Making the Most of Your E-mail Marketing (written January, 2015)

I would guess that more than 95% of business people use email today. In our business, maybe a little less. Maybe like 75%. Knowing this, it’s important to make the most of our email marketing then. Because email marketing can be a great way to promote your offers inexpensively and profitably.

The first question that comes to mind is who to send emails to. I have read that you should only send emails to people you know and to people that have done business with you. You should actually get their permission if you can. I once years ago rented an email list from a reputable mailing list service. I then proceeded to send emails out at the rate of 20,000 per day for three days. On the second day, my ISP suspended my account and closed my email port. I had more complaints – flames – 25 times as many from that first 20,000 than the cumulative total I had in the more than 30 years of being in business. And these were from people who didn’t know me or had done business with me either – but they complained to no end. Boy did they complain. So my advice is to make sure you only mail to qualified names. Do not rent email lists!

The second question is how often should we send emails out to our names? There are no right answers, but I have read that once a week is more than enough. Since all of us are inundated with emails regularly, you don’t want to annoy your prospect or worse – immediately go to the prospects spam file without them ever seeing what you are promoting. You don’t want to be a nuisance! Once a week should be the maximum. I send my emails out every Saturday or Sunday, but no more than 1 time per week.

The third question is very important. What is the purpose of your emails? When I first started I figured it was the right thing to do, but the more and more I read about it, I realized I was going about it all wrong. I use to try to sell people straight from the email, but that didn’t work for me. So I decided to utilize emails as I would a postcard or classified ad. Sometimes, I direct the prospect to a website that explains my offer in full detail or sometimes I send emails to enhance my current postal mail promotions and services or even sometimes, I just send an email to disseminate free information. Educating your prospects will attract them to your offers. It has worked for me.

The last question then is when should you send out emails? What time is best? When are these prospects most active? It’s hard to pinpoint, and since I have sent emails out at all times of the day, I would think the best time to send emails to our prospects is on the weekends during the night time hours of 5pm-10pm. In our business, I think that is when most of our prospects are around and that is the best time it seems like when I personally get the most activity. Getting your offer into the eyes of a prospect at the right time definitely helps improves results. In our business since most people do MLM part-time, the weekends are when most of our prospects are around.

In closing, I have found that when I do a full blown marketing promotion for my services, my offers and my promotions, using print advertising and email marketing together captures every demographic group I am looking for to sell to. So to make the most of your email marketing, I believe you need to use emails in conjunction with all your advertising. It has worked for me my friends. So I hope these quick tips help you improve your email marketing too.

The author of this article is Larry Costello, President of All-American Print & Mail, 2200 Wilson Blvd #102-57, Arlington, VA 22201.