Internet citizens and anyone who has used email for any length of time knows that they have to be on the alert for unwanted emails. This suspicion is one of the reasons it is difficult to use unsolicited emails for internet marketing any more. Instead a far more effective method is to create excitement in customers you already know is through some promotion that they want to hear about in their email box. And when they are excited to see your emails arrive, they will be sure to add your business email address to their favored email contacts list and you will have circumvented the spam software problem that has been the cause of your email delivery problems all along.There are many ways to generate excitement in your customer base but perhaps no other one is so additive for your customers as a contest. For the cost of a small prize, people will work tirelessly to satisfy the terms of the contest. And by structuring the contest so the customers must get their clues via email, you are opening that door of email communications for future promotions and marketing. That alone might be worth the price of the prize.
The great thing about creating a contest is you can structure how it works to take the customers to your web site or have them collect clues that are directly related to y our products or services and the contest itself can become a big marketing "commercial" that the customers want to be part of. A contest, along with the obvious value of helping to resolve your email deliverability problems, can serve to generate web site traffic and energize a sluggish site or a function on your web site that you want to see get more attention.
Do you have a blog that isn't getting enough traffic? Hide a clue on it and challenge the contestants to come and search for that clue. Want to see a banner ad get more clicks, let the contestants know the next clue is hidden behind that banner ad and then put the clue on your affiliates page. The clicks to that banner or affiliate link will skyrocket. You can often cover the costs of the promotion and the prize through the increased traffic to your web site entirely.
An online contest can also help drive business to a brick and mortar retail operation that you may be using your web presence to support. This is a wonderful way to meet your online customers face to face by using the contest to take the customers to your store to look for a clue. As they move through the aisles of the store, in addition to eagerly looking for the next step of the contest, they will be shopping and very often, buying things which is exactly what you are looking for.
A contest that you set off via email is also a powerful viral marketing tool. Your customers will naturally tell their friends and relatives about the contest. And as more people hear about the contest, you may see a surge of requests to join in on the fun coming through your online message services. Just be sure to take those customers to an email registration so you can harvest their email addresses and get your business email placed on their favored contacts list too. In that way you cleverly expand your marketing base while drawing new customers to your web site.
You may find that once you get started having contests via email and contests that incorporate every aspect of your online presence, it might become a habit you want to repeat often. The increased traffic, sales and expansion of your customer base can be so lively that there is no reason not to use this marketing tool often.