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Email marketing software can be an incredibly effective tool for today's retail store. In an economic climate in which competition is ferocious, email marketing software can give you the extra edge you need to drive more people into your store and increase sales. Best of all, it is easy to integrate email marketing software into your 'marketing mix'. Email marketing software is very cost effective, and there is very little learning involved. This is not to say that a little creative brainstorming isn't required, but once you've got the idea, it's quick to hit the ground running.

This article will help you get on your way to deploying an email marketing software strategy for your retail store. As you gain more experience with email marketing software you will be able to revise your strategy to ensure you always reap the maximum benefit.

Step 1: Build Your Mailing List

The very first thing you need to do is build your mailing list. This is an incredibly important step because the results you ultimately achieve with email marketing software will heavily be based on the quality and size of your contact list. Remember, you don't want to be labeled a 'spammer', so make sure you get people's permission to email them before you add them to your mailing list.

There are a variety of ways you can get people to give you their email address to help build your mailing list.

Many retail stores will ask customers for their email address during the 'check out' process. Simply having the cashier say with a smile: "Can I have your email address so we can occasionally email you special offers?" can really go a long way! People generally respond very well to 'special offers' and most will be willing to share their email address with you if you're willing to give something back (coupons, invites to exclusive in-store events, etc).

Some retail stores also run contests where people can win a prize. The prize can be anything you think will entice your customers, from store merchandise, to a free giveaway, to anything else you can imagine. On the ballot that people use to enter the contest, you can ask for their email address. Make sure you have a checkbox in the ballot asking customers if it's ok to send them emails. Then, you simply type up everyone's email address from all the ballots and presto! You've got a whole bunch of new people to add to your mailing list.

Building your mailing list for email marketing software is not an overnight activity, so don't be alarmed if it takes a little bit of time to really build up a substantial list size. Good things come to those who wait. So, while you may be eager to blast your message out to thousands of people, remember that list building is an ongoing process, and it may take several days/weeks/months to get your list to that size. Don't get discouraged, because once you have started building your mailing list, it will only continue to grow.

Step 2: Send Out Your Email marketing software Campaign

The most important part of launching your email marketing software campaign is to figure out what your goals are and what you want to promote. After all, if you don't have clearly defined objectives, then it will be impossible to know whether anything has been achieved.

Do you want to drive people into your store? Do you want to get people phoning into your store? Do you want people to be buying a certain item? Do you want people to be telling your friends about your store? Etc.

There are many possible objectives you can have, but once you've nailed down what you want to achieve, you can start taking steps towards setting up your email marketing software campaign. One quick tip here is that the best performing email marketing software campaigns are the ones that have one single objective. So, don't try to do everything at once, as that will hinder your email's success.

Most retail stores have the goal of bringing people into their store, which is a logical objective, since patrons in your store can lead to new purchases. Assuming that is the case, then you can ask yourself, "What would entice someone to come to my store?"

The answer for many retail stores is to include coupons in their email marketing software campaign. By sending out a special 'email coupon', you are encouraging your customers to print the coupon at their home, and then bring the coupon into your store to redeem it. The coupon could be for a certain percentage discount on all items or a specific item, a buy one get one free deal, or anything else you can imagine. The important thing is that your email marketing software campaign is giving your customer a reason to come back into your store. As a side benefit, if your email coupons are exclusive to people in your mailing list, then it will further build your mailing list as people will want to sign up to get those offers.

Many retail stores also benefit from the viral nature of email marketing software. In your campaign you can encourage people to forward your e-coupon to their friends, which takes just a few clicks of the mouse. This means that when you use email marketing software to contact one person, this person can actually spread the word to many more potential customers.

Step 3: Analyze Your Results

After you have sent out an email marketing software campaign, it is important that you analyze the results. This will empower you to be better at email marketing software in the future because you will have a keen understanding of what works better with your audience and what does not work so well.

With the top email marketing software software, you can see exactly who opened your email, who clicked on a link, who forwarded it, and more. These metrics will let you easily measure the effectiveness of your email marketing software campaign. Of course, you can also use other metrics, such as how many coupons were redeemed in store.

By using these metrics you can answer questions like "Are my email marketing software campaigns more effective when I send them Tuesday morning or Thursday afternoon?", "Do more people open my email marketing software campaign when I mention a coupon in the subject?", "Do more people race into the store if my email has a special limited-time offer?", Etc. There are lots of questions you can ask. And, with the vast assortment of reporting tools available through email marketing software software, you can actually generate highly scientific answers very easily.

A little bit of studying the reports can go a long way towards boosting your future email marketing software efforts and making email marketing software an even more effective tool for your retail store.

Countless retail stores across the globe have started harnessing the power of email marketing software to help achieve their goals and objectives. With email marketing software's low cost, ease of use, and high return on investment, it is no wonder that many stores have stopped traditional paper mailings altogether in favor of email. So, put on your thinking cap, ask yourself how email marketing software can benefit your retail store, and prepare to make that plan a reality!

Let's keep it simple and go over what you need to do local business email marketing the right way. It is not hard to do and you can quickly get started in just a few steps.

1. You need an autoresponder and for that I suggest Aweber. They rank at the top of all autoresponders being used on the Internet today.

The service runs around $20 a month and let you follow up with thousands of names and email addresses. It's very easy to get started with and they offer training on how to use their system.

2. When using an autoresponder you want to build a sign up form and then place the code on every web page you have. If you are promoting your local business properly you will have website visitors coming to your site on pages other than just your home page.

For this reason placing your sign up form on every page gives you a chance to build your mailing list faster. Doing this will help you increase your business as you can follow up with people over a period of time.

3. Offer something free such as a report that gives him valuable information relating to the niche your business is in. This is what will help entice your website visitors to subscribe to your mailing list. This does not have to be anything real long, but it should include unique information that would make your website visitor want to read it.

4. Set up a few follow up messages in your autoresponder in advance. These only need to be around 200 words in length and should offer helpful information or something your reader would find interesting.

The advantage of pre writing them is you can set them up to go out at various intervals and then forget about them. This makes following up with your new subscribers very easy to do and automates your email marketing efforts.

5. Consider publishing a tips newsletter and send it out on a monthly basis. This is a good way to keep in touch with your email subscribers so they don't forget about you. This is also a good way to sell new products as you can promote things directly in the body of your email newsletter.

These are a few of the basics that will help you do local business email marketing more effectively. Placing a sign up form on your web pages when building your list will give you a tremendous competitive advantage in the marketplace as most of your competitors are not doing this.

The thing that will make you different from the millions that have their own websites is the online marketing strategies that you will use. You need to have these if you want to remain on top of all the others whom you are competing with.

Furthermore, your online marketing strategies are crucial to getting more visitors to come to your site. It can be noted that people are being presented with lots of choices once they start searching the internet. Are you sure that some of them will get to choose yours over any other else?

In order for you to come up with a sound and effective online marketing strategy, you have to make sure that you know what your target market is and how you are positioned over the internet. These things should be combined to other additional strategies that are also important in online marketing.

Below are some considerations to think over before your formulate your own online marketing strategies.

1. Set some goals.

It cannot be denied that when you set some goals, the path that you will take towards it will be more focused. This is because you know what you want done. And the steps to be taken are clearer to you.

On example of a goal to be achieved are target customers. Decide what types of customers you will cater to. From there, you can easily choose those which are in need of what you are offering. You can send them promotions and advertisements that will tell about your product or service.

Furthermore, you can plan your website to suit your target market. In the process, those that are not necessary in your campaign should be taken out of your site to avoid confusion.

2. Distinguish yourself.

Over the years, online businesses have sprouted in the internet. You cannot anymore tell what their difference is from the rest. It seems that when you see one, you have seen it all already.

This is why you have to distinguish yourself from the many existing websites. So what if you are offering the same things? The thing to remember is to distinguish your website so that it will be set apart from the rest.

Provide some additional services they will not anywhere else. Use your imagination in thinking up unique things to offer your visitors. Check over some of your competitors to see what they have and what they do not have. Make the most of the information that you will achieve and use them to your advantage.

3. Prioritize convenience.

Make it easy for people to buy from you. Do not lead them to some never-ending navigation just to have an order placed and to make some payments. Equip your website with tools that are easy simple and easy to use.

People want everything done fast. Do not disappoint them.

Once you have all these compiled into one solid plan, then you can set to see changes in how well your site is doing. If you have not planned them to perfection, then you will end up wasting your time and not getting back the money that you have put up for your website.

Only you have the power to think of online marketing strategies to use on your website. Follow the considerations given and keep going from there.

For more information about Online Marketing Strategies be sure to follow the link in the resource box below to receive your free home business Cd.

For starters, and just to make sure we're all on the same page, what is email marketing solutions? In a nutshell, it's exactly what it sounds like: communicating with your customers via email. But there's a key difference between legitimate email marketing solutions and the pesky spam messages that end up in your junk folder. The difference is that email marketing solutions is opt-in, or permission-based. This means that the people who are receiving your email messages have, at some point, signed up to hear from you. This is one of the key reasons why email marketing solutions is so effective.

But that's not what I want to focus on today. In fact, now that we've gotten the basic stuff out of the way, I want to introduce you to a completely new way to look at email marketing solutions. Yes, email marketing solutions will help you communicate with your customers and leads, and yes, it's an inexpensive and efficient method of marketing. But you probably already know that. You also likely know that you can use email marketing solutions for many methods of communication, including e-newsletters, e-flyers, e-coupons and promotions, press releases, postcards, event invitations (or e-vites), thank you notes, and so much more. But did you know email marketing solutions has another major functionality?

Email marketing solutions can help you get to know your customers. Just when you thought that market research and intricate customer profiling tools were reserved for big companies with huge budgets, here comes this nifty, easy-to-use and inexpensive online tool. Email marketing solutions is like a window into the actions, preferences and behaviors of your customers and leads.

So, the big question is: How? And, as cliché as it sounds, I'm happy to say it's easy as pie (actually, since I don't really bake, if you're anything like me this is going to be much, much easier than pie!) Here are the simple steps you can follow to get to know your customers via email marketing solutions.

Step 1: Take Good Care of Your Contact List

When you ask customers or prospects to sign up for your email marketing solutions subscriber list, the one key piece of information you must collect is their email address. If you want to make the most of email marketing solutions, make sure you also ask for their first and last name, and other information that may be pertinent to your business. For example, if you run a sporting memorabilia store, you may want to ask for the customer's favorite sports team(s). This way, later you'll be able to send out targeted messages promoting merchandise from the selected sports team(s). The simple step of asking for pertinent information when the customer signs up will later help you send messages targeted to the exact interest of each customer. If you keep the information you collect in a simple Excel file, you'll later be able to automatically upload it to your email marketing solutions software.

Now, you may be thinking: does targeting my customers' interests mean I'll have to manually sift through each customer record and separate customers by interest group? The answers is no, not if you are using a first-class email marketing solutions software package.

Step 2: Make Good Use of Interest Groups

An interest group is a group of email subscribers who share something in common. This may be a group of people who live in the same area, wear the same shoe size, purchase from your store with the same frequency, etc. In email marketing solutions, you can segment customers any way you want, or any way that makes sense for your business. By separating customers into interest groups, you can automatically send out email marketing solutions messages to one or more specific group(s) of people. For example, if you have segmented your customers by birthday month, you can send out a Happy Birthday email message specifically to the customers whose birthdays fall on the current month. You can even include a coupon for a freebie or a special discount on the customer's birthday.

One really cool thing about that is that the top email marketing solutions programs can auto-fill information on an email message. So, for example, if Annie's birthday is on April 2 and you want to send a coupon that can only be used on her birthday, the best email marketing solutions software packages include a feature that can auto-fill information, such as, "This coupon is only valid on April 2."

Now there are 2 key ways you would know Annie's birthday is on April 2, or Tommy likes the Toronto Maple Leafs. The first way is the one described in Step 1: you had the foresight to ask for this pertinent information when the customer signed up for your email marketing solutions list. So, what if you already have a list, but you never asked for customer information at sign-up? Can you still use email marketing solutions to get to know your customers? The answer is yes, of course.

Step 3: Make Good Use of Links In Your Email Messages

Another great way to get to know your customers through email marketing solutions is include pertinent links in your email messages. The best email marketing solutions programs provide you with detailed link click reports. This means that you will be able to see which customers clicked on each link contained in your email marketing solutions campaign. How does that help you get to know their interests and preferences? Easy! Once you have chosen how to segment your customers (by shoe size, birthday month, life stage, etc, etc..), create some email content targeted to that interest group. The simplest and most straightforward method is to say something like: "Want to receive emails about stuff that's important to you? Tell us what's important to you". You can then include links to options like "traveling, my kids, work, etc.." Make sure these links take the reader somewhere, even if it's a simple 'Thank You' page. And, you don't even have to be so direct. Say you run a music store. You can include links to your product pages with link text like "See what's new in classical music" or "Click here to browse through our hard rock music selection."

Once the email has been sent, your email marketing solutions software will show you a detailed link click report. You will see which customers are fans of classical music, and which are fans of hard rock. Then (here comes my favorite part), if you are using a top-notch email marketing solutions program, you will be able to automatically turn these report results into interest groups. This means that with the simple click of a button, you will instantly have a classical music interest group, and a hard rock interest group. Next time, you can send each group emails with more of the albums that you know will interest them. And, you were able to get to know your customers that well simply by including a few pertinent links in your email marketing solutions campaign.

With these 3 simple steps, you too can get to know your customers using the simple, inexpensive and highly effective tool known as email marketing solutions.