Art Marketing Buzz

Angel Grady is a digital painting that I will be using in an experiment in social networking. The basic jest of this experiment will be to build a mailing list from scratch over a 3 month period. Then with this list sell some prints from a limited edition piece I have that has not been on the market. I have not put all the details together yet but I know it will be called “Project Angel” and I know the piece I will be selling. There will be some other goodies with it. It will be fun and informative. The image profiled was produced with Adobe photoshop, Corel Painter and the idea is to use web 2.0 or social media marketing to sell this piece of digital art. Stay tune!

Why To Use Email Marketing in Your List Building Campaigns

Ok, there is a ton of stuff out there on email marketing.  How to do it is not a problem.  There are a billion websites talking about how to optimize, strategize and monetize.   My initial question for everything is always…why?  So here I want to take a look at a few reasons why we should look at email marketing as a piece of our internet marketing and networkmarketing or MLM presence.

Leverage.  One of the reasons some of the best entrepreneurial minds are in on the secret of attraction or social marketing is because of leverage.  Email is a small part of that and allows us to leverage in a few different areas.

We can leverage our marketing budget.  Budget you say? I hope you have a budget or spending plan established for your business.  Anyway, email is a great investment in terms of dollars.  Unlike the real world our email does not have much in terms of production expense.  I am only including hard costs here.  The labor expense to put your dream pieces together is likely much the same as our offline competitors.  There is no letterhead, envelope, or stamp.  Ok, so we do have other expenses on the technology side. Sofwtare. Some people think that only large companies can afford the software and service to do consistent email communication. In fact, most email marketing software is priced according to desired capacity.  That means only paying for the size license that you need. Smaller licenses are surprisingly affordabl, as we are starting here I think it costs about 14 bucks a month.  A very inexpensive employee I might add.  Check out http://www.icontact.com/a.pl/250405

We can Leverage our time. Email marketing allows us to effectively and proactively communicate with our customers and targeted prospects. In this awesome cyber world we no longer need to passively wait for our clients to cruise to the storefront or website.  Using customer databases, campaigns can be customized with specific data allowing highly targeted mailings.  Choose whatever targets you want, gender, age, niche, or source for example.  Sometimes an area that is overlooked in terms of effectiveness,  is permission.  Our clients have indicated some interest…they have opted in.  They have given us permission to contact them and are more likely to respond positively. Compare our properly constructed client list to the ton of crap we all receive everyday from the postal service.  Did we opt in to that?  No.  A high quality targeted email list can achieve and sustain click through rates of 20 and 30 percent. The numbers compare to less than two percent for direct mail campaigns and maybe a 2-5 percent response from blanket or non-targeted email campaign.  All of this together can improve your lead generation and customer retention programs.

Next email is now.  It’s immediate.  With the self service tools around anyone can create and send effective email communications in minutes or hours.  Production time is minimal.  The other side of immediate is obvious.  Once you hit the button it is literally seconds for your targeted client to receive the message.  The method also generates opportunity for immediate response.  It cuts the old direct mail 6 to 8 week response time in general down to 48 hours, in many cases just minutes. 

Results are measurable.  As this is a new blog and podcast we haven’t talked about tracking much.  We will need to because it is vital to your marketing efforts.  In email marketing the results are reported in-terms of “opens”. Which tells you how many people saw your offer, CTR’s or click-through-rates, which tells you how many people actually clicked on the links.  There are many other really cool ways to track and measure your responses, you can check them out at icontact.com. or many other autoresponder services.  By being able to quantify the success of your campaigns while in progress, you can adjust your strategies or even copy to improve your results. Email is far less expensive on a cost-per-contact basis than many advertising options.  Another area that ties into cost or ROI is how effective it is. 

Email can help drive traffic and help with SEO.  By using links embedded in your messages, customers can quickly be directed to your site.

And finally most importantly, but not regularly talked about is relationship building.  In traditional marketing you need so many touch’s before your prospect takes ownership of their part of the relationship. Through email you can automate those touchs and still have it be personal.  It can help to build loyalty through a concept called reciprocation.  When you have been giving useful content for free it builds a type of perceived commitment from your prospect to you.  See “Influence, The Psychology of Persuasion”,  by Robert Cialdini, to see this and other mental triggers.  

Email builds brand awareness and Customer relations.  Regularly delivered email messages with a proper subject line and your logo or branding environment reinforces company and product awareness.  Email created and interactive connection and nurtures quality customer relations.

So there you have it.  If you haven’t started already do it today.  See these resources to help you along the way.

Resources talked about.