Here is a quick video to give you an idea of what our email marketing platform looks like!

If you are considering Email Marketing for your business, we are committed at Digital Street to getting you directly connected with your customers and prospective customers alike. Our services will help you create email campaigns that are targeted, optimized, and measurable.

Email Marketing is a low cost, high impact solution, and Digital Street does not require a long-term contract. Our pricing is based on a month-to-month service agreement with affordable plans that start at as little as $50.00 a month with a full-service approach on every level of account. Each customer we have, large or small, receives the same level of service.

To get you started, your dedicated account manager will set up an initial training session on how to use our Email Marketing platform. You will learn how to create contact lists, import contacts, and how to use other email editing features such as auto responders and triggers. We also offer complementary data entry services. The Digital Street Email Platform can enable you to capture emails from your web site by generating an e-newsletter signup form for your website. Sign up forms are a great way to begin harvesting emails for your contact lists.  Additionally, we will offer tips and best practices to ensure delivery and increased open rates.

Once you have your contact lists created and uploaded, you will begin training on how to build customized email campaigns using a variety of easy-to-use templates, or you can request a custom designed template from our art department. While creating a campaign, you will be able to instantly preview it on multiple email programs such as Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo!, AOL, and Outlook in order to ensure your email campaign is compatible with all of the major internet service providers and email programs.

Another great feature included in our service is the ability to receive customer feedback via surveys. You can create surveys with as many options as you wish and you will have the ability to track all of your survey results located conveniently within your reporting section.

We advocate personalizing your emails as much as possible in order to really stand out and create that one to one communication style. One way to personalize your emails in our system is with the use of Dynamic Content tags. Dynamic Content tags allow recipients to receive images in their emails based on the type of mail they have requested. For example, if a golf course has a combination of women and men golfers and they want to promote merchandise from their pro-shop, they could select a dynamic content tag to display women’s apparel for women recipients and men’s apparel for the men golfers. Also, you can add text personalization to the subject line and beginning of the email. For example, a subject line like: Subject: An email for “John Doe: from your favorite golf course.” can really stand out and get opened without hesitation.

Tracking emails is important to determine the effectiveness of your campaigns and if email marketing is viable for your business. After you have sent an email campaign, you can instantly view response data including open rates, links clicked, bounced emails, unsubscribed emails, and forwarded emails.

Additionally, our email marketing services include unlimited image hosting, multiple split testing, free built-in SPAM checking, and tons more. Find out how to get started with Digital Street’s email marketing services here.

There are so many businesses that fear the unknown and are frightened of starting email marketing.  Although many are still hesitant to move away from their tried-and-true snail-mail methods, others are rapidly discovering that email marketing is one of the most effective means of generating sales.
When Shop.org surveyed retailers for its State of Retailing Online 2009 report, it found that email was the most-mentioned successful tactic overall.

The Ad Effectiveness Survey commissioned by Forbes Media in February/March 2009 placed email marketing second only to search engine optimization for generating conversions.

And research conducted in 2009 by the Direct Marketing Association (DMA) found that email outperforms all other forms of direct marketing. The bigger question, of course, is why? Of all the hundreds or even thousands of messages consumers are exposed to each day, why is email marketing so effective?

1.  Email Marketing Reaches Many!

It’s hard to find someone that doesn’t have at least one email address!  What this means for your business is that you can reach out to your entire customer and prospect base.

2.  Email Marketing Is Proactive!

Email marketing goes directly into your customer’s email inbox! They don’t have to search through a phone directory or newspaper to find your services!  With one click of a mouse, they can contact you directly to get a quote or more information about your services!

3. Email Marketing is Targeted

Most forms of advertising are based on the idea that if you hit thousands of people with your message, even though it may mean nothing to most of them, a few are likely to respond.

Email marketing is based on the idea of sending the right message directly to the right people based on their preferences, local market conditions, and other factors.

You can build a master list and then segment it by geographic location, marital status, gender, age, income, time of year, etc. Doing so eliminates a lot of the guesswork that makes other forms of marketing so inefficient.

4. Email Marketing Provides Data

We at Digital Street provide you with reports to show which emails or messages went through and which didn’t, so you can improve your next campaign.  You are able to run split tests, sending one offer or message to half your list and a different one to the other half, so you can get a better feel for what your customers want and what your prospects buy from you!

5. Email Marketing Allows You to Engage

It’s nice to get the immediate reaction from a customer who sees your ad just before going shopping. But your real goal is to build a relationship with a broader base of prospects so they think of you whenever it’s time to hit the stores.

Email marketing allows you to do that by bringing them shopping tips, updates on trends, seasonal items, and special loyalty-program deals on a regular basis. It’s a great way to engage them—and keep them engaged.

6. Email Marketing is Less Intrusive

Unlike telemarketing calls, email marketing doesn’t interrupt a prior activity to deliver a message. Opening email is the activity your customers and prospects are engaged in when they see your message. If you’ve done a good job of building that relationship, they’ll look forward to seeing what you have to say.

7. Email Marketing Works

According to the DMA’s (Direct Marketing Association) research, email marketing generated a return on investment (ROI) of $43.62 for every dollar spent on it in 2009. You’re unlikely to find that kind of ROI from any other form of marketing or advertising—the best reason of all to launch an email-marketing campaign.

When done correctly, email marketing allows you to become (and remain) visible to your customers and prospects with highly targeted messages at a minimal cost, all while delivering outstanding, measurable results that will ripple far beyond your pond of current customers.

Even if you have a great product it can be a real challenge to get a new company off the ground. If people don’t know about your products they obviously can’t buy them.

Typically, new businesses will invest heavily in traditional advertising, cold calling, and email marketing. All of these are legitimate and should be pursued.

However, a robust social media component to your marketing efforts can make all the difference.

Social media is about generating buzz. The only thing worse than bad press is no press at all. If people are not talking about your brand they’re probably not buying it.

Here are 10 reasons your small business should be using social media:

1. More Traffic (a lot more) – The amount of traffic a successful viral marketing campaign can generate is simply staggering.

2. Reputation Management – Find out what people are saying about your brand and where.

3. Increases Search Rank – The more people share your content and talk about your brand it generates natural links back to your site. This increases your search engine rank which increases your traffic and the quality of it.

4. Branding – Creating a recognizable identity and a strong brand is key to success.

5. Buzz – Get people talking about your brand. This will increase the spread of your brand via word of mouth. People trust what their friends and family tell them.

6. Levels The Playing Field – Social media allows tiny companies and one man shops to get the same exposure as multi-billion dollar companies with massive advertising budgets. A single viral video has the potential to be seen by as many people as a million dollar Super Bowl ad.

7. Saves Money – Social media costs a fraction of what traditional advertising does.

8. Increases Trust – Companies with a strong presence on social networks are more accessible. Companies that are more accessible tend to be more trustworthy (or are perceived that way).

9. Makes You Better – When you engage with customers through social media you’ll know what they want, what’s wrong, what’s right, and how you can do better. Domino’s Pizza heard from customers via social networks about how terrible their pizza had become. They responded by throwing out all the old recipes and starting from scratch.

10. Increases Your Market – The web has made doing business all over the world as easy as doing business in your own neighborhood. A robust social media presence will expose your brand to potential customers all over the world.