Email marketing is one tool that an increasing number of businesses have latched onto within the past couple years as it is an amazing opportunity to double or even triple profits. If you have decided that this method of marketing to your customers is a strategy you’d like to tackle, plenty of resources are out there to help you get started. However, it can be difficult distinguishing among the many different email marketing companies. Here are several characteristics of a reputable email marketing service.Building the Opt-In Permission-Based Mailing List

A crucial part of email marketing is having easy-to-use contact list management features. First and foremost, an email marketing service should allow you to be able to important your existing mailing addresses from a file on your computer. This is often the preferred method when adding a lot of contacts because manually entering your existing contacts email address one-by-one is more time consuming and leaves lots of room for errors to occur.

Second, one of the characteristics of list management that an email marketing provider should contain is a feature that allows your list to be segmented into multiple groups. As you build your email list, you’ll see why the segmentation is important. Remember, not each contact is the same and having different segments lets you treat them differently.

A third feature that your provider should have is the easy-integration of a sign-up box on your website. Being able to use a sign-up box from your email marketing service is perhaps the most important feature you should be looking for. A sign-up box that’s strategically placed on your site acts as an automatic marketing tool that works on autopilot adding subscribers as soon as they enter their email address.

Sending Emails

An automatic email service should offer a variety of options when it comes to sending out your emails to subscribers. There should be pre-designed HTML templates, image galleries that you can use if you want to include images, and there should also be the option to customize your own design. In addition, there should be guide points along the way and systematic instructions to help if you get lost. An intuitive, user-friendly, and easy-to-use interface is what you ultimately need in an ideal email marketing service.

Tracking Tools

An important part of the marketing process is tracking your efforts. In order to know the success of your efforts, you need to know what your subscribers do with the information contained within those emails. A reputable email marketing provider should contain such data like how many emails were opened, which links your prospects clicked on the most, and how many emails bounced because of invalid or full email addresses. In addition, important subscriber statistics that you should have access to include what your email-list growth rate it as well as how many subscribers have been added and removed. Ideally these reports will be updated in real-time so that you don’t have to wait to gauge your success.

All of these issues are important to look out for when attempting to choose an email marketing service. The ability to customize emails, easily maintain your list, and have data readily available at your fingertips are all features that will help you succeed at the highest level with your email marketing efforts.

About the Author

Rudy Barell is a Senior Account Executive with Elite Email, the #1 email marketing program used by businesses around the globe. Experience how easy it is to build your mailing list, create eye-catching emails and track your success using detailed reports with the complete email marketing software. Try it free!

To grow your business in today’s online-dominated environment you’ll need an amazing eNewsletter. Creating a monthly eNewsletter is easy with the plethora of online email marketing companies offering low-cost services. The more difficult part of effective email marketing-once you’ve crafted a catchy newsletter, of course-is building your list. Here are easy steps you can take to make sure your email marketing list is maximized for the most open clicks:

* Make it easy for readers to sign up for your email marketing campaigns. Don’t request too much information-the more you ask for, the fewer people will likely sign up. Just ask for their name and email address.

* Make sure your eNewsletter subscription form is easy to find. If it makes sense to add this to every page of your website without creating clutter, feel free to do so. You can even add a form at the end of popular articles, in addition to having one at the top of the page.

* Utilize social media. Integrate your sign-up forms with your social networks.

* Create an archive so that potential subscribers can see past eNewsletters and are able to decide if they want to sign up.

* Reward your subscribers. You can offer an opt-in bonus for those who sign up for your emails, but you can also reward those who respond in some way-such as answering poll or survey questions or providing testimonials. Appreciated subscribers will want to stick with you-and your email marketing campaigns

* State your Privacy Policy. No one will want to subscribe to your eNewsletter if they think their personal information will be published, so let them know by providing a policy page that clearly outlines you won’t share their information with others.

* Blog often. This helps to build a community with prospects and potential clients, along with complementing your email marketing strategies. You can also post comments on others’ blogs with links back to your site.

* The No. 1 way to build a larger email marketing list is through publishing useful content. No one is going to want to sign up for your eNewsletters if you don’t provide them with unique and worthwhile content. Don’t send out newsletters too often, and make sure your content is worth reading.

For information on email marketing services, including reviews of popular companies, please visit www.Email-Marketing-Options.com.

About the Author
Darcie Duttweiler is a copywriter at ChooseWhat.com.