To be successful we need to be open to changing course mid year or possibly even mid campaign. We often look back on the past year and make changes for the next where we see opportunities, but are you watching out for those opportunities throughout the year? How much more successful would we be if we were constantly evaluating our marketing?

Is your direct mail bringing in more customers than your print ads? Why not shift additional focus to your direct mail efforts. Maybe your website is really starting to take off and is converting more sales then ever. Now may be the time to really start adding content to your site and working on your search engine optimization

The ability to adapt will become even more important this year as the economy continues to struggle. It will become more important to closely monitor the ROI for your marketing and make changes to continue to get the most from your money. Make it a goal to evaluate your marketing processes and goals today. Then do the same thing tomorrow, and the next day and the next. Look for opportunities everyday and act immediately.

So what does it take to start an email campaign? A simple campaign is actually surprisingly easy to launch. The four basic tips outlined below will make the process smooth and even more effective.

1. Assemble a list of contacts that want to hear from your company. This doesn’t mean buying lists of email addresses online. Your list of contacts will serve you best if it is made up of people you do business with on a regular basis or people who have asked to be on your email list. Anything beyond these two groups of people may be getting into the spam arena, and I’m guessing you feel the same way I do about spam: negatively.

2. Have a well-defined reason to contact the people in your list. It doesn’t benefit you to send out emails just for the sake of keeping in touch. If the people receiving your emails don’t find anything of value in your emails, it’s likely your contacts will be clicking the unsubscribe button quicker than you can add new contacts. (Yes, you must have an unsubscribe button, which I’ll talk about in a later post.)

To make sure your message is worth your subscribers time, be sure to evaluate what you want to send off. What will interest your subscribers? Do you have a sale going on that they may be interested in? Maybe you’ve been getting a particular question a lot. Answering that question in an e-newsletter could be a great way of showing people what an expert you are. (And it doesn’t hurt that you may be cutting back on the number of times you have to answer repeat questions.) Whatever your reason for sending an email, you have to provide something your subscribers will find valuable, or you could end up losing your subscribers and risk needlessly pestering customers.

3. Creating an email format that fits in with your other marketing material is vital. When a customer opens your email, they should instantly be able to recognize that it’s coming from you. Keeping your colors, graphics and logos consistent with your website and printed material will lend credibility to the email and further solidify your brand in the minds of your customers.

4. Finally, you’ll need a method of sending your emails, and there are lots of email services out there to chose from. We use Constant Contact, but other services will work as well. Some people ask, “Why can’t I send emails from my computer and business email account?” You could, but services like Constant Contact are cheap, easy to use and can tell you a lot about what happens to your emails after you send them, which helps you maximize the effort. For instance, a good email service will tell you if and when your emails were opened, which links were clicked and who has asked to be unsubscribed from your list. They’ll also help make sure you are conforming with the CAN SPAM Act. All this goes toward increasing the effectiveness of your marketing-driven email.

If you think it’s time to jump into email marketing let us know and we’ll help you get started. If done well the benefits are many and the cost is relatively low.