This is a guest contribution from Mike Swan of Markupcloud Ltd

Let’s put it without masking – email marketing is facing challenges unbridled;  not in terms of its effectiveness as an online marketing endeavor, but in a way it is being adopted and used. While the new players on the block have more or less ignored this still-most-effective way of web-marketing , there are others whose email marketing strategy is chaotic and restlessly roaming around the pillars of spamming, non-targeted emailing and bulk-emailing.

The influx of social media into the marketing realm is just an influx, nothing more. If you are led to believe that social media has invaded the way we are supposed to advertise our products, you would end up doing a  be a great deal of disservice to your business if you begin to bank heavily on social media with that belief. Emails are still much more effective than any social media platform. They are more personalized, more relevant, and stand a greater chance of being visible. And there are reasons to claim and believe so. And then, there are questions:

“I have 300 followers on Facebook, Why Would I Need Email-Marketing?”

Let’s say you post an article on your website, which is delivered duly to folks in your email subscription list. You post URL of the same article on your social media page. What does have a better conversion rate? Well, thanks to a platform like Facebook, if you have 300 fans on your page, you won’t get more than 30 fans to see your post on your luckiest day – unless you are adopting some alternate way to promote that post. As for the email subscription, your post is delivered to the inbox of every single subscriber. While not all might go ahead and read the article, the conversion rate is apparently much higher because of the greater visibility.

It’s Easier to Miss an Update on the already-flooded News Feed Than it is in Inbox

Again, this applies to the two most popular platforms, Twitter and Facebook. Thanks to the deluge of people your fans follow on Twitter, your tweet gets lost before it’s noticed. And same goes for Facebook and other social media platforms. But, irrespective of how many emails we receive in a day, we always scan for the ones which can be relevant to us.

So, you don’t need hotshot digital marketing professionals to formulate strategies, you don’t need to post the URL a dozen times a day, you don’t need to keep coming up with different ways to promote that single post (Well, you can do email marketing AND all this as well for meatier results).

One factor that underlines the above is that you have the permission of your readers to send your site’s updates to their inbox. So, you are not prying or spamming by any means. Email marketing, however, is not all about subscribers.

Social Media is Not the Only Way People Share

Not everyone is super keen to share what they see and like on their Facebook timelines. There is a huge chunk of people who still prefer sharing their favorite bits with people through emails. Now, because these shares are not on a public platform, and are shared through emails, they aren’t visible to all. However, they are more likely to evoke response because they are sent by the sender exclusively to few contacts in his/her email. And because it gets delivered to their inbox, we go back to the point number one of it being standing a better chance of being converted into a visit.

“How Do I Extract More Email Addresses?”

Now, this is where social media can prove to be handy. You do not have to solely rely on the traditional methods of extracting the emails of your visitors. There are easier and more effective ways to do so. You can, for example, use Facebook Connect to fetch the email addresses of those who have already been visiting your site. Facebook Connect displays a pop up on your site wherein a visitor who is already logged in to their Facebook account only to click a button on the pop up and his/her email address is automatically recorded into your subscribers list.

Get Your Subscription Forms Displayed Everywhere on Your Site

You can also create a separate website on your website that is dedicated to subscribing visitors to your blog. You can promote the page and drive more traffic towards it to improve your chances of getting more and more subscribers. In addition to this, let a subscription form appear below every post. If your readers are bothered enough to read the article down to its last word, there is a good chance that they would like to keep themselves attuned to your updates.

The Call-to-Action

You don’t always have to display the text “Subscribe to our updates” on the subscribe button. Sometimes, a clever use of words gives better results. Let’s say, you can use “Download Now” to signify that any update on the site would be downloaded on your visitor’s email.

Get All the Spam Rules in Order

Spamming can do more damage than you had expected. And there are more ways that qualify as ‘spamming’ than you had evaluated.

Here is the CAN-SPAM act for your consideration. Make sure you read it thoroughly to understand how you are contributing to spamming and why you should change your approach. Your subscribers signed up with you for a free giveaway you had promised, you should not use their email for marketing purposes unless this was a condition explicitly charted out at the time of signing them up. Also, you need to include a way for people to unsubscribe form your blog

Draft Them in Words that Stand Out

for delivering even better results, you need even more people noticing your emails, for which, you need to choose your words wisely. Going with the humdrum of a language isn’t likely to bring any result. Let the subject of your emails intrigue then. If your visitors are getting the updates about the latest articles on your blog, keeping the title of the article in the subject might just do the trick for you. Irrespective of the title you chose, it is going to be unique and different than the other emails they receive.

The email marketing results ways are good enough to make you aware of all the ways email marketing is good. As it continues to march ahead in top gear,  sooner you catch the wagon, better it would serve you in the long run.

Mike Swan is a creative web designer in Markupcloud Ltd with vast experience in Research and development vertex of web design technologies. He use to write  on various Markup conversion  processes and socialize it through social media platforms. You can find him on Facebook, Twitter, and G+. 

Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger

Online Marketing: Why Email is a Richer Cousin to Social Media

@ProBlogger

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