E-mail Marketing 2011
Welcome to the New Year 2011
What a great year 2010 truly was for us at Viper Logic, home to Viper Mailer our email-marketing-service-provider system.
Logic wishes all a very prosperous 2011
2011 is being forecast in various directions but that should not matter to you or me. The year 2011 will shape up to be what you put into it, while you can go out and eat Chinese food at your favorite Chinese Restaurant and read the fortune cookie you receive at the end of that meal and use that as a guide to how or what direction your business will take in 2011.
Now for the major changes to look for in email-marketing for 2011
Social Networking profiles and efforts are all of the rage looking toward the New Year as we wind down the year 2010.
Do not get the following information confused with the SPAMMER’s, those people generally located outside the Untied States send out 10’s, 100’s of thousands, sometimes millions of fished email account messages knowing that they only need a few buyers to succeed and offset the expenses of sending spam messages.
The following is for the professional Opt-In on topic email marketing campaign managers.
Gone in 2011 for email campaigns
Email messages that provide no interaction or involvement
Email blasts offering up discounts with nothing else (empty)
Email campaigns that do not share information and excitement about products, places, types and services
Emails sent to masses of people that you have no relationship with
Expanding in 2011 for email campaigns
Customer involvement
Customer involvement and interaction on you, your business and your product or service, what medium you select to provide and promote this customer action is up to you, it is irrelevant which delivery medium you choose but your efforts into that medium is critical as too is your ability to have control of the content and actions of that medium.
In our case we control the mediums we offer our clients to interact in public venues, even though we do not edit or delete any legitimate posts that clients post, share or vent, but we DO have a 100% control over the tools we utilize for all interaction.
Dynamic offers
Location with time sensitive and on target relativity will take center stage. When email marketing managers data mine their list of contacts and refine each contact into a real relationship with each person (not just contacts) knowing what, when and where that customer would be interested in receiving an on target offer based on where that contact is currently located and what time of day they are most likely take advantage of the offer.
Multi path intelligent email campaigns
Whatever you do on your web site(s) resist adding those links to join us, follow us, like us and all of the other gimmicks that in our SEO/SEM experiences are something you should never do. The reason is, businesses spend a fortune in time and money getting traffic to their web sites only to have them click on a link that takes them away from your sites/efforts. Sending new and existing customers to anything that you do not own is a really bad thing, once a site visitor has left your site for one of those (out of your control) distracting sites, they are likely gone forever.
How to nicely trick your followers
The 2011 rule for popularity gaining is this.
We all know those logos to the popular and famous social sites that are on your site, or you see on many other web sites you visit.
Here is the idea for 2011 that we like.
The popular social sites offer buttons utilize them, only the link that your site visitors click on takes them to your forum, blog or micro-blog or focused sites that your company has built and controls. This tactic, if done correctly meaning you have very important information, education and ways for others to meet up and share with others sharing the same interests, interests that drew these site visitors to your web site in the first place will gladly embrace this opportunity. Reframe from just taking site visitors to a landing page of your web site that is requiring a Call to Action (purchase).
Email-Marketing-Campaign contact refinement
There is a giant reason that most all (ESP) email service providers offer great email contact management benefits and here is what they were designed into all email client accounts.
Target specific contacts, what 2011 is all about.
If you sell coffee at a coffee shop but all you know about your contacts isd that they have bought a coffee at your coffee shop in the past at some time. 2011 requires interactive relationships with those email contacts. Email contacts are generally stored in your email marketing service account and you can separate your list of contacts into multiple groups. Say for a coffee shop you know who is buying smoothies and who is decaf or regular coffee drinkers, who eats a bagel or has a sandwich with their coffees and maybe even who drinks coffee in the shop and who gets their coffees to go.
Knowing details (beyond the contacts name and email address) about each customer is a 2011 critical requirement in the coming year, in addition, you are going to need to be a trusted sender more then ever with your customers, when it comes to the larger (mostly free MSN, Yahoo, AOL, Ymail, Facebook, Myspace, and countless other email delivery service members.
Welcome to the one way street
Unlike the major search and social engines having the ability to allow spammers to send through those free accounts messages to you, you as a business operator are not going to be able to get your messages through their severs because the email contact will first need to add you as a trusted sender. Business owners, nonprofit organizers and membership groups have their work cut out for them if they are to stay in touch and continue selling their products and services to these free email contacts.
Wishing each and all a profitable New Year 2011
While the industry of email-marketing and yes all e-Communications are clearly going to see changes, the much hyped (media promoted) items more then likely will not be the ones coming to frustration, but rather the items that we are sharing above, and that are not of the popular media coverage ones.
Yet these items that we mention, though perhaps not all of them and not exactly as we are predicting will take place, these changes none the less will force huge corrections for most all email-marketing-campaigns in 2011 and beyond.
There is always an opportunity to prevail but only for those that not only wish for it but that have a PASSION to excel at growing their businesses or organizations through e-Communications.