Email marketing is contacting people via email as part of marketing strategy. It is every email sent to customers to convince them to take action such as buying your services, products, or sign up for something; or to encourage other people to become your customers. For years, email is one of the channels used in online marketing and a great way to generate traffic to your website.
Email marketing does not stand alone, but it should make part of all your marketing strategies. If you want to do email marketing effectively, you need to do it in line with goals you already set in your business plan. For instance, you need to identify your target customer’s profile in order to deliver your email in a convincing way and realize your strategy’s objectives.
Besides, applying email marketing strategies isn’t that complex as might be other marketing channels. It doesn’t require geek knowledge before seeing results.
Email lists can be built, bought, or rent. And the best one is to build your own email list. Buying or renting email lists isn’t the recommended choice if you want to keep your business clean. So building your own list is the right process that will give you a solid strategy.
When you place a subscription button or form on your website, make sure it is somewhere where it could be seen and found easily. Make it clean sand familiar, and remember that the more it’s placed on the top of the website is the better.
To increase the reach to that content, and in turn email subscribers, promote it via social media channels such as Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Google+…etc.
Email marketing does not stand alone, but it should make part of all your marketing strategies. If you want to do email marketing effectively, you need to do it in line with goals you already set in your business plan. For instance, you need to identify your target customer’s profile in order to deliver your email in a convincing way and realize your strategy’s objectives.
Everyday people have the behavior of checking two places whenever they get online and before doing anything else. People tend to check their email inboxes and social media profiles. When we find an email arriving to inbox especially from some websites we trust and they have great content, we tend to open the email right away.
Email marketing Benefits
Whatever what kind of business you have, you can use email marketing. This flexibility is what differs email marketing from other types of marketing plans.
Another benefit of turning to email marketing is its low cost. Even if you are still a fledgling business in its first journey, you can rely on email to build your first success.
Besides, applying email marketing strategies isn’t that complex as might be other marketing channels. It doesn’t require geek knowledge before seeing results.
A lot of things have been introduced, thrived and later on died through the web history, but only email survived over decades. Email is being used since early ages of internet, still being used, and will remain useful, at least for medium term.
Email List Building
The first element of launching an email marketing campaign is to have an email list.
Email lists can be built, bought, or rent. And the best one is to build your own email list. Buying or renting email lists isn’t the recommended choice if you want to keep your business clean. So building your own list is the right process that will give you a solid strategy.
So, how to build an email list?
Subscription Button
The first channel to build an email list is through subscription. Make sure that you have different types of subscriptions on your website.
You can put a subscription button on your website. And when visitors like your website, they will subscribe to receive your newsletters and any of your updates.
When you place a subscription button or form on your website, make sure it is somewhere where it could be seen and found easily. Make it clean sand familiar, and remember that the more it’s placed on the top of the website is the better.
Give Away
You can also offer content you think great including an eBook, Guide, Catalog… etc for email subscription instead of selling it. People won’t provide their emails unless content is worth it. So, be selective what content you are offering for subscription.
To increase the reach to that content, and in turn email subscribers, promote it via social media channels such as Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Google+…etc.
Email signature
In emails you or your employees send, you can add a subscription icon in signature.
Offline
If you organize an event somewhere in the city, you can make forms for attendees to fill, and make sure to include email address. You can then contact them if they accept to opt-in for your list.
While collecting emails, tell people what kind of emails they would expect from you and what kind of content they would receive.
Social Media Call-To-Action
In call to action like the one on Facebook, you can set to send users to any of your landing pages that require subscription.
Guest Blogging
If you do guest blogging, you can also use it to build your email list. You can ask people to subscribe to your website or blog.
Email Marketing Tips
Customer Satisfaction
Today, no matter what kind of marketing channel you are using, you need to make customer satisfaction a priority. What you provide need to contribute to the user’s experience. Meaning, when you send an email, it shouldn’t sound as if you are selling something. Instead, provide something which is useful for users. Email marketing isn’t flooding people’s inboxes with sales deals.
Before any email campaign, don’t think of sending emails recommending your products. People will do the business when they have a reason for that. Your job then is to give that prospect customer a reason to buy what you are offering.
That makes part of your efforts to build relationship marketing that proves effectives and pays on the long run. In other words, you need to focus on the customer experience before thinking of sales.
Email personalization
To build a relationship with your customers, they need to trust you. In order for this to happen, they need to be your friends or feel as they are dealing with someone they know. When you succeed to build that personal-like relationship, they would trust you and are likely to do business with you.
For that to happen, you need to pay attention to the kind of emails you are sending them. Avoid such emails received from faceless brands; those emails with no soul that are dead before arriving to the user’ inbox.
Instead you need to personalize your emails including those confirmation emails that are sent automatically after a subscription or an opt-in. People will appreciate personalized emails that cite their names for instance. When they read such email, they feel connected with your business.
However, you shouldn’t personalize all your emails. If you contact someone for the first time, don’t personalize your email. It would look suspicious. Imagine you are in the street and a strange comes toward you and start calling you by your name. How would be your reaction? In this case of sending emails, you are the stranger.
It’s like in the physical world, give people some time to know you and what you are doing before coming so close and getting in personal contact.
Permission
The first people that make part of your email list are those people with whom you have already a contact. They might be your old customers, users that subscribed and confirmed to receive your updates or someone that have contacted you, or any of those you have contacted. While launching an email marketing campaign, you can include them in the list.
But, those that have just subscribed to your content or any of those you intend to contact for the first time, you should first get their permission before sending them your emails. Afterward, you can contact them and introduce yourself and let people learn more about you.
Email Design
It’s not a necessity to design emails to do well in email marketing, but it’s better to send beautifully designed emails. But, you can send such emails only for those users that have trusted you and already have contacted.
However, when it’s the first time you contact someone you need to avoid HTML emails. There’s a high chance they won’t be delivered to inbox, but to junk. And this is not where you want them to arrive.
This article does not tell everything email marketing, but it provides the basics on which you can build your email marketing strategy. If you implement all the practices included here, you’ll start getting results you have been missing. If you haven’t decided to include email in your marketing plans, probably time has arrived to do it.
Tell us what you think, and if you have any ideas please share them in the comments below.
I'm here to help you reach success with your online business. I can help with content marketing, social media, SEO, and email marketing. I provide tips you can follow to build a succesful online business.
0 Comments:
Post a Comment