Email marketing

The spam in your inbox proves that emailing marketing works. Should you make email marketing part of your strategy? Yes, you should, and I’ll tell you why.

If you’re an accountant or other service professional, you’re providing a complex high-value service. You need to build a relationship with your prospect before they do business with you. Email marketing is an ideal medium for relationship building.

What’s the key to success? That’s simple. You need to get your emails read by your target audience.

First you have to consider what you’re up against. Spam has become so intrusive that most companies will have firewalls and spam filters to block unwanted emails.

You therefore face two challenges – how to get your email through to the intended recipient and how do you get them to read it?

We’ll come back to that in a minute. Let’s take a step back. How do you build an email list?

You start with your clients. You should already be networking and collecting people’s business cards – that’s your second source.

As a business professional you need to give a little to get something in return. What you give is something of value and what you get in return is a prospects email address and permission to email them.

This is called permission marketing. The prospect has given you permission to market to them.

Why would they do this? You have to offer something of value – a free report into the top ten ways to save tax. You can provide it as a PDF on your website for visitors to download for free in return for their contact details.

You then create a monthly newsletter. You need to build a relationship, so don’t bore people with what amounts to a sales pitch. Provide something of real value that people will actually read.

How do you ensure that your email gets through? You have to understand how spam blocking software works. There are key phrases and words to avoid. For example, ‘buy now’ or ‘special promotion’ can get you into trouble, especially if they’re in capitals. And avoid exclamation marks.

What’s the best way to ensure your email gets through? Get us to write it for you.

How do you create an email that’s read by the intended recipient?

a subject line that compels the recipient to open the email
the email should always be written in a friendly, conversational style - the first sentence is very important
provide value – be controversial or provide a new insight into an age-old problem
stick to one topic within your email
make sure you have a call to action – a reason for someone to contact you
take people to your website and given them a reason to bookmark it

A smart addition is an email forward feature – ask the recipient to forward to email to someone else they think may benefit from it. It’s just like a referral.

Avoid images unless there is a very good reason to include them. Content is king. People want something of value to read and most firewalls screen out images these days.

How do you send a large volume of emails? Leave that to us. We have the technology.

Used wisely and courteously, email is the internet’s greatest marketing weapon.

We can run email campaigns on your behalf.

To learn more, call Tim Baugh on 01707 392552 today!

Our Marketing for Growth programme click here >>

Generating new business via networking .. click here >>

How to use Email marketing effectively .. click here >>

You need a communications strategy .. click here >>

How to build a website that works .. click here >>

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