The A-Z of Email Marketing for startup businesses

E-mails are a powerful marketing strategy for small businesses and even larger operations today. As a matter of fact, there's a good chance that many businesses have their own e-mail system. They can build the mailing list, send a regular marketing message to their customers, and track sales, leads, and client activities.

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With e-mails, you can keep track of your past campaigns and see what new techniques are working, what you should improve on, even compare how well your campaigns are performing with those of other businesses in your area. Plus there are also some tools designed to help you improve your e-mail marketing campaigns, which allows you to get the most out of your campaign and see how effective your campaign actually is.

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Some free e-mail marketing software programs are really just demos, so they are not fully functional and offer not-all-encompassing services. For those who are really new to the e-mail marketing game, a simple program can be beneficial because it allows you to just get your foot in the door. A free program should only be considered as a guide, and not as a complete solution. There are many paid software programs, but these are the ones that have been proven with the customer and industry testing.

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Other e-mail marketing programs include an auto-responder, which is a service that allows you to have your e-mail messages sent out based on a pre-set interval. A pre-set interval is the time period that you can set up within the program that your e-mails will be sent. You are able to specify a time frame when the e-mails will be sent out (30 days, 7 days, or whatever time frame you may choose), plus choose how many days' intervals you would like. This is extremely convenient because you don't have to think about how often you want your e-mails to be sent out each day - the auto-responder does that for you, allowing you to focus on other marketing issues.

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There are many auto-responder programs, most of them come with a free account, in which you are able to set up a list of e-mails that will be sent out at specified intervals. So, if you don't want to use the free account you'll have to enter the content, graphics, and other elements of your e-mail campaigns yourself. These auto-responder programs will even handle your list building and management - so you can concentrate on marketing your business instead of worrying about list building.

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One of the main advantages of having an opt-in list that you own the list of e-mails is that you are able to send newsletters that have information for your subscribers, rather than having to rely on your subscribers to send you their newsletters. You can have the subscribers send you their information by e-mail, through your auto-responder, or just give your subscribers the option of signing up to receive the newsletters.

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In some cases, you may want to send out information and announcements to your subscribers as often as possible. However, one of the main disadvantages of opt-in lists is the frequency of the newsletters that you send out. So, instead of sending the newsletters out as often as I do - twice a month - I have a higher rate of unsubscribers and the subscribers don't read my newsletters when they get them.

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However, you can use your own opt-in list to send out your newsletters - as often as you would like. You are however limited to the number of subscribers that you have, plus any additional subscribers you may purchase. That is the downside about the opt-in list - you are limiting your newsletters to only the number of subscribers you have in order to get your message out.

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You can't just think of your prospects as a number. If you're not careful - your prospects may not benefit.

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