In a sales meeting, it’s important to earn permission before proceeding to the business proposition, and that same sentiment applies to email marketing.
Deborah Shane writes for Small Business Trends and highlights that entrepreneurs can establish trust as they build their businesses by giving clients and prospects the option to receive emailed messages, information and resources from you.
“It is also a very targeted and effective way to ask people for their business,'” she adds. “There is great power and responsibility in permission-based marketing, as long as you are using it appropriately and respecting your community.”
Do you pause between the stages in the sales process and earn permission to proceed to the next stage? How do you gradually build trust with your prospects in order to make the most of the business relationship?
Putting together a newsletter containing articles that you think your clients and prospects will find interesting is a great way to keep your name at the top of their minds while also demonstrating that you understand what it is they care about. It is important to understand your audience and the reasons they joined your email list. You want to direct content that speak to their needs. We suggest that you include a quick checklist under where the individual would provide their email to identify their interests. This will obviously depend on your clientele and the variety of products and services you offer, as well as the ways in which you want people to see your brand.
Consistency and timing are vital aspects of any marketing campaign, especially with emailed messages.
The 6 a.m. to 10 a.m. period is another wise time to send emails, he adds, as many people will be browsing their inboxes as they prepare to start their working day. There is virtually no point in sending emails between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m., as Owsinski calls it “an email dead zone” and notes that messages delivered overnight tend to be ineffective.
It seems there is a large debate on the best time and the best day to send out emails, besides a consensus on it being BAD to send out emails between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m. We suggest you consider your target audience, decide on a day and time and then measure the effectiveness using analytics that will provide you with the open rate and the number of click throughs. If your list is large enough, you could even split the group to compare results. Different markets have different schedules. Seniors, for example, will differ greatly from young entrepreneurs. They too will differ from teachers, and so on.
In terms of the optimum frequency for delivering messages, we advise sending out emails between one and four times per month. If you’re considering circulating a newsletter, decide whether you will send it weekly or monthly, and stick to that schedule. The important thing to remember is to establish a process for identifying and/or producing content that will appeal to your readers. The last thing you want is for them to unsubscribe to your mailings.
