Website Design and Email Marketing

Getting a website design company to build a really great site is one thing. But how does a company ensure that their marketing campaign really brings traffic to their website? Recently, I had a business asked me to set up a newsletter or email marketing account for them. I am all for marketing, but there are things to consider when setting up a plan to market one's products or services.

1. Who  you send out your email campaign to is vital to the success of the campaign.
   • First of all, where did you get the list of recipients of the campaign? If the list did not come from companies you have done business with or have asked to receive communication from you, then I would be concerned that this list of receipents may not want communication from you.
2. You may ask if there are any potential risks to sending out bulk emails to those you have not had business with or who did not ask to receive newsletters from you.
   • The answer is yes, there are risks. And those risks may be high. All it takes is for a few recipients of the email campaign to complain about the unwanted emails to the right people, and your IP address of your domain could be put on SPAM servers which have marked your IP as a risk for sending spam.
   • You may think, who cares, but your website could get banned from the search engines.
3. So, how do you get a list of people to send out your newsletter to? 
   • You do it the old fashion way! You have a Subscribe to Our Newsletter form on your website which invites people to ask to have your newsletter sent to them. Put relevant and interesting content on your site and promote that content to drive traffic to your website.
4. Now that you have a list of people who have signed up for your newsletter, it is time to throw all of your marketing material their way, correct?
   • I would say that this is not very wise. People who ask to be on your newsletter list may not want to receive lots of marketing material from you, but rather would like to receive some useful content or material that they can use. I would suggest providing 80% of interesting and relavent content and 20% of marketing material. That does not mean 80% great content and 20% promoting your products and services on each newsletter. I would suggest 80% of newsletters sent should not be self promotion and the 20% that are, ensure that there still exists good and relevant content in the newsletters.

So, get out there, create a newsletter signup form on your website, with an autoresponder thanking them for signing up, and provide your newsletter recipients with interesting and valid content or stuff - like a free download of an ebook that you had a professional write about your niche.

Good luck!

• Wayne's blog
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