Emailing Effectiveness?

I don't do email marketing but from what I read:
Just like anything else it's a numbers game your best bet is to buy a program that will harvest Google Places etc and return the owners contact email because doing it manually is going to take you forever.

I don't think it's considered spam since you are trying to help the business just like if you owed a website and a advertiser contacted you to run there ads.

Yes, emailing is a numbers game. The more prospects you send an email to the more chance of landing a customer. Don't worry about spam issue as you're contacting the business to make your pitch. They normally choose to respond or ignore and not hit the spam button.

I have tried emailing and managed to get some response and sales. But to be honest, you have to email somewhere around 150 emails to get 2-3 responds. I find that emailing prospects is workable but the result is very little and the job is tedious unless you want to outsource them.

I think direct mailing is even better although there's some capital involve for this method to work.

Qamar

Man... picking up the phone and cold calling is going to help much more than sending out hundreds and hundreds of emails just to get a few leads which may or may not become anything, and even if they do bite, you have a good chance of not having a high perceived value since you're chasing. To me, I have higher sales by phone than closing sales by email.

I have sent out about 600 emails this week with about 5 responses. 2 I closed... spent a couple hours calling today and closed a sale. A lot less time consuming than searching craigslist for emails.

If you build a good permission based marketing system - it'll be your biggest asset in Internet Marketing.

I use craigslist to market apartments - push to a landing page where they can either call or opt in - my autoresponder sends them emails that have a CTA to call me.

Works in just about ANY niche.

You'll never get any big sales unless you get really lucky. It's about positioning and being an expert, not numbers (if you wanna land the big fish and make a career out of this)

Email targeting can work, but it's not only a numbers game but it needs to be well targeted numbers at that. A little research up front can be very effective, also ensure you're targeting well and you have a catchy (but professional) subject line and a brief but focused email. Put yourself in the recipients position.., you first need to get your email to the right business then person - then you need to get their attention so as to intrigue them to open the email. Then of course tell them 'what's in it for them' and have a call to action...

Email is much more effective if you combine it with a telephone follow-up. Sometime a pre-call to get the details of who's in charge of marketing and check their email , then email and tele-follow-up. If you're not so comfortable with the phone a following-up my email call is an easier place to start from.

Expect 1-3% response on your email rate - if you've targeted. You'll get much higher if you pre-call (confirms name and contact details) , email and then follow-up!!!