In our last installment on email marketing, we covered the advantages of email marketing and how to capture email addresses from visitors to your website.

Now that you are collecting email addresses from your customers, it is time to develop a plan to use them.

There are many types of email campaigns that can be implemented. Some, such as limited time offers and notices of special events, are designed to quickly drive traffic to your site. The goal with these campaigns is to increase sales over the short term.

Other email campaigns, such as newsletters and surveys, focus more on building customer loyalty and improving customer service. By establishing yourself as an expert in your field or as someone who provides top-notch customer service, you will be able to increase your customer base. This type of relationship-building marketing focuses on increasing sales over the long term.

Ideally, your email marketing strategy will include both approaches.

Take some time to think about how (and what) you’d like to communicate to your subscribers. Even more importantly, consider what kinds of content your recipients will find most useful. Put yourself in their shoes.

By providing value to your subscribers, whether it is in the form of special offers or useful content, you will ultimately find yourself with more satisfied customers and higher conversion rates. Focus on keeping your emails personal, relevant and valuable.

Some of the various ways you can utilize email communication include:

• Newsletters
• Announcements
• Notices
• Industry news
• Product tips
• Special offers & promotions
• Featured items
• New product introductions
• Holiday products & events
• Invitations
• Surveys
• Coupons
• Retention letters
• Customer service
• Welcome emails
• Requests
• Auto-generated responses to specific consumer actions

These are just some ideas to get you started. There are almost limitless ways in which you can employ email marketing. Spend some time thinking about the occasions when it makes sense for you to communicate with your customers and what you want to say to them at those moments. Next, plan an email campaign to carry out your objectives.

Your collection of customer email addresses and the permission to use them is an incredibly valuable resource. Combined with a solid email marketing plan, you can successfully grow your business while increasing customer satisfaction. In today’s economy, who among us can afford to overlook such a golden opportunity?!

Look for our continuing series on email marketing to help you create and implement a successful email marketing plan. If you ever need help, we have an experienced email marketing team and an array of email marketing services to assist you.

Our next installment will focus on design considerations. Until then, please share your ideas for email marketing strategies. What kinds of campaigns have worked well for you? Do you have ideas you’d like feedback on?

Tags: Contact Emails, e-commerce, email marketing, Marketing, online sales, sales

This entry was posted on Friday, March 6th, 2009 at 9:20 am and is filed under Email Marketing, Marketing, Web Traffic. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.