Tanner Waid

Today at the Idaho Internet Marketing Meet-up the topic of discussion was “Email Marketing”. The guest speaker was my pal Jon Waraas. Jon uses email marketing as one of his biggest marketing tools. He says that it is in fact his number one resource when it comes to a campaign.

Below are the talking points that Jon discussed in the meet-up.

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- What is email marketing
- Rule #1, constant contact
- Know your audience
- The actual email
- When to send the emails
- Getting emails
- Automated emails
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Email marketing in basically keeping in contact with your target audience. You can do this many different ways. Offering a newsletter or subscription list works. What works even better than that, is offering a free tool or service or even an eBook to your customers in return for their email address. You want to be careful not to actually ask for their email either because that will lower the chances of them actually completing the task. Instead try disguising it by saying “please enter your email & we will email you the results”, or “and receive your free copy”.

You want to stay in constant contact with your audience (or list) so you need to send emails out on a reglar bases. This can be made easy by products such as Aweber or Mailchimp. Jon recommends that you send out an email about every week or so. Depending on your market of coarse, some markets may require less or more. Even if they do not purchase something from the email you will at least keep your brand in front of their eyes. In turn that keeps you in the back of their head, so…. if they ever do need your product or service you are assured that they will come to you first.

Knowing your audience is also very important because you need to be sending content that is worth while and will actually cause conversions. The best way to do this is to go out and find related forums about your specific industry. READ what people are saying and how they are talking, all of it. This will give you some insight on how you need to construct your emails and what to target.

When it comes to writing the emails themselves don’t make every email a sales pitch (people get tired of that). Instead mix it up a bit and throw in some juicy tips and knowledge that will interest your consumers and will make them want to open every email they get from you. It is also a wise idea to add discount codes in your emails because people really like that “special treatment” so to speak.

Now, when it comes to the point of when to send your emails, listen up. The majority of people get paid either on the 1st & 15th or somewhere real close to that. So it makes sense to send out your emails on the following Monday after the 1st and 15th. Why Monday? you ask… Well think back to every Friday you have ever had, you aren’t planning on buying anything on Friday, NO! You are more worried about getting done what needs to be, and getting the hell out of there. SEE YA!! If you will now think back to every Monday, you are working at a slower pace and thinking about what needs to happen in the week to come, so if you happen to get a lovely email about a discount on a special product that you need or want you are more likely to buy it. Try it for your self and see what happens.

Here are a few good tips that were brought up and I think could have a great impact on the outcome of your email campaign..
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- read the goverment legalities first
- buld a brand instead of trying to get a sale or conversion initially.
- automate your emails so your band is always in front of your audiences eyes
- discount code emails work the best
- keep in constant contact
- go to a related forum of the product/service you want to push in order to come up with a worth while email
- subscribe to your competitions lists to see how they go about it
- send emails on the Monday following the 1st and 15th of the month at around 8:00 am
- give away tools to get email addresses
- email past customers to target return customers
- contests are a great way to capture emails