Business owners – large and small – are consistently looking for ways to increase productivity.  One of the most cost efficient ways to market your business or services is through e-mail.  However, you want to make sure that you set yourself apart from the thousands of other companies that market through e-mail, and  rise to the next level.

With the common thought process of e-mail marketing being “if I send it they will buy”, you need to be a cut above the rest and avoid focusing on:

• Which subject lines get the most opens
• Which spam words should I avoid
• How long should my e-mail be
• What is the best time or day to send my e-mail

To be successful focus first on creating a segmented list of e-mails.  The key to not wasting any movement in e-mail marketing is knowing your target audience for your current campaign.  You want to avoid sending all e-mails to all clientele!  If you continuously send out e-mail blasts to your entire contact list, you are (1) only getting a slim number of people interested in that particular service or product, (2) a higher number of people marking your e-mail as spam, and (3) an even higher number of people who won’t forward your e-mail on to their friends or family.

When you start out an e-mail marketing campaign, you must know your clientele’s interests as they relate to your products and services, when and what they last purchased from you, whether or not they open and click on e-mails, and if they subsequently visit your website.  As soon as you have this information you can start to segment out your contact lists into groups of interests, groups of purchase dates, and groups that will include website promotional material.  So, instead of only getting a handful of interested people you now have a much higher chance of productivity.  Instead of people marking your e-mail as spam you have a higher chance that people will pursue further action with your e-mail.  And, instead of people talking bad about your company’s horrible and irrelevant e-mails, they will forward your information on to their friends that are interested in the same products or services.

The second feature of your e-mail marketing campaign that will take you to the next level is consistency and predictability with a touch of personalized attention.  Think about what it takes to develop a random person into a one-time customer, from a one-time customer to a repeat-client, and from a repeat client to a fan of your company that will refer you out to their friends.  There is almost no way that you can possibly create this for every single one of your potential customers, right?  Wrong!!

It’s the personalized attention and consistency that you provide to that one person along with the trust that you will follow through with everything that you have said which takes them to that champion level of clientele.  With the right e-mail marketing system, you can do exactly that:

• Contact and follow up with all new potential customers when they request something from you
• Communicate with your customers on upcoming events or promotions
• Provide weekly advice or tips related to your business or services
• Consistently deliver a monthly newsletter

Finally, utilize multimedia to enhance your relationship and reputation.  Multimedia goes hand in hand with being consistent and having personalized attentiveness.  The best way to use multimedia is immediately after a business relationship has been established – expand on your relationship and reputation by using various multimedia.  In other words, instead of just collecting their information and adding them to your list, send your newly found customer a thank you letter for spending their time with your business and provide them a small token of your appreciation.    Remember, you want to make sure you go that extra mile to retain that customer for repeat business and turn that client into an absolute fan that will promote your business for you.