Is E-Mail Marketing Still Effective?

The year was 1996, when I started promoting my business online. Emailing in bulk was as common as drinking water. And a very effective way to advertise your business, I must say. Now it’s becoming increasingly more difficult to advertise your business using e-mail. With the excess of spam in your mail box and most people deleting the deluge of mail they receive daily, things sure have changed since my foray as an online business owner.

Still, if done correctly, email marketing can be an inexpensive and quick way to reach your target market. One concept is getting people wanting to receive your emails. A couple ways of doing this is to do permission mailing, meaning to have people sign up on your Web site or as they provide their email when they purchase something from your company. This way, you can collect a legal list of emails.

Some email advertisements can become redundant and ineffective unless you:

• Offer discounted services and products consistently
• Send to a very targeted mailings
• Offer free content or service to lure them in

A few sentences of original content may provide reasons to read your email. Tips and suggestions are some ways to keep your audience interested in your emails.

When sending e-mails, you need to:

• Have catchy luring headlines and subjects
• A recognizable company name from constant exposure and branding
• A simple process to get more information on your products and services

It is to your benefit to call-out interesting subjects or in the body of the text since you only have a few seconds to captivate the reader’s attention before he or she deletes it.

Behavioral Advertising

Some companies specialize in a data-collecting process known as behavioral advertising, which matches ads to a consumer’s interests, determined over time. More on Behavioral Advertising can be found here: IAB.Privacy Matters

BY KATHERINE BOEHRET
When most people hear the word “budget,” they groan about all the numbers and spreadsheets involved in setting financial goals. Instead they procrastinate and continue spending without any specific savings goals. Case in point: I recently postponed a meeting with my financial planner because I didn’t have the energy after a long business trip to work through my finances. Read More Here!

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“Why didn’t the parents say anything? Why didn’t the teachers say anything to convince the children to get more assistance?” McDonald says, repeating the questions that still trouble her.

After pondering what could be done to save future students from similar neglect, McDonald decided to open a daycare facility. She tapped every financial resource available to her to get started, including her pension plan, mutual funds and credit cards. She also refinanced a condo, sold property and used a grant awarded from New York State. In 2003, she purchased a building in Brooklyn, N.Y., and Footsteps Childcare Inc. was ready for business.

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“On Facebook, we can ask our customers what’s the next location they want,” Nelson said. “What do they think of our next flavor? It’s an amazing way to communicate with our fans.”

Facebook is not just for friends anymore. The free social networking site — blocked in some workplaces as a potential time-waster — is increasingly becoming an inexpensive marketing tool for small businesses.

Sprinkles is among a growing number of small businesses taking advantage of a relatively new program on Facebook, one that allows them to claim their name, become visible even to folks who aren’t on the site, and stay in close contact with their customers. The business, in effect, can act like any other person on Facebook, posting status updates and seeing what its fans are doing.

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