I’m a marketing professional. I want people to pay me to do their marketing. But in reality, I understand not everyone can afford to hire me or someone else. I’m still a nice person, so I like to help people do their own marketing.
That’s why I’m about to give you some email marketing tips that will probably get me kicked out of the club. Oh well, I’m not really much of a joiner anyway. I think there are just certain things any business owner should know about email marketing, so here goes.
1. Email marketing is not hard. I know it seems complicated, but with email marketing software like Constant Contact, creating professional emails is really easy.
2. You don’t need to know HTML. Again, programs like Constant Contact make it easy for dummies to create gorgeous templates (I mean, I make them, so come on, they can’t be that hard). I actually don’t like it when a client wants to complicate it and makes me use HTML. Me ‘n HTML don’t get along so well.
3. The best days to send emails are Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays. Why? Because on Mondays people are bombarded with email and are likely to delete yours. On Fridays everyone wants to play hooky, so they don’t want to read your stinkin’ email.
4. Emails don’t have to be blatant sales pitches. I actually like the people I email, so I like to send useful articles about marketing to them. Things that they will find helpful, but also things that will remind them how super smart I am when it comes to marketing.
5. There is a way to target your list. I HATE untargeted email lists. I don’t buy lists. But if you start slow, you can ensure you send your emails to people who actually kind of care. And might buy from you.
6. Not every email is spam. You can get good results from email marketing (as long as you’re not slimy about it). Email is a great way to inform people about your product if done correctly.
7. You can track your results. Email programs like (ahem) Constant Contact (I’m sorry. I just really like them and haven’t found anything better) let you see how many people opened an email, how many clicked on a link and how many unsubscribed. You can try different days, times and subject lines to see which get the best results.
8. Email marketing isn’t dead. I brought this debate up before but still stick to my guns. Email is a great way to reach a wider audience.
9. Email marketing can save you thousands of dollars. Compared to other forms of internet advertising, email is cheap. So save your money on the ad in the Wall Street Journal and consider emailing a targeted list of future customers.
What are your email marketing tips? Share them and I’ll repost all of them onto this post!
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Susan Payton is the Marketing Eggspert, and owner of 
Great article Susan! I loved the bit about what days to send email! Very cool stuff. Oh, btw, I like iContact, cause it also has an auto-responder.
Some great points on why email marketing is such a great way to get your message out there.
The ability to make minor changes to a subject line and track the results immediately is where email marketing becomes much more appealing than print marketing. If you create an email template, blast it out and notice a spelling error or that it didn’t have good results, you can make those adjustments quickly and be ready for the next day. However, with print marketing, you have spend a lot of time and money to get the creative done and then once it’s out there you can’t easily pull it back due to grammatical issues or because you decide that the picture wasn’t right, etc.
-Justin Levy
Hello Susan,
Although I always though I new what marketing was it wasnt’ until I started a business that I realized there was more to it than just putting out a billboard. As a newbie entrepreneur it’s quite difficult to juggle marketing, product offering, web sites, domain names, finances, and the other list of things that must be done for startup. Marketing to me should be effortless, efficient and painless. Your article is great, and you are right about the days of week for email delivery, I never send emails on Mon/Fri. I will be looking into Constant Contact though and see if it really is painless. Thanks so much for bringing this information to us non-marketers.
Brandie–
I’ll check out iContact.
Justin–
You’re right. Little tweaks can make a huge difference.
Vera–
I’m glad this article helped you! Marketing SHOULD be easy!
Good information Susan
I’m glad you LIKE the people on your list enough to send them great content instead of always sending pitch letters. Don’t you wish more marketers would do that?
These are great points although somewhat basic.
As an email marketer myself, I agree with the fact that email marketing is NOT dead. To say otherwise is just to show they have not made any money doing it.
Good tips! Online “guru´s” only want to make people believe email marketing is hard so they can sell a product that “solves all your email marketing problems”
So, do you know of any cases where email marketing has worked for a Realtor? I would be interested in hearing about that.
http://www.HomeSweetAzHome.com
Christine–
Email marketing works for every industry. For realtors, it’s a great way to update buyers of new houses on the market, or changes in price, as well as give them useful articles on buying a house.
Susan
Your article is very informative and useful. Glad I found it. Cheers.
Adding this to my bookmarks. Thank You
Although I don’t market through e-mail, I have to say that these are useful tips but if you plan to start out on email marketing you have to have a narrow list of recipients at first and see their feedbacks/reactions. Aside from e-mail marketing you can also use ppcs in your blogs or sites wherein you are paid by the marketing company whenever it is clicked but not accidentally. SEOs can also get you a lot of that green bill.
I really appreciate you are sharing this information. I have been trying my luck with email marketing for months now but to no avail. So, might as well try your advises here. Thanks!
Email marketing done on Tue, Wed and Thu would definitely give some positive results. Nice tip.
hiiiiiiii Susan,nice information. thank you for your post.
I personally liked your point no 3 & 4 a lot. I think it is all about being empathetic towards your (hopefully) would-be customers. I am sure, simplification & understanding of TA would make your results a lot better.
A fantastic read….very literate and informative. Many thanks….what theme is this you are using and also, where is your RSS button ?
Thanks for the comments guys!
Video Sharing Script: it’s a custom WordPress theme designed for all of Sparkplugging. The RSS button is in the top right.
I did not know the right days to send an email and thanks to you because I now have an idea when is the best day to share a little bit of my marketing strategy with my future mailing list. Also, i think it is nice to make these emails as newsletters too so that the people reading it will not only have an idea on what you do and what your products are but also learn from it.