We live in a world of iPhones, Facebook posts, and Tweets. And lately, it seems, every business is doing some kind of email marketing campaign. I wake up every morning, check my Blackberry, and have at least 3 email promotions from both big and small businesses. So, now that the email marketing is a flooded market, it's important to stand out and make your campaigns shine a little better.

Step 1: Using The Right Email Marketing Program
Pick a program that is not only good for you, but makes viewing capabilities the easiest for your customers. There are a pile of programs out there that can deliver your campaigns. But that doesn't always cut the mustard for me. I want versatility in addition to easy-to-deliver and easy-to-use email campaigns. First, let's talk about price. One hot button for me is the ability to decide whether I want to pay-as-I-go or pay a monthly fee. This is an crucial factor in deciding what email program to use. Another major factor is ease-of-use for the admin (that would be you in this case). How easy is the program to use? How much time did it take to find what you were looking for? If one program takes an hour, and another program takes 30 minutes, common sense will tell you that it might be worth investigating the more intuitive program and save the time.

So who do we recommend? Webspeak likes MailChimp.

So let's review. The three most valuable points:

• Can your customers get your emails and read them with ease?
• Do you have flexible pricing?
• Can you use the email marketing program well?

These three points will save you time and money. They will also equate emails to dollars by delivering the right message in the best possible light. But, that's not everything.

Step 2: Your Emails Need To Have Purpose
For years, blogs have been used for random thoughts and personal journaling. They are just now being tapped as a marketing tool for businesses. But before this neat "blog marketing" idea occurred, blogs kind of gave those email marketing campaigns a bad name. So what's the problem? Business owners and marketing directors sent random and superfluous information, and to make matters worse, they sent those emails too frequently. 

What's missing? Give your customers a reason to respond to the campaign. Otherwise, your emails will be regarded as a waste of time. The email campaign is about the customer, not your business so gear to what they like and eliminate what you think is "cool." Giving your emails purpose will develop a good foundation with your customers. Everyone offers specials, so be creative. Remember that it's a flooded market now so what you write really needs to make it interesting for them.

Step 3: Limit Your Frequency
The main goal is quality, not quantity. No one likes to have their email box covered up every morning with emails from you. Therefore, Webspeak recommend a maximum blast of once a week unless there is a special occasion occurring. We even recommend a twice a month blast as another option for sending frequency.

Step 4: 20% Is Fantastic
Email is becoming a lot like snail mail mailers were in past years. If you mail out 100 pieces of mail, you may get 5 good responses. Luckily, email has been proven to offer a better return, but I would not expect more than a 20% return. In fact, a 20% return is what we would call "Fantastic."

We would love to talk with you about your email marketing needs. Talk to Webspeak now and let's get started.