Are you wondering how to drive an effective email campaign? Let me give you a few tips. First answer these 3 questions

1. How often do you send an enewsletter?
2. Are your enewsletters mobile friendly?
3. How quickly does your business respond to email requests?

For question 1-you should be consistent. If you send an email once a month, you should send out that email on the same day every month. For example, send it the first Monday of every month. You customers will then look forward and know to check their in-boxes on that day every month.

Question 2-just like your website, your enewsletters should be mobile ready. The majority of consumers will read your enewsletter on a smartphone or mobile device.

Question 3-your business should be responding to email requests within 5 minutes. I know that seems fast, but the odds of connecting with a new customer drop 100- fold if you wait 30 minutes or more! At the time they send that email, they are focused on your business, connecting with you and whatever service that they are inquiring about. After 30 minutes they have moved on with their days, kids, work, etc. And because you didn’t respond quickly, they have already contacted 2-3 of your competitors to inquire about their needs. So respond quickly.

You have an opportunity to use email globally and to attract customers to your business. There is compelling new data in support of email marketing. Email marketing out performs social media; we expect organic distribution of an individual page’s posts to gradually decline. Less that 2% of users who like a page on Facebook will not see that company’s posts in their newsfeed. I still recommend social media for SEO and to help distribute your content, which I will talk about shortly.

In the US, adults are almost twice as likely to sign up for your emails than to interact with you on Facebook. Most businesses have email lists that are 30-50% larger than their social fan base. The open rate for health & beauty emails is greater than 20%.

Top 6 Things To Do for Your Email Marking Strategy

1. Start at the beginning with your list make sure that you are doing all of the right things to grow your list. This should be your PRIORITY! Do you have a signup for your newsletter on your website? When someone calls your business do you ask for an email address to share specials and updates? When someone comes to your business, do you ask them for their email address to share specials and updates?
2. Make and Editorial Calendar-don’t just look at the immediate-look at the year or at least 6 months. Create a calendar theme. Feb-Valentines, March-Spring, April-Easter, etc.

3. Create an email template, consistency and branding are key. Your enewsletter should be attractive and professional.

4. Take the time to look at your data from your email platform. What is the open rate? What is the click through rate? What are people clicking on and does a certain time and day get more opens and clicks than others. I recommend sending enewsletters mid-day Tuesday thru Thursdays, research shows that you will get a larger response during those times.

5. Do you know your customers-ask them-do a survey-what would they like to see in your emails. Do a survey at least one a year.

6. Make sure that all of the emails have a strong call to action and point back to the website.

Your content, don’t stress about not having content, you do. What are your specials or deals? What have you been posting on Social Media or your blog. What do you have on your YouTube channel? Do you have vendors that you use that giveaway free content and photos? If you don’t know, ask, because most will help you with marketing. You have content, you just may not know that you do!

Your email template should align with your branding, make sure that it looks neat and professional. Always send a test email first, have more than one person review it to catch any errors. Also test the email on your smartphone and devices. Test links to make sure that they are working.

For more information on eNewsletters or email blasts, please contact us!

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I’ve been thrown under the bus so many times in my lifetime by business partners, associates and friends that the tread marks have left excruciating scars and I sit here wondering if honesty, integrity and loyalty exists in 2013! I hate not trusting people, but time and time again I get slapped in the face by reality. I recently read an article on Katie Couric’s website:

Want to know how to spot a liar? Here’s how!

From Janine Driver, body language expert and author of “You Can’t Lie to Me.”

Read more here…

Basically you can never be too sure if someone in your life is being dishonest. But you’d think with the age of the Internet and Social Media, people would try to be more honest, because their reputation is on the line-literally! Edward Snowden is a prime example, his life is ruined and he can’t go anywhere in the world without people knowing him and what he did. Kids in high school and college know all too well how one bad decision can end up online and destroy their lives and yet, here we are in 2013 and people continue to be dishonest, show lack of integrity and loyalty. So color me stupid, people just don’t care and that scares me, what is the world going to be like 10 years from now?

According to Webster Integrity is:

Definition of INTEGRITY

1 : firm adherence to a code of especially moral or artistic values : incorruptibility

2 : an unimpaired condition : soundness

3: the quality or state of being complete or undivided : completeness

And this is Webster’s definition of Integrity for kids:

Main Entry: in·teg·ri·ty
Pronunciation: in-teg-rt-
Function: noun
1 : the condition of being free from damage or defect
2 : total honesty and sincerity
3 : the quality or state of being complete or undivided

So you be the judge, is there integrity in the world in 2013? Especially when it comes to business! Has the oil boom and the almighty dollar turned us into a society with no morals, no integrity and no loyalty? In a world where everyone claims to be a Christian, where is God? In Luke 6:31 it says do unto others, as you would have them do unto you! So does that mean I should treat business partners, associates and friends the way that they have treated me. Or how about Exodus 21:24 where it says an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth? The biggest lesson that I’ve learned in life is that if someone claims to be a Christian or talks about their faith in God and God has led them to this or that, RUN, RUN for your life! I once believed that Christianity, honesty, integrity and loyalty all worked hand in hand, but I am here to tell you that I was wrong.

Loyalty is something I am finding is almost extinct. Does loyalty exist among brands? Is there customer loyalty? What about loyalty among friends? Coworkers? Do we live in a society where everyone is ready to jump ship and no one is loyal to anyone or anything? Personally, I do not believe that loyalty exists in our world in 2013. Loyalty is important to me and I am loyal to others, but sadly it is not a two-way street. So here I am at a crossroads wondering what I should do. Do I change my morals and values? Do I forget about them altogether? How do we live and survive in a world where the existence of honesty, integrity and loyalty are on the verge of distinction?

The post Honesty, Integrity and Loyalty Do They Exist in 2013? appeared first on Website Design and Marketing.