3 Keys to High Impact Email Marketing

Emailing potential customers or clients can be a quick and effective way of generating significant business. If you have a computer and internet access it is also a completely free way to market yourself. There is an art to the unsolicited email. A lot of people won't even open an email from someone they don't know. If they do, as soon as they see a canned sales pitch they might delete it. There are some key actions that will help you avoid instant deletion. Here are three to get you started.

1. Know Your Market

Spamming countless businesses and individuals is not only annoying but also a poor use of time? Take a couple of minutes and figure out a general market. If you are selling pet products, emailing local restaurants is not going to help. Pick out businesses that deal with pet products. Look up all the pet stores and groomers. Take it even further and look up veterinarians, doggy daycares and dog walkers. One problem you might come across when looking for potential customers is that finding email addresses isn't as easy as phone numbers. I suggest using your local Chamber of Commerce as a starting point. They usually have directories that include email addresses. You can also do an internet search for any local online directories. As a last resort, go through your yellow pages, find a business name and search to see if they have a website. If they have a website, they have an email address. Make a list of all possible contacts, and their email addresses. Eventually you will want to add a column that identifies how they responded to your emails. Make sure it is in a simple and clean format and file it away or save it. It can be used in any future email campaigns.

2. Your Subject

The body of your email is very important, but if people do not get by the subject, your body is useless. The subject can be tricky, some words that you might think are eye catching like "free" or "limited time offer" are often marked as spam. If the automatic spam filter does not filter you out, a person might see the subject and instantly delete it. Your subject must be something that is unassuming enough not to seem like spam, but gets enough attention to get opened. Using something like "quick question" is very often a great start. The person opening the email sees that and it instantly piques their interest. They probably think it is someone asking about their services, pricing or hours, which is an email they want to open as soon as possible.

3. Body/Pitch

Keep it simple. We have heard that phrase over and over again, but you have to remember it and use it. A long flowery speech on the effectiveness of your products, or a technical break down of the polymers used in it, is just going to be glossed over. My suggestion, state who you are, and what you offer. Then make sure you try and incite some sort of action. You can do this a couple ways, and I suggest using both in your email. First you offer up a follow up email or call. Something like, "If you are interested in our products or services, you can email me back for more information, or we can arrange a call at your earliest convenience." This way when they call or email you, you can hit them with the speech on effectiveness, or the technical specs and they will be willing to read/listen. That isn't the only action you want to inspire though. You should also leave a line that will hopefully end up in more leads. At the end of the email, leave a line saying something like, "Sorry if you are not the person I should be contacting, if you know of anyone that might be interested can you please forward this to them?" This will hopefully end up in leads you did not even think about. Or at the very least, get you in contact with someone in the targeted organization that might be more interested in your services.

There are three things you can start right now, to improve the effectiveness of your unsolicited emails. I suggest trying out a couple different subjects and pitches, find the ones that gets the most responses and go forward with those. Good luck!