Are you looking to find new customers, clients or patients? Don’t have your own list of e-mail addresses? We have the capability and resources to provide you with the ideal e-mail list for your e-mail marketing needs.

We understand that one of the key factors in a successful e-mail marketing campaign is a high quality e-mail list. We will select the e-mail addresses based on your target demographic—whether you are looking for a business or consumer list—and we can further narrow the demographic based on geographic location, age, gender and even professional title. Then we’ll automatically upload the e-mail addresses into your Simplicity account—you’re all set to deploy e-mail marketing messages to your new custom list at your earliest convenience.

Proven ways e-mail marketing can improve sales
This month we’re offering tips on how to increase your marketing to sales conversion during the summer months. Instead of wallowing in the recession, we recommend ramping up this summer’s marketing campaign by using e-mail—a marketing tool with a high ROI that is proven to build brand awareness and customer loyalty.

First things first, we believe that the success of an e-mail marketing campaign depends on the following three factors:

• A high quality list of e-mail addresses
• A promotional offer
• Creativity

From the experts at Expedite Media Group, we want you to break away from this summer’s slump and concentrate on gaining maximum possible exposure for your e-mail marketing campaigns, which is the most efficient and cost-effective way to reach your audience with minimal effort. If you know how to plan a good e-mail campaign, you will see tremendous results from it. However, sometimes your campaign is not planned as carefully as you thought. This month, we’re providing you with a few very simple, but worthwhile, tips and changes you can make to increase your sales by using e-mail marketing.

Don’t just focus on making the sale, try giving something first

We recommend giving something away for free—something for nothing is always a draw in e-mail marketing campaigns. The hard part is that plenty of people will subscribe for free stuff, but getting them to part with money can be frustrating—but not so much when you know how. It makes no difference what you are giving away in your e-mail offer as long as it has something to do with your mailing list topic, and is something that will be of interest to your audience. The answer to most e-mail campaign problems is that you must stop trying to "take" and start trying to "give."  Even if you do not make money from giving something away for free you will start building a rapport with your clients.  

This is more important than getting one sale. If you can build a relationship with your readers and they trust you and know that you are always providing valuable information or great promotional offers, when you do want to send out a sales proposal, your response rate will increase tremendously. Sending regular discount offers is a great way to get your customers familiar with you and your products and services—and turn them into regulars who will buy from you again and again.

A great salesperson will use e-mail marketing to follow up, build relationships and turn them into paying customers

Businesses and salespeople are always seeking new ways to grow and make that sale. However, during the summer, many businesses fail to focus on the actual business, and therefore may find themselves falling off their strategic business plan or sales goal. There are many ways to use e-mail marketing as a sales follow up. A few ideas are:

• Send a thank you--a little personalization goes a long way, and it doesn’t hurt to tell them you appreciate their purchase.
• Use e-mail marketing as a re-enforcement of why choosing your company was a great idea in the first place.
• Use e-mail marketing to refer them to another product or service your company provides that would complement or enhance their first purchase. Suggesting other products shows them you not only care they bought from you, but that they are happy with their purchase.
• E-mail current clients asking for referrals, but make it worth their time. You can offer a percentage off their next purchase for referring a new customer or a special offer for those they refer.
• Include a coupon for your services. You could encourage them to pass it on if they are not going to use it themselves. They might know someone who needs your services, and this could mean the difference between their friend purchasing from you or not.

Give equal time, thought and attention to the subject that introduces your main message

People don’t read bulk e-mail marketing messages with poor subject lines that do not grab their attention. You should create compelling and motivating e-mail subject lines to attract readers who are sure to get something valuable out of it. Subject lines of e-mail messages should be interesting, meaning they are able to entice the recipient into opening the message, and reading for further information.

A good subject line can make or break your campaign, so if your subject line isn’t working well, your e-mail may never get opened and your campaign might be a failure. The humble little subject line that includes tips, tricks and secrets, definitely has an enormous influence on your campaign’s results. The biggest suggestion toward retaining more customers is to avoid dollar signs in e-mail marketing campaigns, because a lot of SPAM contains things of this nature, and people usually move this to the trash--if it’s not already in the SPAM folder. The following are some of the most popular SPAM filtered words and phrases to refrain from using:

Include a clear call to action in your message

In order for an e-mail marketing campaign to be effective, make sure to clearly let your customer know what it is you expect from them, and how they should go about taking that action. Try to refrain from too many links or offers, and let the customer visually see what they are going to receive.

For example, “Click here for a 20% discount on your next weekend trip!”

No matter how good your product is, every effective sales process requires an element of repetition. Once you have a prospect’s e-mail address, continue sending messages to them to set yourself apart from your competitors. Those missed steps are missed opportunities without sales.

Holiday’s—AVOID E-MAIL MARKETING AT THIS TIME

It’s that simple. During times of the year like the first week of winter break or a long Memorial Day weekend, people tend to be away from their computers and e-mail. Due to vacations and our busy lifestyles, breaks can cause e-mail to pile up, and chances are this mail is sent to the trash. For the obvious reasons, some of the toughtest months for e-mail marketing are December, January, June and July.

Test, test, test and test again—an increased response can include more feedback and more sales

For years, salespeople have been trained to push for the sale to the point that being hung up on becomes the normality. In today’s market, people are tightening their budgets and thinking carefully about every little purchase. While everyone likes to buy, nobody really likes to be sold. So although being a pushy salesperson may increase your sales in the short term, it’s likely to leave your customer dissatisfied, which means they might not come back to you next time they want to buy. In order to keep providing value and create lifelong customers and clients, utilize e-mail marketing that is geared toward being effective, professional and createing a high impact.