Affordable email marketing begins with a sizable opt-in customer list
Marketing your website can become an expensive proposition, using conventional marketing methods. Particularly when you’re starting up, conventional advertising, such as mailing pieces, magazine ads and television spots can eat up your advertising budget in a hurry. While these methods can bring big returns, you need up front money to fund such advertising efforts. However, email is virtually free, except for the time it takes to set up the email software and write your message. This little bit of effort sets you up with a legitimate and truly affordable email marketing vehicle.
You can’t just send out email pieces to people before you have obtained their permission to contact them. This is spamming and is virtual suicide! Your search engine ranking will take a dive and you may also get shut down by your own ISP! Not the way to go. So how do you get their permission?
What you need to do is build a opt-in customer list as quickly as possible. One of the best ways to do this is to develop a newsletter and some free reports to entice visitors to sign up. This is the basis of an affordable email marketing campaign. In return for delivering quality information to your visitor, you have a name and email to which you can send updates, the regular newsletter and occasional promotional pieces. You want to be judicious in sending purely promotional messages. Too many of these wears thin on your readership, resulting in cancellations and loss of your good reputation in your niche. Word travels fast on the web. All it takes is a thumbs down from a popular blogger and you’re toast.
As you continue to promote your free reports and newsletter on your website, your readers will often pass your message on to an interested friend, who may then come to your site for his own copy, based on this friend’s referral. Before long, your opt-in customer list grows to a substantial number. The more your list grows, the more your affordable email marketing campaign returns for your efforts.
When you place your invitation to subscribe or download a free report, be sure to assure your customer that you value their privacy and won’t ever give, sell or otherwise share their information with others. You also want to build your customer list with the double opt-in. This means that after they sign up, you respond with an email that requires they respond with a reply or a click-back to your site to confirm they asked for your offer. This protects you against allegations of spamming.
By the time you’ve got your affordable email marketing campaign going, you’ll be making money. Then you can think of more expensive campaigns.