While many marketers do not realize it, every day email marketing is tested against social media marketing.  Social media marketers tout the method as being far more personal, much less intrusive, and all around better than email.  Still, most businesses from in-home to Fortune 500 corporations still invest in email.  Email marketing still remains to be the most effective way to communicate and drive traffic to the website, converting visitors into paying customers.  Email marketers use automation techniques and several other strategies to compete with social media.  It is the in-depth email marketing strategies that keep the competition fierce when going up against one another, and with these strategies, email marketing will continue to keep the revenue coming in.

Acquisition

To keep email on top as a marketer you must master acquisition.  This requires building an email list of recipients that really want to receive your message.  It is important to look deep into your client list and weed out the weak in order to reach that target consumer.  The best way to go about creating this list is building awareness through the various online opportunities.  For example, using social networking outlets to promote availability of select email content on Facebook or Twitter can create strong interaction with your brand and help develop your contact list.  Also, search engine marketing campaigns can be used by referencing availability to email subscriptions on landing pages.  This creates a steady flow of experience for users and maximizes opportunities for acquisition.  Any success for an acquisition campaign comes from making the offer appealing to your audience.  One tried and true way to make the offer appealing is to offer a discount coupon after successfully signing up for the email list.  It is important to examine your audience and their needs when offering these coupons; your offer has to measure up to them giving you their private contact information.  These are some general tips when it comes to mastering acquisition and will help your email marketing strategies build strong potential.

Automation

There are two types of automated email: triggered and sequential.  Triggered emails are sent when a user takes a specific action.  Sequential emails are sent to customers on a predetermined schedule, the user signs up to receive an email and within the next week they receive their weekly email. Triggered emails are beneficial to retailers, because when a product is purchased that triggers the system to send an email.  It is important for retailers that are using triggered automation to keep their emails up to date to ensure the value of that email to their customer.  Sequential emails relate more to publishers and service providers.  By promoting weekly updates through email, publishers and services providers can keep their audience up to date and in tune with your organization.  Automation does not only benefit your audience but can benefit your staff.  Using up-to-date automation systems, your staff can receive messages that keep track of data.  For example: if the user got the email, if they went to the site, and if that email lead them to a purchase.  These are valuable tools when developing email marketing strategies and by examining the statistics coming in, you gain the ability to target problems and see where success is leading to hone in on conversions.