Email marketing is one of the most cost-effective forms of promotion. It costs very little to implement and can have very high returns. At Optix we are amazed by how many businesses are still overlooking the huge possibilities of email marketing in maintaining relationships and encouraging customers to buy from them.

Many people still think that emails are only really for internet based businesses. The fact is that if you do not yet carry out any email marketing for your business you may well be letting your competition gain an advantage on you.

Imagine being able to do direct mail marketing but without the cost of paper, envelopes or stamps. Imagine direct phone marketing, but without the cost of a salesperson or phone call. This is what email marketing can do for your business.

Sending emails is extremely cost effective and compared to a direct mail campaign could save you huge sums of money. This means that your promotion budget can go towards providing compelling content or offers to make your marketing more enticing.

One of the most convenient things about email is that it is (almost) instant. You send it, and within a few seconds customers across the other side of the world can access it. If you deal with international customers, then emails mean you do not have to pay extra postal or call charges, and you do not need to wait a week for airmail!

Another advantage of emails is that they are direct; they go straight to the person intended with minimal risk of being interrupted or intercepted by someone else. Obviously there are the SPAM filters to get around but with good qualiy email marketing systems, this is all checked for you.

As emails are direct, it is easy to make them personal; both in terms of name, and also content. If you have two main products, you can easily have emails for each customer group focused on their particular product. By personalising your emails, the recipients are likely to pay more attention to it; they will also be less likely to treat it as junk/spam mail that is quickly deleted.

The other major difference between email marketing and offline campaigns is the tracking of response rates. With email marketing systems such as our own (Optix EMS) once an email has been sent you can trace when its been opened and if you’ve put links into the system you can see if they have been clicked and generated you traffic for your website. A proactive team would then get on the phone to those clients whom have taken the time to read your email and clicked on it and follow them up for a sales opportunity.

At Optix we have been running our EMS system for over four years now very successfully and would welcome the opportunity to talk to you about how we can help you promote your business through the use of email marketing.

It’s very likely that you are a user of, or have at least heard about ‘social networking’. This month we focus on the relationship between SEO and social networking and give you a few tips on how you may be able to use social networking sites to promote your business.

Social networking sites like Facebook, Bebo, MySpace and more recently Twitter are now used by more than two-thirds of the world’s internet population. In the UK it’s estimated that one in every six minutes of internet time is spent on these sites and the proportion of time spent is increasing all the time. Social Networking has become a fundamental part of the web experience and the rate of adoption and usage shows no sign of slowing down. While social networks started out among the younger age groups, they’ve become more mainstream over time. The audience has become broader and older, this is mainly due to Facebook (now the UK’s 2nd most popular site after Google) which last year saw its greatest growth in the 35-49 age group.

Here are a few things you might like to try:

- Posting useful information and links regarding your site on blogs, forums and the profile pages of friends, if appropriate.

- Don’t come across as too desperate or spammy, there is an unwritten code of online etiquette. Try to be helpful and see what comes from it, if you go straight for the hard sell, it will just alienate people.

- Create a fan page for your website/company on Facebook and invite employees, clients and potential clients to join. You can use this to post information, photos and messages.

- Open a Twitter account and let people know what’s currently happening with your company/website. If you’re not following us already, you can see our company account here: http://twitter.com/optixsolutions/

For more information on how you can promote your business on social networking sites, call us today on 0845 029 7766 for a free consultation.

Power Marketing is a specialist marketing and market research consultancy based in Exeter, Devon. They work with a wide range of clients across the South West and beyond.

Their integrated services encompass research, marketing strategy and communications solutions. They have extensive experience in public, not-for-profit and private sectors – working across both business-to-business and consumer markets. It was imperative that the design and structure of their new site accurately reflected this.

Spearheaded by Optix Solutions Business Development Manager Alistair Gleave – the new site includes a bespoke content management system which allows the team at Power Marketing to add Latest News and Case Studies to the site, as and when they need to.

“Having worked with Optix on a number of projects for our clients, we chose them for ourselves because we find they are practical and helpful. Alistair Gleave is always on hand to help answer any queries and provides a consistent contact throughout.” Sarah Ingram, Consultant, Power Marketing.

To view the new site please log on to: http://www.powermarketing.co.uk/