Welcome to Part 2 of our series “Email Marketing for Computer Business”. In Part 1, I explained small changes that you can make to start writing more effective emails today. Using these techniques, you can significantly improve your conversion rate – how many recipients open your email, then buy your service. Read it here if you haven’t read it already.
Eventually, your sales will plateau, then start to decline. The reason is simple – email lists shrink over time. Research shows that an average of 25% of email recipients unsubscribe each year. They might not be interested in your services, bought your service already, or simply do not find them relevant.
To get more business via email consistently, you’ll need to address two problems:
- Add more subscribers to your mailing list
- Make your emails more relevant
First, a note on what NOT to do. Some companies sell or rent email lists. For a small sum, you can get access to thousands of local email addresses that fit your demographic. They might even claim that these are “opt-in” lists. Growing email lists can be hard, so this can be tempting.
However, emailing people who did not explicitly ask to hear from you will not only tarnish your reputation, but also land you on the bad side of your email marketing company. These companies are legally bound to fight spam, and the most reputed ones, like MailChimp and Campaign Monitor, are especially serious about this.
Being reported as spam can be very bad news for your marketing campaign. Even an innocent mistake like sending emails to deactivated accounts can get you banned from using their service (it’s happened to me!). You must tend to your mailing list like a garden, not use and abandon it like a coal mine.
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