At Evolve Marketing we LOVE email marketing because we know what a powerful marketing tool it is! It can cost effectively create and sustain awareness of your business  and drive targeted traffic to your website, increase your customer loyalty, and increase sales!

Unfortunately many businesses still don’t appreciate the power of email marketing (often mentioning the ‘spam irritation’ factor). But they have missed the quiet revolution of opt in ….growing your email list organically and only emailing those that want to hear from you. Yes it takes longer but it’s worth it.

A starting point to harnessing the power of email marketing is to begin capturing the email address of all your business’s stakeholders – group them accordingly – prospects, clients, suppliers, staff etc. I am amazed that so many businesses still don’t collect the email addresses of prospective customers who contact them. Such a wasted opportunity! Every time a business fails to capture a prospect’s email address they’re turning down the opportunity to contact them for free, for weeks, months and years ahead. It’s also madness not to offer visitors to your website an easy way of submitting their email address.

Once you have the email addresses – you need to use them! You need to start communicating regularly perferably in planned, structured way. You don’t just have to use email to sell. You can use email to thank people for their business, make them a special offer, give them a free article or report, send a newsletter, recommend a product or service they may be interested in, ask for referrals, share some news they may be interested in, ask why they’ve not done business with you…the list is endless.

So how can you maximise the potential of your email programme?

By adding value for your customers and prospective customers. How? The key is not to think of email as a selling tool – but as a powerful communication tool. Emails have the power to build relationships and keep you ‘front of mind’ (especially powerful when there is a long buying cycle involved or where you are trying to harness the power of referrals). Use this communication tool to add real value to your customers’ lives and to keep them informed of your activities. Make your emails interesting and relevant – add value and keep it short – nobody has time to wade through realms of information.

Also make them personal by using the personalisation options and keep tweaking, enhancing improving your communication – review your campaign results. Testing and refining is easy and vital to ongoing success.

So start today and harness the power of email marketing. After all is an incredibly cost-effective marketing tool that when done properly, can drive sales and help build stronger relationships with your customers and prospects.

Good luck