Email Marketing Strategy - A 'How To' Course

...This is page 6 of the email marketing strategy course. We'll be covering how to hone in on a target market, write to suit them, and make more money as a result.

Defining Your Target Market - Email Marketing Start Up Strategy

This is one, if not the, most important step of your email marketing strategy.

Defining your target subscribers is absolutely essential for success. A lot of new and established online entrepreneurs get this totally wrong and never reap the rewards from email marketing that they could - not to mention the fact that they clog the airwaves with email that no one wants to read and waste their time writing to a list that doesn't care.

People are different - they have different interests, desires, and personalities that require different 'tones' when you write to them.

I've seen on really great marketer manage this so well that I thought he had a hired writer to write to one of his lists. I was on two of his lists and barely knew it - the tone he wrote with when he sent out his horse newsletter was completely different than when he wrote his marketing newsletter. We'll talk about 'tones' later, right now be assured that you must target your subscriber and let that knowledge dictate what you will write in your email marketing campaign.

Finally I have one last reason why you want to define your target market...

A year or so ago I was talking to a famous marketer - a guru if you will - who told me he was dumping his whole list and starting over. That was literally thousands of people that he'd been writing to for over a year. A list he had acquired through time, sweat and bandwidth! Most of us would have killed for that list! So why was he willing to 'let them go'? He didn't know how to write to those people - he couldn't be bothered stretching himself to give them quality information that would eventually put money in his pocket. He didn't know how to re-write his email marketing strategy. To this day I wonder how he ever came to be a 'guru' in so many people's eyes.

Determining Your Target Market - Who Will Be Your Readers?

Some of the questions you need to ask yourself at this stage are:

• the age of your target market,
• their geographical location,
• their education level,
• their annual household income and expenditure,
• their family status.

No, you don't need all the information and it doesn't need to be 'bang on' or exclusive. But you do need to know, generally who these people are that you are targeting. That way not only do you know how to talk and sell to them, but you also begin to understand where to find them online.

You also need to determine your target market's interests in respect to the email newsletter content you intend to write. For that we need to...

Back Up A Bit to Your Email Newsletter Strategy...

Let’s say your strengths lie in the topic of financial investments and that is what you've decided to write about. It's time to ask a tough question about your content and your subscriber now:What type of subscriber would sign up for your newsletter?

I'll be flat out honest with you here. The type of subscriber (if you get any) to sign up to a 'general' or 'broad' topic newsletter such as financial investments would be someone new to investing. They're just learning, just starting out, and you're going to need to do a lot of 'educating' before you can suggest that they make any move that will earn you money on your recommendations. I'm not saying it can't be done, but it will be a lot more time and work on your part before you see a return on your investment of educating these subscribers.

Now imagine that your subscriber was already educated on the topic of financial investments. Imagine that they weren't skeptical. Imagine that you could just write to the heart of the matter, then recommend a resource, they clicked your link and made a purchase. Your time would be dramatically reduced, your income would increase, and your list would be more responsive. 

I know you're wondering how to build a list like that...

The secret is in focus. Target. Hone in.

Here's a story to illustrate. There are a number of financial investments people can make. Your subscriber has already made some but they recently heard about the opportunity of investing in foreign currency.

Thankfully you're an expert in that! And it gets even better because as they run across your materials online they also discover that you know quite a bit about investing in Iraq's Dinar. And, could it be?, they want to know more about it and you've got a newsletter to sign up for!

Here's the difference:

• Financial investment newsletter, subscribers are few and fearful, competition is fierce.
• Dinar investment newsletter, subscribers are ready to learn and buy, competition is practically non-existent.

Where do you think the most opportunity for you to make money is?

You can do this type of targeting with any topic.

Would you rather have:

• a crafting newsletter or a sock knitter's resource?
• online shopping or buying business gadgets online?
• how to build a website or how to make money with an existing website?

What we've just done above is called targeting your market. Digging in to a true niche where the highest rate of success will be. This sets you apart from the multitude of competition, establishes you as an expert, turns your subscribers into rabid readers, makes your writing easier and increases your chances at making some money out of the entire process.

In the next lesson we'll talk about the vast variety of ways to format and make money with your email marketing strategy.