The Pew Internet and American Life Project released a report lately that confirmed that email remains the number one activity that American Internet users partake in. This is in spite of a lot of people trying to convince us that it's dead or unproductive.
Don't let anybody convince you otherwise. At thealphamarketer.com, we've been trying to convince you of this for quite awhile. Still, email has changed as far as delivery goes, and we need to keep a few basic things in mind to keep it successful.
The first and foremost rule is to make sure that those you're sending emails to have opted in to your list. Simple, but many have tried to sneak around this and are burned as a result.
Just as importantly though is that the content you send to them is relevant. This is more important than it first looks. But again, even some pretty seasoned veterans make some costly mistakes at this point.
While I make it a point to know who I give permission to send emails to me, if I didn't have a grasp of who they are, I would probably accuse them of spamming me too.
One example is when I received an email that was done from a right motive, but it wasn't relevant to me. One of the strategies of email marketers is to send stuff they find to their cutomers that has value to them. I'm not talking about products or services for sale here, but interesting online stuff that is believed will be of interest.
The problem with what happened with me was that it was sent as a stand-alone link to something that was unconnected to any interests that I had. If I didn't remember the person or company that had sent it, as having signed up with them, I would have definitely unsubscribed or sent an official complaint.
The key, again, is not only content, but relevant content. If you want to add interesting things that may have value not connected to the content of what you write about, put it at the bottom of your mailing, explaining that it was something interesting that you thought your readers would like to take a look at, but not related to your normal offerings.
This way they understand that you're doing them a favor, and not someone that is just sending an unsolicited email.
The reason this is important is because a lot of people have an enormous amount of ezines that they've signed up for, and they may not necessarily remember who you specifically are by name or whether they've signed up with you. Especially at the beginning of your relationship. Keeping things relevant to what your business is, protects you from uncertainty and losing good potential cutomers.
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