Blending your social media marketing strategies with your email marketing strategies may sound difficult, but honestly, some of the strategies are pretty simple.

In fact, I’ll bet you can implement most of the strategies listed below in your next email newsletter!

It’s time to integrate social media with email marketing! Here are your strategies:

Social Media for Email Marketing: Strategy #1

Include the same photo you use for your social media avatar next to your email signature. This can be done both in your email newsletter and in your everyday emails. Since 90% of our immediate recognition is visual, this strategy will help increase recognition of you and your brand on social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn and infuse some of you in your emails.

Social Media for Email Marketing: Strategy #2

Link to your social networking profiles in your emails. In your regular email signature or your email newsletter, include links to your profiles or pages on social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. Invite your readers to visit the sites and connect with you.

Social Media for Email Marketing: Strategy #3

Don’t be afraid to make the ask. Ask your email newsletter readers to share their feedback and comments on your Facebook page. Invite them to share their favorite thing about an article or their ideas about your topic on Twitter. Encourage them to respond to a question you posted on LinkedIn.

Social Media for Email Marketing: Strategy #4

Interact with your email newsletter subscribers. Email isn’t a one way form of communication. Remember the reply button? Ask reader to hit reply and share a piece of information with you. Then in your next issue, share the results of your ask. Share some of the reader feedback, a specific comment, or the findings of the survey to keep them interested and engaged.

Social Media for Email Marketing: Strategy #5

Highlight your most active social media friends, followers, and contacts. Highlight comments, ideas, or posts shared by other members of your tribe in your newsletter and link back to their profiles. This is a great way to encourage more engagement on your social networking profiles and give back to those who engage in conversation with you.

Have you found other ways to integrate your social media strategies with your email marketing strategies? I’d love to hear about it below!
 

I made the mistake, as did many others, of sending these messages right from Outlook like I did with all of my other email messages. Why not, right? Wrong!

In fact, one day some people stopped receiving email from me completely!

I went into panic mode pretty quickly because my whole business used email as its main form of communication, and this was a disaster. I did some research and quickly found out I was flagged as a spammer by one large email company because I was sending several email messages with the same subject line and messages to very large groups of people!

It took a lot of work to get back into that provider’s good graces, including tons of phone calls, emails, applications and even some begging. After that, I made it my mission to learn everything I could about email marketing, HTML email, spam laws, and service providers — one of which became my best new email asset.

To do any type of email marketing, you have to set up an account with an email marketing service provider. These service providers enforce strict email rules, work tirelessly to keep their servers white-listed (liked) by the internet service providers / email providers, provide you the ability to track and measure your email marketing campaign results, and manage your email marketing list subscribes and unsubscribes.

There are a lot of email marketing service providers available and I am often asked, “Which is the right one for my business?”

The key to answer that question is knowing what you intend to do with your list, what size your list is, how often you will be sending emails to your list, and how you plan to use your list. Then you can compare that information with the features of each individual provider. The features vary from provider to provider, but one area where they vary greatly is how the service is paid for.

For example:

• Some service providers charge you an account setup fee and some do not.
• Some service providers charge you a specified fee to send an unlimited number of emails, while others charge only when a message is sent.
• Some service providers determine fees by the size of your list or how often you send email marketing messages to your list.

When evaluating service providers, be sure to look at the features they offer and verify they offer services you want to use or add-on in the future. Find out if they offer only one auto responder message or the capability to send an entire auto responder campaign, if you can have multiple lists with separate opt-ins, and learn how you can customize your email templates and what tracking options are available.

Click here to read my blog post with more information and a list of email marketing service providers.

Click here to learn more about Bourn Creative’s email marketing design and implementation services.

It is difficult to talk about email marketing and not talk about list building. In fact, many experts make it seem as if building a big list is the only thing Internet entrepreneurs need to worry about. But when it comes to your list, does size really matter?

Yes and no. At several of the conferences I have attended, experts say that the tipping point for a truly successful ezine is 1,000 subscribers. But I am here to tell you that HUGE results can come from small lists, as long as your readers are engaged and you are actively working to build long-lasting relationships.

Tips for Building Your Email Marketing Opt-in List

Give Them Something Free! We live in the holy land of the “free gift with purchase.” This sales technique repeatedly draw hundreds shoppers to retail establishments daily and it is just as effective when used online. While retail stores provide a gift in exchange for a sale, online marketers provide a free gift in exchange for an email address.

In Internet marketing, giving away something that is relevant and valuable to your prospects and customers not only helps you build your list, but it gives people a sample of the caliber of products and services you and your company offer and a feel for what it would be like doing business with you.

Here are some ideas of the type of items you could give away:

• Special Reports
• A teleseminar or teleclass
• Audio Recordings
• E-books
• A Coaching Session
• Monthly Newsletter
• Product Reviews
• Prizes
• Re-brandable Reports
• Physical Products
• Coupons and Discounts
• Trial Memberships
• Tips, Tricks and Strategies
• Checklists
• And more!

Are you interested in learning more strategic list building tips? Check out the email marketing blog posts listed below for ten more marketing savvy list building tips.

Top Ten Email Marketing List Building Tips – Part 1.

Top Ten Email Marketing List Building Tips – Part 2.

Email addresses should be obtained only by legitimate means like through opt-in and subscribe boxes on your website, or by specific request. This is why email marketing lists are often called opt-in lists. Valid contact information should be included in every piece of email marketing and a privacy policy should be provided.

Single Opt-In Marketing Lists vs. Double Opt-In Marketing Lists

• Single opt-in emails do not require a confirmation via email. In this case, when a customer subscribes, they are automatically added to your marketing list.
• Double opt-in emails require the subscriber to confirm their subscription and agree they do want to receive your email marketing messages. In this case, when they subscribe, a confirmation email is received in their inbox. They will only be added to your list if they click on the link in the email message.
• NOTE: Just because you meet someone at an event and they trade cards with you doesn’t give you the right to add them to your list. Also, adding everyone you have ever met to your list and justifying it with an unsubscribe link that gives them the option to not receive your ezine is unacceptable. If you use either of these tactics, you will be viewed as a spammer.

Remind Email or Ezine Subscribers How they Joined Your List

Many email marketers will include a 1-2 sentence description of how their list is generated. This short statement reminds the recipient that they did in fact opt-in to the marketing list.

For example: “You are receiving this email message because you made a verbal or written request at an event, opted-in on one of our websites, www.bourncreative.com, www.jenniferbourn.com, www.designandprofit.com, or purchased a product from Bourn Creative.”

Provide an Easy Unsubscribe or Opt-Out Option for Your Email Newsletter

Believe it or not, by making is clear that you include unsubscribe and opt-out links in each email message, email newsletter, or ezine, you will actually increase your subscriber count. At some point people who have joined your list may want to leave. By showing them that leaving your list is as easy as joining it, you bypass some of the fear associated with the possibility of receiving spam and unwanted email in their inboxes.

An email newsletter or ezine (email magazine) is a very popular form of email marketing. An ezine is an electronic form of communication that is sent out on an ongoing basis and used for business to business or business and consumer companies.

Because email marketing doesn’t require printing or postage, staying connected to your audience via email marketing is a more cost effective alternative to traditional print newsletters.

Email marketing is an essential tool to growing your business in today’s fast-paced world of Internet business. Offering open, conversational, and interactive communications is quickly becoming a necessity for business marketing. In fact, these days, it seems as if everyone already has, or is currently developing some type of email newsletter or email marketing system.

No matter what type of business you have or what services or products you sell, a value-added ezine can be a great tool to help build your business. Publishing an ezine, weekly, bi-weekly, monthly, or even quarterly (if it makes sense) helps you stay in front of your customers and prospects, increase your marketing “touches,” and generate more leads and referrals.

Publishing An Ezine or E-Newsletter Will Also Help You:

• Save valuable budget dollars (and some trees) by going digital. By producing your ezine online, you’ll save on design fees, printing, postage, envelopes and mail handling, not to mention the fact that your ezine will get to your audience much faster than snail mail.
• Increase your brand recognition by getting your image and name in front of your customers and prospects more often. Include your logo, tagline, ezine title, color palette, brand graphics, and photo in every issue.
• Connect with your target market, customers, and prospective customers on a regular basis, keeping you at the top of their minds and the tip of their tongues, ensuring that when your services or products are needed they will buy from you or refer you to their friends, family, and business associates.
• Increase your credibility and gain the trust of your target market, making it easier to sell your product or service.
• Educate your current clients on all of your services, products and talents, enticing them to expand their relationship with you and increase profits from your existing customer base with the “I didn’t know you do that, can you do it for me?” response.
• Attract new opportunities, such as strategic partnerships, joint ventures, media interviews, speaking engagements, and more.
• Create new passive streams of revenue by referring products or services that earn you a commission (affiliate programs), directly selling your products or services, or selling ad space in your ezine.
• Expand your network and build your list by capturing the email addresses of your website visitors with an opt-in box and getting permission to market to them.
• Organize your industry knowledge and package it into products, programs, reports, ebooks, tips lists, articles, and endorsements that can easily be reused and/or repurposed.
• Reach a wider audience and bring in more potential customers by repurposing your email newsletter content on your blog or submitting your articles to news bureaus, PR websites, and ezine article directories.

From designing and programming your newsletter templates, to writing content, and implementing each issue, if you want to publish an email newsletter to enhance and build your brand, Bourn Creative can help. We offer design, copywriting, and full-service email marketing implementation services for businesses just like yours.

Infusionsoft Unveils Email Marketing 2.0 to Revolutionize Small Business Growth; Next-generation Email Marketing is Behavior-Driven and Adapts Dynamically to Drive Sales

PHOENIX, AZ – (MARKET WIRE) – 02/08/10 — Infusionsoft today announced the availability of Email Marketing 2.0, ushering in a new era in small business growth with email marketing that dynamically and automatically adapts and responds to customer behavior in order to increase sales and customer satisfaction. Infusionsoft is the first company to combine CRM with email marketing in a single system for a simple, automated and powerful next-generation solution that enables small businesses to target their marketing like never before. Email Marketing 2.0 is supported by new features in Infusionsoft’s flagship product, a free trial for new users, as well as an array of educational resources to help customers get started with their first Email Marketing 2.0 campaign.

Traditional email marketing systems rely on one-off and broadcast emails that are not aware of customer and prospect behavior, and are not able to respond and change based on important information like sales transactions and customer feedback. Infusionsoft Email Marketing 2.0 takes a customer-centric approach by combining email marketing with a powerful customer database (CRM) that tracks interest, behaviors and e-commerce data in a single system. This allows Infusionsoft users to automatically send timely and relevant marketing communications that match their customer and prospect needs — around the clock, responding intelligently and in real-time, creating new opportunities to increase sales. Infusionsoft Email Marketing 2.0 also eliminates the irrelevant and distracting email communications that drive customers away.

Email Marketing 2.0 also differs from email marketing “1.0″ in that customers can send more than just email communications. Letters, faxes, voice messages, post cards and even text messages can easily be incorporated into the smart, automated communications strategy of an Email Marketing 2.0 customer.

“Email Marketing 2.0 from Infusionsoft is a significant development for small business,” said analyst Brent Leary of CRM Essentials. “Other vendors are building email marketing into their customer database products, but this one makes it based on customer actions. It should help get prospects into the sales pipeline quicker — and anything that eases that process, particularly for the small business market, can make a big impact. It also simplifies email marketing, which a lot of small businesses find too complex and time-consuming to do properly.”

“I have been waiting for a solution that would allow me to incorporate behavior-based email marketing into my strategy, but there hasn’t been a way to do it easily with a small staff. Infusionsoft Email Marketing 2.0 gives me a way to dramatically increase sales by holding my audience’s attention longer and providing more targeted messages than ever before,” said Jennifer Bourn, art director and marketing manager at Bourn Creative, a branding, design and marketing firm in Sacramento, Calif.

“Email marketing is one of the most cost-effective and accessible tools available for small businesses to reach their target audience. But it must be done in a way that pleases customers and prospects. There has been no system to do that — until now,” said Infusionsoft CEO and co-founder, Clate Mask. “Email Marketing 2.0 is the next-generation of email marketing. It’s smart, responsive, dynamic and adaptive. And that means real growth for the small business owner.”

He added, “While email marketing 1.0 is un-intelligent, manual and, well, email-only, Email Marketing 2.0 on the other hand is smart, automated and ‘email-plus’ communication. It’s a shame that email marketing has been stuck at a 1.0 level when all other services and technologies have advanced. That changes today.”

Infusionsoft is offering small businesses a free trial to launch their first Email Marketing 2.0 campaign. The risk-free trial is a three-step process that can be completed in a single day, immediately demonstrating the value of Email Marketing 2.0:

• Import existing email lists
• Design Email Marketing 2.0 campaign with built-in response triggers and hit “go”
• See results: increased customer engagement, sales, converted prospects, etc.

Email Marketing 2.0 from Infusionsoft is tailored for small businesses that don’t necessarily have an IT department or a large sales and marketing staff to get started or keep it running. It’s chock full of examples and templates and is designed to be customized to your brand. Recent product updates introduced an email-authoring feature that instantly matches email themes to a company’s logo.

Because it’s provided on-demand, there is no software to maintain and no headaches about maintenance or computer infrastructure for small businesses. All that is needed to start growing a business is an Internet connection and a browser. Subscriptions to Infusionsoft include free seasonal product updates, which have recently included improvements to ease of use, data import, email authoring, as well as advanced email marketing features.

Infusionsoft will be offering ongoing education on Email Marketing 2.0 in the form of videos, blog posts, Webinars and in-application tips and tricks.

About Infusionsoft

Infusionsoft helps small businesses grow fast with targeted email marketing that responds and adapts to customer behavior. Infusionsoft is the first company to combine email marketing and CRM in a single system for a simple and powerful next-generation solution, enabling small businesses to target their marketing like never before. The web-based software also combines e-commerce and powerful automation tools with its intelligent email marketing to deliver a true small business growth suite. The privately held, three-time Inc. 500 company is based in Gilbert, Ariz. and is funded by Mohr Davidow Ventures and vSpring Capital. For more information, visit www.infusionsoft.com.

Contact Information: LaunchSquad 415-625-8555 Infusionsoft(at)LaunchSquad(dot)com

1. Add a Sign Up form or Opt-In Box on Every Page of Your Website
2. Advertise in Another Ezine
3. Promote Your Ezine in Your Email Signature
4. Send Out a Press Release
5. Announce Your Ezine to Your Network

Remember, with a personal, relevant, value-added ezine, you can attract new customers and prospects to join your list. And, that’s what it’s all about, building your list and getting contacts into your marketing funnel.

With that in mind, let’s move on to email marketing list building tips six through ten:

TIP 6: Use Your Business Card

If the back of your business card is blank, print new cards and include your mini ezine advertisement on the back. Include a call to action or an irresistible offer that drives them to your website to get a free gift and a complimentary subscription to your ezine.

TIP 7: Attend Live Networking Events

The people you meet in person will be your most loyal and valuable prospects and customers, and if they opt-in to your ezine list, the probability that they will purchase something from you skyrockets. After all, people do business with people they know, like, and trust. Taking the time to connect with people in person, accelerates the “know” and “like” factors, and a consistently well done ezine will build the “trust” factor.

When you are networking, be sure to mention your ezine in your commercial. If you have time, or someone wants to know more, chat about the benefits subscribers receive. Let them know when your next issue will be sent and offer to add them to your list. If they are still unsure, offer to send them a sample copy to review.

TIP 8: Use Article Marketing to Promote Your Ezine

Article marketing is the use of a written article to market and promote your business, products, services, or programs. You can write value-added articles on any area of expertise and post them to several article marketing websites, such as www.ezinearticles.com and www.articlesbase.com. Attached to each of your articles is your author resource box that contains more information about you! Here you can include a link back to your website, a plug for your ezine and special offer, your tagline, and more.

TIP 9: Get Published in Other Ezines and Blogs

Bloggers are HUNGRY for fresh content and if you approach them the right way, will usually welcome a well-written guest post. Make sure you look at who the bloggers target market is and what the content theme of the blog is prior to contacting them. You want to submit a post idea or post content that fits their market, stays in the same genre of content the blog readers are expecting to receive, and provides information that will benefit the readers.

Just as bloggers are looking for new fresh content, so are ezine publishers! Many entrepreneurs that publish weekly ezines will occasionally publish feature articles by guest writers. The same criteria apply for ezine publishers: 1) Make sure the article provides information of value to the readers and 2) Make sure your article topic fits the overall ezine theme and reader expectations.

It also doesn’t hurt to offer a reciprocal post for them on your blog or in your ezine. Check out what they are doing in their business. Are they planning an event or getting ready to launch a product? Offer them a post around that time to promote their business efforts.

TIP 10: Start Doing Some Public Speaking

Public speaking is a great opportunity to do some ethical, permission-based list building. And with an ezine, your post-event follow up can be easy and inexpensive. As the speaker at an event, you already have the audience’s attention, now it is your responsibility to give them an easy way to sign up for your ezine.

Here are some ways you can build your list as a speaker:

• Offer to send a free copy of your presentation notes, or a copy of your PowerPoint presentation to attendees who give your their business card.
• You mention your ezine in your presentation and pass around a signup sheet to collect their names and email addresses. Make sure your signup sheet includes a compelling headline with your ezine name, a short description, and your opt-out terms or privacy policy.
• If you have a table or booth at the event, you can hold a drawing for a free gift or an hour of consulting time. To enter the drawing attendees simply drop their business card in the bowl!
• You can offer a free gift or a prize during the close of your presentation. First, mention the item or offer you are promoting and all of the fantastic benefits attendees can receive as a result. Make sure you get them really excited about your offer. Second, announce that one lucky person in the room is going to get it for free along with a free subscription to your ezine! Third, tell the audience to get out their business cards. You can either have someone collect them, or have people hand them in.

Everyone knows that giving something away for free is one of the best ways to get people to opt-in to your marketing list. Your free offer may be an ebook, a special report, or even an audio recording. In this blog post, I want to share with you ten additional tips for building your marketing list.

TIP 1: Add a Sign Up form or Opt-In Box
on Every Page of Your Website

Adding a subscribe form or opt-in box to every page of your website ensures that no matter what page a visitor may land on first, they will learn about your valuable ezine and your special offer.

TIP 2: Advertise in Another Ezine

One of the best places to spend your advertising dollars is in email newsletters, email marketing, and ezines from other entrepreneurs and businesses that target the same market share and audience that you do. Think about it. The audience is already subscribing to one ezine and the likelihood that they will subscribe to another is pretty high. Plus, the cost of advertising in an ezine is relatively low when compared to other forms of advertising.

An Advertisement in an ezine is also a great place to test out different headlines and calls to action. Just be sure you commit to run your ad multiple times and track your links. Remember, a mediocre offer seen several times will have better conversion rates than an irresistible offer made only once.

TIP 3: Promote Your Ezine in Your Email Signature

At the end of your email signature, after all of your usual contact information, include a quick 2-3 line mini advertisement for your ezine. If you’ve got a special offer or free gift, let people know about it!

TIP 4: Send Out a Press Release

Are you launching a brand new ezine? Are you tapping an emerging market that people want to know about? Have you hit a milestone such as a specific number of subscribers or a specific number of issues published? Did publishing your ezine bring you a huge new opportunity, contract, book deal, etc.?

No, the press release isn’t dead. In fact, with more and more media outlets cutting staff, the reporters and journalists who are left have a much larger responsibility and a lot more work to do. Reporters do still look at well written, relevant, timely press releases.

Also, optimized press releases with the right keywords and longtail key phrases are amazing tools for search engine optimization and increased online visibility for you, your ezine, and your business. Reporters use online media sources to search for press releases that are relevant to their stories. Bloggers use press release distribution sites to see what content is popular and to get ideas for new blog posts, and potential interviewees. You should be using press releases with links back to your website, services, and products to boost your search engine ranking.

TIP 5: Announce Your Ezine to Your Network

Be sure to send out a promotional marketing piece to announce your ezine to your clients, prospects, business networks, and friends. You can also send them a single sample issue to read through with an invitation to opt-in to your list and continue receiving your ezine. Also, if you belong to any professional organizations or associations, find out if you can place an ad in their newsletter or trade publication.

Check back tomorrow for the post Top Ten Email Marketing List Building Tips – Part 2.

Frankly, every time email marketing is mentioned at a presentation, seminar, workshop, or in written articles, this problem is addressed. So I know the problem isn’t due to a lack of information or ignorance.

So what is this huge problem? It is people adding other people to their list WITHOUT permission. Um, yeah … that would be called SPAMMING!

I am appalled at how many lists I get added to after attending meetings, networking events, and conferences. The funny thing is that I didn’t opt-in on their website, I didn’t ask to be added to their list, and I didn’t purchase anything!

Now, that doesn’t mean I am not interested in what they have to say or what they are doing. I just want to be granted the freedom to get their information on my own terms. I want to be given the freedom to subscribe to their blog in my Google reader instead of in my inbox. I want to be given the freedom to visit their website for new information. I want to be given the freedom to click on links posted on Facebook or Twitter.

The bottom line is that I deserve to have a choice as to what my inbox is being filled with.

With that in mind, here are some basic “what not to do” reminders on email marketing list etiquette:

1. Just because you asked for my business card at an event and I gave it to you, it doesn’t give you permission or the right to add me to your marketing list.
2. Just because you subscribed to my list, doesn’t mean you can add me to yours. It was your choice to join mine. Don’t I deserve the same option?
3. If you add me to your list without my permission and I ask you to remove me from your list, do not threaten to unsubscribe from my list in retaliation. Give me a break. If you want out, just click unsubscribe. It is okay and you won’t hurt my feelings. All it means is that you aren’t a good fit for me.
4. Do not automatically add everyone you know to your list. Respect overcrowded inboxes and give them a choice of how to receive your information.
5. If you don’t include an unsubscribe link in your email messages, you are a spammer and you are forcing your information on the recipient. Do not make it hard for people to unsubscribe. If you do, and they have to waste a lot of time trying to figure out how to get off your list, they will not like you very much.
6. Do not share your list with friends or strategic partners unless the people opting in are told in a very prominent and clear manner that they are going to be added to multiple lists.
7. Do not send me emails every day. My inbox is full enough and really, you should be a little more organized and group information together.
8. Your ezine has a specific focus, topic, or niche it serves. Stick to your niche and stay on topic! If I subscribe to an ezine from a nutritionist to get tips on eating healthy, I expect to receive just that. Don’t send me articles on marketing, or starting a business. Or if I subscribe to a business consultant’s ezine who is providing tips on running a business, he/she should not be writing about how their life stinks and they’re just hanging on week after week.
9. Do not fill your ezine with a giant laundry list of products that I should buy so you can earn affiliate commissions. Stick to just a couple that you actually use. Otherwise, it seems insincere.
10. If you’re not using a service that does it for you, make sure you process unsubscribe requests immediately.
11. If you are going to share some personal story about your weekend or what you have been up to, that’s great. But PLEASE try to make it relevant to what you’re writing about that week. Figure out a way to tie it into your topic or use it as a lead in to your article.
12. Respect your list. Do not waste subscribers’ time with fluff content and slick sales messages. Provide relevant, timely, and valuable information they can use.

Do you have any tips to add? Stories to share?

For example, when my client Melissa first came to me and asked me to help her figure out why she wasn’t getting the sales results she wanted out of her email marketing efforts, she was shocked to hear my recommended course of action – To STOP focusing on list building.

You see, Melissa had been focusing on steadily growing her list and had grown it to almost 3,400 subscribers. Not only was she was proud of her BIG list, but others were impressed as well, which lead to joint venture invitations, teleseminar guest speaking opportunities, and more.

But, her BIG list wasn’t producing results and her conversion rates were low, which means so were her overall sales.

Luckily Melissa was using an email marketing service provider for her ezine that offered robust tracking tools. Those tools allowed me to analyze previous email campaign reports and her list.

So what was the problem?

Melissa, may have had a BIG list, but her unique open rates and click-throughs were in the toilet. That means less than one-third of her list actually opened the emails she was sending, and of those one-third, even less actually took the time to read the content she was delivering! You see, Melissa had a high quantity list, but it was a low quality list.

My recommendation, and what she ultimately hired Bourn Creative to do for her, was to help her transition from a focus on list building, to a focus on list nurturing. Getting people to join her list wasn’t her problem, but she wasn’t engaging them and nurturing her relationships with her subscribers. She wasn’t connecting.

I told her she needed to STOP focusing on list building and instead start focusing on list nurturing.

By focusing on list nurturing, and making list building a secondary task, Melissa began to build relationships with her readers. She was focused on providing great content for her tribe and helpful, valuable information. Soon saw her conversion rates on email promotions and sales steadily begin to improve.

What do you think? Do you have any thoughts on list size? I’d love to read them!