Marketing Trends - Email Marketing

Email Marketing is a fantastic tool for marketing your company as it is quick, simple, cost-effective and gives you a great way to get in touch with your mailing list and try to encourage them to take action.

Here are a few tips on how to make email marketing work for you:

Build yourself a good database
Network like mad, run online and offline competitions to gather data and log all your contacts in day to day business into a spreadsheet with names, emails and telephone as a minimum.

Create a well-designed email template
Make sure your emails correctly reflect your company personality and brand and look professional. Do what you can to check that the email formats correctly in popular email clients and doesn't fall foul of SPAM filters.

Use a good emarketing service provider
Don't try to send out your emails via Outlook or Yahoo, it will slow down your computers and you can't send to large numbers of people in this way. We use Constant Contact which works well, manages your data, produces reports on the success of the campaign and complies with spam regulations. Click here to try a FREE 60 Day Trial with Constant Contact.

Be interesting and helpful
Don't just sell in your emails, add value and improve your relationship with your list by offering free and relevant information, special offers and news which will make your clients happy to receive your emails.

Create good calls to action
Decide what you want to achieve with your mailing and make sure that readers are encouraged to visit your website, try a new product, take part in a trial or something which engages them with your company.

Email regularly
Make your email marketing a monthly task to make sure your list doesn't forget about you!

I've produced two interesting articles with more information about Email marketing on my blog, click here to take a look.

Client Case Study - Rose & Clavel

Rose & Clavel Chartered Accountants have been very busy this year, organising a series of informative seminars and producing interesting and high-quality articles.

Shaw Marketing have been working with them to co-ordinate public relations, radio advertising, B2B direct mail and networking. This combination of marketing over the last six months has led to a huge increase in awareness, driven traffic to their website, generated enquiries and brought in new business. As a result of our PR work they have had many features on and offline, including:

• A full page editorial feature in the Sur in English
• Two full page articles in Essential Magazine
• Two double page articles in 4B Magazine
• Featured expert on Expatica.com (three articles on the site)
• Articles on Andalucia.com, InMalagatoday and ThisisSpain
• Featured in three Eye on Spain newsletters
• Seminar information was listed on lots of websites and featured in local publications prior to the events

Publicity value - In excess of 9,000€

Rose & Clavel are re-running their popular seminar series this Autumn and you can register your interest on their website

Can you help ADANA?

Shaw Marketing Services and HomeCareontheWeb are working together to help ADANA and we'd like to encourage other businesses to get involved too. Property management firm HomeCareontheWeb donated a computer when ADANA's was stolen and are helping publicise the charity with a press release to the local media. We were able to wipe the computer and install all the programmes the charity required and have offered to help them create a productive fundraising plan and support it with marketing and public relations.

When we spoke to ADANA it was clear that the charity needed more skilled people to help the charity run like a business and not take-over the lives of their committee! I have worked with a lot of charities in the past and know it takes a lot more than passion for the cause to make it work. I'd like to get local businesses to agree to help the charity by donating your skills for free and becoming a sponsor of the charity like we have. If you're a building firm, could you donate some hours each month to help repair the pound? If you are an accountant, could you help them with their bookkeeping or apply for much needed grants? If you're a vet, could you come once a month and help the dogs for free? If you have experience with fundraising could you help organise this area? If you're an event organiser could you organise a fundraising event? If you have contacts with businesses, could you arrange for donations of pet food, blankets, medical supplies or anything else they could need?

This little charity needs our help and skills. They are currently caring for 150 dogs and could do so much more, so I hope we can get together and show our support, whilst creating much needed publicity for our businesses.

Visit www.adana.es for more information or email us if you could offer any skills or time for ADANA.