Recent studies claim that email marketing is one of only two marketing methods businesses intend to increase spending on this year (social media is the other).

One of the inferences we can draw from this is that email marketing works. For several years now, email marketing has had the highest ROI of any marketing method commonly being measured (social media doesn't fit that description). This means that email outperforms direct mail, TV ads, and print ads dollar for dollar. It also significantly increases the bang for your buck when used in combination with other methods. For example, when you run a direct mail campaign and follow up with email, you can expect a 50% higher rate of conversion than you can get with direct mail alone.

The other thing we can conclude from this, though, is that there's going to be a lot more marketing email in your customers' mail boxes.

Yours needs to stand out.

How can you accomplish this?

• Make sure your email marketing piece reflects your brand. You need for your customers to be able to recognize that the email they receive is from you, someone they know and trust, not from just anyone. Onsharp can assist you with custom templates to give you that visual consistency. When you write the email, make it consistent, too. You don't want to say the same thing every time, but you will want to take a similar approach, keeping your heading, your tone, and the way you address your customers the same from month to month.
• Offer value. If it's all about you, your customers will be less receptive than if it's all about them. Certainly, share the news about your new products and services. But you can also tell your hardware store customers how to get their cars ready for the Fargo winter, or share the best upcoming arts events with your music students -- anything related to your products and services is probably something your customers would appreciate knowing about.  
• Segment and target. If your list includes different groups -- people who read your newsletter and click through, for example, vs. people who read and don't click through, or people who shop with you every week and people who stock up twice a year -- then you can improve your results by creating a different mailing piece for each group.If this sounds overwhelming, consider using SugarCRM to keep track of these things.
• Test and track results. Measuring your results allows you to determine the return on your investment and improve the results of your marketing efforts. Again, SugarCRM makes this easy, but even a spreadsheet is useful. Set your email marketing piece up with a special landing page, phone number, or coupon so you'll know when you get a response.
  

Done well, email marketing can be something your customer's look forward to, not something they quickly delete.