the most powerful weapons in your marketing arsenal. Do it right and the results can literally change how you run your business.

If you want to test what email marketing can do for you, sign up for a free trial of Constant Contact or AddressTwo.  Not sure which is a better fit for your business?  Give us  a call.   We can help.