Whether you are new to the world of small business marketing or you have a ton of experience, there's always room for improvement and we can all always use all of the help we can get.
The good news is that there are many email marketing tools that can help take your campaigns to the next level. With the right combinations of tools and strategies you'll be able to see far better results than you ever would have imagined otherwise.
When it comes to email marketing tools the first and most important is the autoresponder. The autoresponder can unlock the doors of the email marketing world for you right away. Basically, an autoresponder is a tool that lets you sign people up for your list straight from your website, or even through other emails you send out.
When people sign up, the autoresponder handles the entire process instantaneously. It adds them to your list, and also sends out your choice of confirmations, thank you messages or other messages of your choice. You can also create a series of emails that gets sent out automatically over a period of time. This is a great option for example, if you have a mini eBook series you are offering through email or you have lots of product reviews you want to share to each new person that signs up. An autoresponder will prove to be a highly valuable and effective tool for you and your business.
You also need to consider analytics when it comes to email marketing tools. This means that you need to find a way to look at what you are doing and see how successful it is. There are many different kinds of statistics to keep your eye out for when evaluating your emails. The most important of these are click through rates. Click through rates tells you how many people clicked on links, which links were clicked on and who clicked on them. This is a great way to judge if you're call to action is effective or what you might need to change. You can also overtime see trends for different people who routinely click certain things, and you can target them even more effectively in the future.
Beware of putting too much stock into open rates however. The open rate is technically what percentage of people on your list opened up the email. However, to gain this statistic a tiny image is embedded within your email message. If your recipient has images turned off - and many do - than you won't be getting an accurate response from them. Therefore, open rates are usually lower than what they actually are do to reporting issues.
There's no shortage of email marketing tools that can help take your game up a notch. From autoresponders that build your list and communicate with your members without you needing to raise a finger to analytic tools that allow you to evaluate your campaigns in detail, your business can be significantly improved with the right choice of tools.