Nextwave Media - Creative Internet Solutions

Interesting article about the power of email marketing, not the least of which is that 19 percent of shoppers surveyed said they visited a top retailer’s online storefront after receiving a promotional email from the company. Eight percent said they were driven there by search engine results, and only five percent said their decision to visit one of the top 40 retail websites was primarily influenced by social media channels such as recommendations on Facebook or Twitter.

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Converting visitors into customers is about more than just supplying great product information. It’s about more than a great design, simple navigation and customer service links. The basics–such as page design and content presentation are certainly necessary. But if you want to grow a loyal customer base for the long term, you have to reach even further.
Here are six ways to engage visitors and turn more of them into actual customers, bringing friends with them.

1. Serve up the ideal newsletter. Contrary to what some social media “experts” say, people still like to receive email from companies they love and from stores that carry items or product lines to which they’re devoted. By integrating useful tips and links to articles or invites to forums, you’re opening up a channel for conversation, of which customers will take advantage.

Just came across a great blog post with some inspirational email marketing campaigns for online stores.
Twenty Email Marketing Examples for Design Inspiration

Instead of putting an entire offer or promotion in your email, use teaser content that points to more information on your website or blog. This has the added bonus of providing customers and prospects with more of a reason to click a link and make their way over to your site. It also creates the possibility of up-selling other products and services on your website.

Question: Our company struggles with building a proper opt-in email list. Do you recommend purchasing opt-in email lists? If so, are there reputable vendors that you can recommend? We are just getting started, and I’d like to do this right.

Answer: Don’t cut that check just yet. We do not recommend buying email-marketing lists because many lists contain:

• Old, inactive email addresses that bounce, a red flag for ISPs.
• Spam traps, email addresses set up specifically by ISPs to identify spammers. If you send to these addresses, they’ll think you’re a spammer, too.
• Recipients that are not interested in your message and quickly hit the “This is Spam” button. Get too many spam complaints, and you can quickly tarnish your sender reputation and maybe even end up on blacklists.

Adds new signups quickly, but can cause problems, too

Cultivating a solid, permission-based email list can take a lot of time. So some businesses understandably get impatient waiting around for their lists to grow.

For these businesses, online contests may be an attractive quick fix. As an example, let’s say a newly launched shoe e-retailer, Shoe-Fanatics.com, wants to grow its email list really fast. So it partners with a well-established fashion news website Fashion-Freaks.com, to run a contest or giveaway. Fashion-Freaks.com has been around for years, and they’ve built up a subscriber list composed of users with the same demographics that Shoe-Fanatics.com is looking for. Fashion-Freaks.com will send an email promotion to its readers, recommending they all visit Shoe-Fanatics.com to enter a contest, or redeem a nice coupon. When readers of Fashion-Freaks enter the contest, they can opt in to Shoe-Fanatics’s email marketing list.

Consider these tips