Your business may not have realised it yet, but email marketing software is perhaps one of the most powerful tools available to you. In these days of social media it may seem outdated, however it is still a useful channel through which you can generate business and revenue.

It shouldn\’t come as a surprise to learn that the key to an effective email marketing campaign is having an active list of subscribers who you can build a relationship with and promote your products and services to on a regular basis. By doing this you will generate new business and encourage repeat business from existing and previous customers.

The lifecycle of an email marketing campaign is an involved one which starts with capturing leads, following them up and then managing these contacts in such a way as to enable you to further target various demographics within this contact list in future. In the past, each of these tasks would have been taken care of via the use of several different systems. Thankfully, things have moved forward somewhat and all of these functions are now incorporated into one platform. This email marketing software enables you to manage every step of the campaign cycle through a simple to use content management system. This makes the process a lot simpler and efficient.

Whilst this has undoubtedly improved the way in which companies have been able to implement their email campaigns, the ease with which emails can be sent out in large volumes has lead to a significant problem with spam. This has lead to the introduction of legislation regarding compliance features being included in email marketing campaigns so that recipients are provided with an option to unsubscribe from any email correspondence.

In order to ensure the ongoing success of your email marketing campaigns you need to track whether they are generating the desired outcome. Email marketing software will collect data relating to which of your contacts opened your email and how they interacted with it. An effective piece of software will allow you to create subsequent campaigns based on the activity of your subscribers. As an example, you may wish to base a specific campaign solely around users who clicked a particular link. Every click gives you new information about your visitors which you can use to craft more personalised emails. This will allow you as a business to narrow down your focus to those customers who are most receptive to your marketing.

The most tedious part of the email marketing life cycle is maintaining your contact list. Email addresses must be manually added and removed constantly. Luckily some aspects of the process can be automated in that customers who opt-in and opt-out using contact forms will take care of that aspect for you.

If you are uncertain about any aspect of marketing your business via email then there are a number of specialist email marketing companies who will be able to take care of every aspect of your email marketing campaign for you.

Trevor Richards writes for Extravision (www.extravision.com), one of the UKs leading email marketing companies.

Trevor Richards writes for Extravision (http://www.extravision.com), one of the UKs leading email marketing companies.

Author Bio: Trevor Richards writes for Extravision (www.extravision.com), one of the UKs leading email marketing companies.

Category: Marketing
Keywords: email marketing, email campaign, ecommerce, internet marketing, e-commerce, sales, business