Email marketing is a process of which everyone is aware. How can one build engagement and grow organic referrals through email marketing? The answer might surprise you.
When a client asked me the other day which email marketing platform was the best one to use, I turned the question around on her. “What are your goals,” I inquired. Her response (or lack thereof) made me think hard for my next response. I didn’t wish to put her on the spot, but as it appeared I had already done so I continued. She looked at me in complete amazement, unsure of what she should or shouldn’t say. In what seemed like an eternity she stated, “I guess I want to send out a newsletter and some special offers.”
I’ve been in the email marketing game for a long, long time, and my firm works with strictly with small business as a matter of course. Most small business people understand email marketing, at least the basics. What I find is, much like the client I had just mentioned, they know email marketing is good for sending funny pictures and jokes to friends and family. The fact is they have yet to learn some of the “business” capabilities of a comprehensive, professional email marketing platform. Learning to utilize such a platform to distribute and analyze those communications (and much more) is a lesson yet to be understood by them, let alone mastered. That’s why it’s important to seek the advice of someone that is knowledgeable of the wide variety of email marketing solutions.
When I begin to work with a new client, I recommend they use an email platform that offers ease of use, if they are not outsourcing that function it to us. As a Master Certified Solution Provider with Constant Contact®, I take special care to enlighten my clients to what works best, what can be integrated into various marketing elements like event marketing and surveys, and how best to automate their marketing for prospective new customers. By focusing on effective email marketing, small businesses can gain advantage over their competitors with a well-defined email marketing campaign.
“Just do it” might be a good slogan for athletic motivation but it rarely proves effective in the world of small business marketing and especially the arena of email marketing.
Let’s talk tools
When it comes to professional email marketing tools, I recommend the use of Constant Contact. From analytics to email templates for just about any purpose, it’s the platform of choice for millions of marketers and small business owners. When it comes to the tool kit, there’s no better reason to use a platform that not only provides an auto responder, but social media sharing, birthday and anniversary greetings sent automatically and a host of others. Here’s where you can learn more about what my platform of choice offers. Within this list of fifty-four applications and integrations you can find just about everything a marketer can ever use, many of which are at no cost to CTCT customers.
While we have experience with many other email marketing applications and even a few “marketing platforms”, most require a significant monthly investment, long term contracts, and powerful functionality that few small business owners really take advantage of.
How do I grow organic referrals with email?
A clearly defined and executed email marketing campaign can provide top of mind status to your communications. When your emails provide engaging and sharable content, readers can’t help themselves by sharing it with others. It may be your newsletter, a special offer, relevant content, or links to your new Facebook contest. These organic referrals are the result of your emails being shared by your customer base, as the design, format and ease of sharing to social media gets your viewers to become interested in what you’re sharing, plus with just one-click they can forward your email to a friend. Email marketing provides a robust volume of organic referrals because they are easy to instigate, as you can share informational links within the body of your emails, or use images that are clickable.
Some marketers are so inclined to manage a social media contest or survey with an incentive based on the reader having to share the message on social media prior to being eligible to participate or be eligible to earn the incentive. Sharing content in email to specific pages to your website is a great way to boost your referrals as well as your search rankings. The more traffic, the better your website will be seen in search.
While it is possible to perform basic email marketing tasks using a generic email account, the lack of automation and sophistication of the various templates won’t provide the impact a professional email platform provides. It is also difficult to gauge any level of participation without an in-depth analytics platform that comes with platforms like Constant Contact®. Ever try to get an understanding of a key metric like bounce rate with Outlook?
For that matter, how do you know your email is even being received? Platforms like Constant Contact® provide high deliverability rate and offer analytics to help you improve your email marketing performance. And we are always there to help as well.
Measurement protocol
Measurement protocol by Google may not make much sense to the copy creator, graphic artist or just about anyone other than the person(s) responsible for IT. However, that doesn’t mean it isn’t a critical issue. Without boring the non-coders in the audience, it has to do with sending the right values to the analytics tools that Google provides. As for analytics via Constant Contact, there are dozens of various apps and integrations users can utilize, including TapClicks®, or Tap Analytics®, which offers one touch analytics for all of your marketing campaigns. The great news – it’s free to use for Constant Contact® customers.
Sharing on Social Media
Another great way to generate more leads and organic visitors is to utilize another one of the applications available to Constant Contact® users. Boutique Window is an email builder and image collage solution that with a simple click can share directly to social media. Additionally, solutions like Hootsuite® and Circulate.it® offer email and social media sharing properties as well.
There is much to gain from a professional email platform like Constant Contact® or any one of several great platforms to automate your email marketing strategies. We happen to have faith in Constant Contact®, as it has served us and many of our clients without fail for over ten years and continues to constantly (no pun intended) improve.
Organic lead generation, a process and platform to build engagement and grow organic referrals with email marketing requires automated systems, and we’re happy to provide a no obligation consultation on how we can implement an email marketing process that you can perform as a Do it Yourself, or we’d be happy to Do it With You.
Just give me a call any day of the week. Or start your own free trial, with my assurances that no super-sales-guy will contact you. You can take Constant Contact® out for a test drive.
Your business will be happy you did.
