Are you finding it increasingly difficult to generate new customers? It’s safe to assume that any business owner faces this problem at one point or another. Regardless of the industry you’re in, you may be facing stiff competition, making it hard to grab the attention of your target audience.
Things get even worse if you only rely on traditional marketing techniques such as using print ads and sending out flyers. You need to take a more modern approach such as email marketing to boost your chances of getting seen by your target market.
What is Email Marketing?
In case you didn’t know, email marketing is the process through which you communicate with both existing and prospective customers through email. This entails collecting their email addresses. As you can imagine, this can take a boatload of time. There’s also the persistent challenge of getting them to write down their email address on a piece of paper. You simply can’t convince everyone to do this for you.
Fortunately, this process proves much easier online. If you have a website, you should make sure that it has a box where visitors can enter their email address. It’s likelier for customers to type in their email address than write it down on paper.
However, it’s not enough to simply ask your customers to type in their email. You need to provide them with a good reason to do so. Some of the most common practices include giving a free e-book and offering a limited trial of your product or service. Keep in mind that people respond to incentives, so give them one to convince them to share their email address.
Why Use Email Marketing?
By now, you’re probably wondering why you should use email marketing. After all, there are a lot of other digital marketing strategies out there like search engine optimization and social media marketing. While there’s no question that these marketing techniques can do a lot for your business, the same can be said when it comes to email marketing.
While email isn’t the most technologically advanced way of communicating with other people, it still remains as powerful as ever. Some marketers think that promoting a business by sending out emails is an outdated strategy, but studies show otherwise.
The fact that virtually everyone has a smartphone or tablet these days means checking emails has never been easier. It allows your email marketing messages to be read quickly by your target audience since they will be notified by a push notification on their mobile device. This can increase your inbox open rates significantly.
In addition, studies show that eCommerce sales are largely driven by email. If you have an eCommerce store, then you may want to send out emails about promos, discounts, or any special offer you have to entice people to buy from you.
How to Get Started
As mentioned earlier, it’s possible to build an email list by yourself. This can be achieved by getting people to enter their email address in a small box on your website. If you’re lucky, some people might share their email after buying in your store. But if you want to speed things up, you may want to consider buying email databases.
While they sound complicated, email databases simply refer to a large collection of email addresses sold to business owners or marketers who need to set up an email marketing strategy right away. This offers the advantage of not having to build a list on your own. An email list provider can help you save tons of time, as you can immediately send out your marketing messages.
What to Look for in Email Databases?
When buying email databases, you must not forget that some of them prove to be a waste of time, money and effort. This applies in particular if you fail to choose a reputable provider. There are so many providers out there who only want to make some quick cash, selling low-quality email lists while claiming that they are highly-targeted.
Keep in mind that in order for your campaign to be effective, your messages must be sent to your target audience. It’s hard to increase conversions if your message reach people who do not show any interest in your business.
For this reason, it’s important to make sure that the email list you’re using is full of email addresses from people who have a good chance of turning into real customers. In most cases, reputable list providers sell their email databases according to the niche they belong to. This means if you’re in the home construction industry, then you should buy an email list from the same industry. Otherwise, you’ll end up flushing your money down the drain.
Of course, your list will only be as effective as how you use it. There’s no use to buying a highly-targeted list if you fail to deliver the right marketing messages.
It’s recommended to sort your list according to how the recipients respond. Some may show interest right away, while others need a little more convincing to get them to make a purchase.
You must learn how to create separate marketing messages for these different groups. Doing so is the only way to ensure that you’re making the most out of your list. And before you know it, buying email databases has proven to be one of the best investments you’ve made for your business.