In this era of Facebook and Twitter, you may be forgiven for thinking that hardly anyone uses email anymore as a means of promoting their business. Nothing could be further from the truth, as it is still a highly competitive marketplace.

Don\’t fall into the trap of thinking that because everyone else is doing it, there is little point in you trying to jump on the bandwagon as it will simply be too difficult to compete. Nothing could be further from the truth as there may well be plenty of companies to compete with, however not all of them will be using email marketing very effectively. If you are not using email to it\’s full potential then you may not get a very good return on your investment. Luckily there are a number of tactics you can employ to increase the effectiveness of your Communique.

The first thing that your email will need to do is get the attention of the reader. There is no point spending all that time crafting a beautiful email if no one is ever going to read it. The way to do this is by ensuring that your email has an effective subject line that will entice the reader to investigate further. Your subject line should not appear overtly \’salesy\’ as this will only have the effect of putting the reader off. Most email marketing software will enable you to personalise the email, allowing you to include an instance of the customers\’ name in the subject line. If someone reads an email which includes their name then it instantly stands out as it appears to be just another email that they may have received from a friend, increasing the likelihood that they will read it. When crafting your subject line there is one commonly overlooked point – make sure it is spelt correctly. Incorrect use of spelling or grammar will reduce the credibility of your business and compromise your integrity with the customer. You would be surprised how often this happens.

One of the most effective things you can do before implementing an email campaign is to perform some market research. Find out what sort of demographics are likely to be interested in your products and services and they actively look to acquire contact details of those people. There are a couple of methods you can employ to do this.

Firstly, include a prominent call to action on the homepage of your company\’s website which will entice people to sign up to your mailing list. It will help if you offer some incentive as a means of persuasion. You may decide to offer special deals or discounts only to people who are on your mailing list – or perhaps they could be the first to be informed about any impending sales you might have. Alternatively, there are a number of mailing list brokers who will be able to supply you with the email details of potential customers of various demographics. Although this may seem like a quick solution, the downside is that all of the contacts you acquire will be from people who have not heard of your business before so an unexpected email may not be welcomed by all of them.

The key with all types of email marketing is to continuously test and monitor your campaigns so that you can refine future emails so that you maximise the response from your customers.

Trevor Richards writes for Extravision (www.extravision.com), a leading UK email marketing company.

Trevor Richards writes for Extravision (http://www.extravision.com), a leading UK email marketing company.

Author Bio: Trevor Richards writes for Extravision (www.extravision.com), a leading UK email marketing company.

Category: Advice
Keywords: email marketing, marketing, promotion, email, internet, computer, technology, advertising