7 Email Marketing Tips for Beginners
Email marketing is a direct and potentially one of the most powerful marketing channels on the Web. In its broadest sense it includes every commercial email message sent to your website readers and business customers.
If used properly, email marketing can help you drive greater traffic to your website, engage with current readers and buyers, promote your offers, introduce new projects, as well as build stronger relationships and establish trust, which are essential assets to any online business.
Studies repeatedly show that email marketing is also the most effective way to reach and return sales. An Econsultancy and Adestra research shows that “Two-thirds of marketers (66%) state that email delivers an ‘excellent’ or ‘good’ ROI, with 8% of businesses achieving more than half of their sales through this channel”.
Now that we know how awesome email marketing actually is, let’s see what it takes to get started with it, and how to improve your campaigns’ results:
#1 Select the Right Email Marketing Service Provider
You need email marketing software to collect your subscribers’ personal data, create and send out email messages and newsletters, and track the results of your campaigns. This is virtually impossible to do manually once your subscribers list gets bigger.
Select the service that offers the best deliverability rates, creation, scheduling, and reporting features, for the price you can afford to pay. MailChimp, AWeber, GetResponse and Mad Mimi are among the top rated.
#2 Make it Easy for People to Subscribe to Your Emails
Create a call-to-action web form for your website visitors to leave their names and email addresses, and place the subscription button somewhere on the top of the sidebar and below every blog post. These are the most visible and the highest-converting positions on a webpage.
To increase your opt-in numbers, offer your readers something exclusive in exchange for subscribing, – an ebook, a short email course, free software download. Whatever incentive you choose, make sure it’s valuable to your audience to encourage them to take the next step. Mention the freebie in the subscription form and promote it in the headline.
#3 Select a Pre-Built Email Template or Design Your Own
You can either use the fully customizable, pre-built templates, offered by the email marketing service of your choice, or you can create your own unique and attractive design. If you decide to design your own newsletter, make sure it’s easy to navigate and readable from PCs as well as mobile devices. 66% of all emails are now opened on a smartphone or tablet, and only 34% on PCs.
#4 Define Your Email Marketing Goals and Work Out a Sending Schedule
First, decide what you want to achieve with your email marketing campaign. Do you want to educate your readers about something? Do you want to deepen the relationships? Then, work out a regular schedule for your emails to be sent so you can better plan, gather, and organize your content around these business goals.
Pick the most optimal time and day in the week to send out your newsletters, and always be consistent as it gives your subscribers something to expect and look forward to.
#5 Connect with Your Audience, Build Relationships
As always, great content is what keeps readers interested and engaged with your brand. If people don’t see value in your newsletters, they’ll ignore them, or simply unsubscribe.
Welcome every new subscriber with a reminder of why they’ve subscribed, what they can expect, and info or link to their downloadable gift. The next few emails should mostly contain valuable and helpful content, like how-to guides, or free web tools, and only after you build initial trust with your audience would you be able to send out some sale pitches.
Use subtitles, bulleted lists, and shorter paragraphs to make your messages easy to read and digest, and don’t forget to link to your social accounts by the end of each email.
#6 Start Introducing Promotional Messages
Once you establish a solid foundation, you can start introducing subscribers to your business’ products and services. But do this with moderation, as you don’t want to put off your readers and make them feel like they’re being spammed. The good rule-of-thumb is one commercial for every two or three content messages.
#7 Track and Measure the Results of Your Email Campaigns
We can only improve by tracking and analyzing our previous efforts. Most email marketing service providers offer enough data to identify what type of content works with your audience and what doesn’t, where are your customers in the sales cycle, and how you can improve your conversions.
Please keep in mind that email marketing is not about fast results. The goal is to connect and establish meaningful relationships with your audience. So look for the trends over a longer period when analyzing your campaigns’ results.
Are you using email marketing to promote your business? Or maybe you’re subscribed to some reputable company blog or website and have some positive experiences and thoughts to share… Please join the discussion in the comments below.
