Contrary to reports of its demise, email is alive and kicking. And email marketing is what works as the most effective and profitable “last mile” to turning prospects into customers and clients.
That said, all of us are far too familiar with email newsletters that waste our time, pitches that annoy us, and downright spam. Those don’t work quite so well, at least not long term.
What works is a value exchange — your valuable information for your prospect’s valued time. Your subscribers need to know they can trust you … that you’re not a soulless self-promoting spam-bot.
But email marketing is also one area where technology is a true asset when used correctly. Beyond sending messages, you can create automated sequences, use tags for message segmentation, identify personalization opportunities, and incrementally optimize your efforts by reviewing analytics.
It comes down to choosing the right email marketing software that works best for you. With that, we can certainly help — based on decades of email marketing experience.
Check out our Email Marketing Software Buyer’s Guide here. And if you find it valuable, go ahead and share it with a friend on Twitter or Facebook. We’d certainly appreciate it.
Reader Comments (34)
I agree with you Brian. Email marketing is the best method to turn our mailing list in good customers. There is no doubt in it.
Thanks for posting this, very useful infomation for my own business.
Sweet. I’m getting Internet Marketing for Smart People, Authority Rules, and now I get this?! It’s like Christmas.
Thanks, Brian. (:
Our intent is to SMOTHER YOU in content love. 😉
Have fun with it all!
I totally agree with Brian. Anyone who has started blogging or internet marketing should start e-mail marketing to promote. It has another value I think. While a person goes with e-mail marketing, he or she thinks over his/her own content, product and services very carefully which turns most of the time good results…
Thanks Brian
Your so true Brian! Email marketing seems to be one of the dominating factors to boost any business to a higher level because genuine content directed to the reader gives that spark of realism.
There are genuine people wanting to learn good meaty content.
What a thorough and insightful series.
One thing I’m still needing to understanding, though, is the justification for offering RSS vs. regular email subscription vs. special newsletter subscription. Don’t some of these cannibalize the others, leaving part of an audience without some of your best ideas?
Would love to hear your thoughts about the prevailing strategy. What have you noticed about audience behaviors when there are two or more options for staying connected?
Darren Rowse has some amazing stats about how much more responsive email blog subscribers over RSS subscribers.
As far as newsletter subscribers cannibalizing the others, I haven’t seen that happen — I see it as providing even more value to those who are more interested.
The casual reader just picks up the content on the blog, stopping by occasionally or swinging in from twitter or search. The interested reader subscribes by RSS or email, depending on preference. The engaged reader takes it a step further and subscribes to additional content. The very engaged reader subscribes to multiple free lists to get everything we’ve got, and the most engaged readers become customers to paid programs like Third Tribe and Teaching Sells.
Everyone gets the level of engagement they want, and we benefit from having a sense of how connected each group of readers is.
Brian, nice post here. I agree that email marketing is not dead. It is just another tool and still a good one in on our overall integrated marketing tool kit. It is funny you wrote this, as I just wrote an article on 9 things people should think of before they hit the “send” button.” Well done and thanks. Ryan Sauers
Haha you know what Brian? It’s like you read my eBook entries (90% of which strongly oppose newsletters as “old fashioned” and “spammy”) and got mad and wrote this post.
Or something like that. 😉
No seriously, I’ve got a question for Copyblogger. It appears that the GoToMeeting limit is a thousand people. When you and Sonia did that webinar didn’t you say you had like over a thousand? How did you do that?
Thanks.
Hi Martyn,
With GTM you can have more than 1000 signups (as many as you want actually) but afaik only 1000 online.
Anna
People come in and drop out so the final number is the total unique individuals who attended during the time of the webinar 🙂
So 1,800 people signed up for an event that could only support 1,000? Ouch.
I didn’t get mad. You’re just wrong. 😉
Heh actually, I agree with you 100%. The thousand people who came to my site? Those are the ones who are wrong. And here’s the scary part – they came from your blog, not mine. 😛
I agree with you, email marketing is one of best practice to turn our mailing list in good customers.
Hi Brian!
Email marketing is still not to be outwitted or outdone by other means in pushing/growing our online business. It’s still here to stay. We just have to learn how to use it properly and efficiently. Your tutorials would really help a lot.
Thanks!
The only email marketing I’ve done so far is to push a special article or short story (my own fiction) closer to my audience. I intend to expand that concept, but I’m engaged in a lot of projects, so it’s on the list. Thanks for your comments!
For me, marketing strategies that make fast traffic give the low conversion rate. And the strategies that pull slow traffic(because we build rapport first) give high conversion. So why not combine both. Attact the fast traffic first then build rapport with them slowly(email marketing) and at the end the conversion will be very high.
Always amazed at how many people dismiss email marketing even though it has been proven to work over years of testing. So many people dismiss it in favor of something more sexy like social media but there is nothing as effective as a good database or mailing list for bringing in the sales
Despite the fact that email spam has discouraged so many folks like me to reading email adverts; i still do read a few with catching, meaningful and news worthy headline. so the bottom line is this; email marketing has lost credibility now we need content, and catchy headlines to make our email read and not deleted without a blink of an eye.
Hi Brian
Thanks for this post. I will definitely go in and read each post. Successful email marketing is definitely something I need to get my head around. I have a bit to learn in this area.
I discovered your landing page section over the weekend as well, so have been biusy reading all the great information there. While I am here, I also wanted to mention the wonderful design and presentation of your site. It really is a great website to look at and read.
Cheers
Thea
Hi Brian
Email Marketing is high class method. It’s really powefull methode to increase sales if we are an online business. Thanks for sharing
Regards
Ery
Agreed. It is one of the best methods to get in contact with your clients and even get more clients.
These are all great resource! Thanks for linking to them again. In the end, since email is such a personal form of communication, marketer need to send relevant content. The challenge with relevant content is the actual definition. Should an email marketer send messages that are promotional, helpful, informational? The answer is all of the above. Additionally having access to robust analytics and understanding your customers will help marketer send compelling email messages.
@IsmaelAlterian
Community Manager | Alterian
http://email.alterian.com
Certainly these strategies will help me in my blog. Thank you!
Great info as usual. Many thanks. Have a link to your blog from my website. Would you be happy for me to link to selected articles also?
Regards Barry
Your post is totally correct. Today we have almost 30,000 subscribers in our opt-in list (feedburner), and it deliver us around 2,000 visitis daily. An email strategy is not irrelevant nowadays. A good move is to dedicate time and effort to reach new subscribers in a honest way.
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