Email marketing is a valuable resource tool used by thousands of companies each day. Unwanted spam greets us every time we go to check our email accounts. Of the almost two billion emails that are sent each day, a whopping sixty four percent of them are unwanted, or unsolicited, spam.

When it comes to email marketing people either love the idea or they simply detest the idea. Even the people who detest the idea of email marketing have to admit the following:

• 95 percent of all consumers use email on a daily basis according to Salesforce.
• More than half of the emails that are read each day are viewed using smart phones, and other smart devices.
• For each dollar spent on email marketing techniques there is a return of $44.25 on average.

With expected returns this high you would think that every company in the world would be using outbound email automation to boost their sales. Many companies do not realize just how powerful outbound email automation is, and of the ones that do attempt to use emails to increase their bottom lines, only a few of them do so efficiently.

Most companies have poor results from their email marketing, and after a short period of time they stop using this advertising tool. As a marketer you simply cannot ignore the fact that your largest audience is located online, and private emails are the best way to reach that audience.

You simply have to be smart enough to use the mistakes that all of the other companies are making and turn them into successes for yourself. Just because you are in the same war does not mean you have to step on the same landmines as your competitors.

Let’s look at some examples.

Sparrow

Email marketing is something that has to change constantly in order to remain fresh, and to capture the attention of the recipient. If your email marketing strategy is stale and outdated then there is very little chance that people are going to read what you have sent to them. Sparrow is a prime example of outbound email automation techniques and the need for continual evolution in these techniques.

Sparrow is actually an iPhone email client. Sparrow was specifically designed to provide an email experience that would be pleasant yet efficient. Sparrow incorporated panel navigation and other features, like an amazing threading system, that caused it to catch the eye of Google. In 2012 Google acquired Sparrow and this changed the life of gmail from then on.

Mailbox

Mailbox is another application designed for Android, OS X, and iOS devices. It is an email management application developed by Orchestra, Inc. and is revered because of its simplicity and ease of use. It includes features like swipe based email sorting, and organization that incorporates color coding.

Mailbox was acquired by Dropbox, Inc. only 37 days after the application was launched. Dropbox paid a reported 100 million for the application, because they saw the potential the application had to boost email marketing sales to heights never seen before.

What does the invention and launching of these applications have to do with your company? These applications did not reinvent emails. They simply made emails easier to use, and more appealing to the average reader.

Launching a Successful Email Campaign

In order to launch a successful email marketing campaign, and to see millions of people read your emails that you send, you have to use an automated strategy that sends your emails to a targeted group of recipients that are likely to be interested in the information contained in them.

If you want people to read your emails about your products, or services, then you have to reach people who might have an interest in what you have to offer. That means sending information on diabetes equipment to people who suffer from the disease, or sending information on gardening techniques to people who live in rural areas, and not to people living in the heart of major cities.

Your goal is to find leads that will direct you to the email addresses of people who are likely to be interested in what you have to offer. So how do you go about finding those leads?

In order to have successful outgoing automated emails you need to:

• Make a list of your current active customers. Analyze the data you have on those customers to determine what they have in common, and what things they respond to.
• Locate places on the internet where you can locate target customers.
• Use social media sites to determine what potential email targets like, and do not like
• Be persistent in your email campaign. Do not send out one email and then give up on the campaign. You need to send out thousands of emails a day and be sure that you target the same potential targets multiple times. Sometimes persistence is all it takes to get a target to open an email and discover what you are offering.

Growing your Target List

Begin your growing target list by going to some of the following cool websites that have already developed databases for you. All you have to do is use the information these sites have already compiled. You gain from their hard work, and do not worry about infringing on something someone else has already done.

When you are a success other people will use your website to help them on their journey to success. The smartest business move you can make is to follow the leads of other successful businesses.

Quora

You can start at Quora. Quora is a website founded by a couple of FaceBook employees where people can go to ask questions, and get answers. You will find that at Quora you can go to specific topics to find people interested in those topics. Within a few minutes of being at the Quora site you can have more than one hundred leads of people who are genuinely interested in the information, products, or services that you offer.

You can find more leads in less time by simply going to places where these leads have already been generated, formatted, and compiled for you. Success is about working smarter, not harder. Use the tools that are already available so that you can be successful in a shorter amount of time.

Yelp

Yelp is another great place to go and find email addresses, physical addresses, websites, and postal codes, of potential clients for your enterprises. By using Yelp and the tools they have already developed you can generate a list of potential clients in a short period of time. You must remember that time is worth money, and the less time you spend developing your email target list the more money you will stand to make.

Twitter

Twitter is an excellent database of interested individuals that you can target with your automated email campaign. On Twitter individuals follow the subjects, and the people they find interesting. You can join groups of individuals who have interests that are closely related to your products or services and increase your list of potential clients.

Tips for Using Twitter

One method of using Twitter to help you increase your customer database works like this:

• Look at Twitter and create a list of potential customers with active twitter accounts. These customers will either be making tweets on their accounts about something that is relevant to your product or service. Be really picky about who you are targeting. You need people who are an extremely great fit to what you have to offer.
• Make a connection with those individuals by making a comment on their blog posts, or by commenting under a comment they have made. These initial connections will eventually help develop your relationship with the person so that they are more apt to open an email you send to them.
• When you send the target an email after you have connected through Twitter or another social media site you have to remind the person of who you are. You can say, Hi this is Lisa, we were talking on Twitter the other day about XXX and I thought that you might be really interested in this. Then you can launch into a description of the product or service you have to offer. If you fail to remind them of your previous engagement they are less likely to read your entire email. You do not want them to simply skim the surface of the material you have sent them, so be sure and point out where you have met before, and what made you think they would be interested in the information in your email.
• Make certain that your emails are informative, entertaining, and relevant. You do not want to sound like you are being pushy. You want people to be intrigued by the content of the email, and you want them to want to find out more. Always leave the reader hungry for more information so they will actively seek your website and services to slate their thirst for more knowledge.
• Never mislead your target. Be honest and straightforward about what you have to offer. If you are misleading you will lose the potential client, and you will lose more potential clients because people share information with friends and family. In this day and time the news about a good company or a bad company can travel across the globe in the blink of an eye.
• Use links within the email that will redirect the reader to your web pages. You want them to actively follow these links on their own. When they actively follow the links on their own they are more likely to stay on the web pages long enough to make a purchase.

LinkedIn

Linked in can be one of the best tools in your outgoing email automation arsenal. Linked in is one of the biggest social media networks designed with professionals in mind. Linked in allows professionals to connect with other professionals that can help to advance their business careers, and increase their sales and profits.

Linked in is free to join. It has about 365 million users across the globe. It connects employers to people wanting work, and it connects potential customers to products and services they desire.

Persistence

Persistence gives the biggest payout. You cannot simply tweet under a comment someone makes and expect them to be immediately interested in what you have to offer. You have to connect with them and then continue to connect with them through various methods. For instance:

• Make a connection on the social media site Twitter, or similar sites.
• Then send them an invitation to your website or to a twitter advertisement you have posted that contains a link to your website
• Give them a call on the number acquired from the social media site
• Create a Linked in profile
• Send them a Linked in invitation to join you on the Linked in site
• Send them a second email
• Make a second Tweet including them
• Send them a message through your Linked in account
• Send them a third email
• Make a third call to them

I know that this sounds like a lot of steps, but believe me when I tell you that the persistence pays off. If you continue to make contact with a person then they will see how dedicated you are and they will be more likely to give your email more consideration. Remember the lesson learned from the tortoise and the hare. Slow and steady wins the race.

Remember that you are using these already established databases to develop your own list of potential clients. This is not an underhanded practice. It is simply you using the tools that have already been established to achieve your desired results. It is like using the spoon that has already been invented to eat your soup. The tool is already available to you so there is no need to re-create it.