Email Marketing Campaign: Pros And Cons
An autoresponder is an application that creates automated email responses, in other words it is an automatic email sent in response to a certain action. A quality autoresponder will give you the ability to send more than one email and in specific intervals, even allowing customized information like names, dates, and other things to be included in the emails. There are a variety of choices for a good autoresponder company, Aweber and Getresponse being a couple of the good leaders in the industry.
The goal of this process is to promote your goods and services to potential customers via electronic mail. When done properly, this technique will eventually lead to a symbiotic relationship between you and your customers. Remember that new clients typically must see or hear about something more than half a dozen times before they finally respond by trying it out. If you plan accordingly, an email marketing campaign will guarantee your product is the one purchased. Further, if you do not burden them with unsolicited mail, customers will trust you and return to your business again and again.
When developing an email marketing campaign you should first define your goals and objectives. Is it new customer acquisition, customer retention, stronger relationships or repeating sales? Are you giving helpful information or trying to prompt a particular response? You must have a clearly defined objective in order to reach your goals, simply because your target audience will determine what message you will be broadcasting.
As part of your web-based email marketing strategy, you should remember that email content should be kept as brief and direct as possible. People are less likely to read lengthy or rambling emails. You should also avoid sending email attachments since people will rarely download them due to fear of catching computer viruses.
Try to avoid crafting emails that include complicated HTML, as spam filters are more likely to pick these up and discard them into a junk mail folder that will never be viewed. A successful email marketing campaign will include sending personalized emails. Make sure that the 'to' and 'from' slots of the email use your name and the recipient's name, rather than the names of your respective companies. Doing so will make it more likely that your emails will be opened and read; as a general rule, people open mail that is addressed directly to them or come from someone they know.
If you want your reader to open and read the mail you send, you need to develop an interesting subject line to capture your reader's attention. If your subject line does not appeal to the reader, your email will not get opened and your email marketing campaign will fail. Also, remember not to exceed 40 characters when developing your subject line.
A good autoresponder will give you the ability to place an opt-in box on your web site by cutting and pasting a simple piece of code. They will then be sent an email in which they will be required to confirm that they do in fact want to receive information from you. This is called "opting in" and is not only important, it is often illegal to send information otherwise.
Not sure which Autoresponder is right for you?
Published March 18th, 2008
Filed in Marketing





