ExpertMarketing Advice

Of all the many ways you can promote your business today, I want to share with you one of the most effective, most profitable, and least risky ways to market your products or services – email marketing.

Now just to be clear, I’m not in any way talking about buying an email list of people that don’t know you and blasting out a million messages in the hopes of making a few sales. Sending any promotional emails to people who have not given you permission to contact them is clearly spamming and there are rules and regulations that prohibit that in most countries.

What I am talking about is “Permission Based Marketing” – where you offer someone some free, valuable information (like a free special report, audio or video) as an incentive to give you their email address and permission to contact and market to them in the future. Offering a free email newsletter to your prospects gives you the chance to get your name in front of your website visitors on a regular basis and allows you to provide value and develop lasting relationships with them.

What’s so great about email marketing? Perhaps the greatest, is that studies have shown that commercial e-mail marketing returned a whopping $43.62 for every dollar spent on it in 2009, according to the DMA’s (Direct Marketing Association) Power of Direct economic-impact study.

That’s an incredible return on investment of over 4000%!! Most businesses are lucky if they run an advertisement and get a 200% or 300% return, but when you can get $40 back for every $1 you invest, I’m amazed that more businesses don’t take advantage of this marketing method.

Here are some important points to keep in mind as you consider using email marketing in your business, and next time I’ll introduce you to some of the best online services available to help you with your email marketing efforts.

1.  You must always ASK for permission to email someone first, and once it’s granted to you, you must respect and honor the responsibility that you’ve been entrusted with. You must never sell or give your list of addresses and names to anyone and you must maintain control of your list at all times.
2. If someone doesn’t want to be on your mailing list, you must respect their wishes and make it easy for them to be removed from your list.
3. If you don’t already have one, create a Privacy Policy that states exactly what you do with the information you collect from your visitors – and honor it! Just posting a link to a privacy policy can increase the likelihood that a prospect will sign up for your list.
4. If you’re a marketer in the U.S. you must be certain your email marketing efforts comply with the CAN-SPAM act. It’s not difficult to do, especially if you use a reputable email service provider to handle your mailings for you, but the penalties for violating it can be steep.