by Josh Sommers Posted: January 29, 2010
Successfully marketing yourself and your business is all about multiple touch points. With so many marketing vehicles — like direct mail, print and broadcast, e-mail is a medium that can be part of a winning marketing program. But the initial steps of setting up your program are the most important.
Contact list is key
Building a database of e-mail contacts is easier said than done. Firstly, make it a priority to build a business contact list.
Every time you make a new connection, put their e-mail and other information, into your contact database. In addition, you likely belong to organizations like local chambers of commerce or other business and networking groups. Oftentimes, access to their database, including e-mail, is part of your membership — or can be, for a nominal fee.
When promoting yourself via e-mail blasts to contacts, you don’t want to become a spammer — those parasites that indiscriminately send junk mail to anyone they can.
Besides creating an e-mail database of people that are relevant to you, successful e-mail campaigns provide receivers of your message with an option to opt out of future e-mails from you.
This is an important compliance step that, if you don’t follow, will shut your program down cold. In fact, without an opt out, major Internet providers could quickly ban your IP address from all of their users.
Then it’s not only “game over” for your e-mail marketing; it creates another set of problems for you and your company for day-to-day operations.
Services can handle database
The most widely-used e-mail marketing solutions for small and medium businesses are services like Constant Contact.
E-mail marketing management services provide many important features. Some include management of your e-mail database and removal of duplicate e-mails (Boy, that will save you some grief).
These types of services also usually provide easy-to-use interfaces — with artistic templates and areas for text and image — for you to create your e-mails. The most important component to these services is the feature of providing a compliant opt out at the bottom of each of your e-mails. If someone clicks the opt out on one of your e-mails, the service automatically removes them from your list and ensures you don’t become an intrusive spammer to that recipient
Almost all of these e-mail marketing services provide extensive reporting, including which users opened and clicked through your e-mail.
If done correctly, e-mail marketing can be another great element in creating awareness to key groups. But there are many pitfalls, and it’s important to set your program up right. Next week, I’ll outline how to get the most out of your e-mail marketing program.
Josh Sommers is president and CEO of Focus Media, a leading Hudson Valley advertising and public relations agency. He can be reached at josh@advertisingandpr.com or 294-3342, ext. 303. Read his blog at www.advertisingandpr.com. His column appears Fridays.
