Email Marketing Made Simple – 8 Key Lessons for beginners
When it comes to the growing a business, Email marketing is a crucial part of the whole process.
However, email marketing seems like a forgotten case with the popularity of videos, artificial intelligence, chat-bots, and virtual reality.
But, if you think email marketing is dead, you are wrong. Email marketing is still going strong today. It is one of the most effective business strategies any organization can employ.
In 2018, email marketing outranked affiliate marketing, social media, and other search engine optimization techniques. The main reason is that most people’s emails are always on.
However, what do you need to know about email marketing?
Here is your beginner’s guide to email marketing:
1. Know that you are a guest in their inbox
Most people are sick and tired of frequent pitches and advertisements, especially in their inbox. It is thus important to remember that you are just a guest who needs to mind his manners as a result. Stay calm as you communicate with whoever you are reaching out to; be ready to get declines and respond to them well too. Never forget that you are always a guest in their inbox.
2. Get permission
All email campaigns were first built after getting permission. It is therefore important to focus on building a sizeable email list that you intend to get to by offering a newsletter or product updates. Here, create your credibility and call people to action. Some of the most common ways of doing this include:
- Creating an email series
- Having free downloads
- Free eBooks
- Product updates
- Follow through with amazing content
3. Managing expectations
Email marketing is all managing expectations, and it’s up to you to set them.
Ensure you have a strong call to action and a consistent follow-up. These two will count on a positive campaign. Choose how many emails you intend to send and stick to that number. The follow-up will help you know how best this works for you and what to stick to and work much better on.
Your follow up email should be sent to the subscriber immediately and not as an autoresponder. Be quick and concise when doing this –it is more powerful.
4. Know when to pitch a product
The main aim of email marketing is to engage customers and make sales. It is thus important to take a risk and pitch your product for the money. Ensure that you do it right to your audience. It should not come as a surprise. This may push many of them away, and you may thus not convert sales. Always remember that an email is a permission asset don’t be reckless to play loose and reckless.
5. How to write a great email newsletter?
What kind of newsletter are you planning to share with your subscribers? Maintaining a regular email routine is a sign of a good email strategy. This makes sure that everyone remembers you and why you are reaching out to them. Doing this well involves mixing messaging and updates. Accompany your product updates with a balanced, friendly memo or personal message. Use your newsletter to create better relationships with your subscribers.
6. Using the auto-responders
When you are starting, you may have the time to respond to all emails in one sitting or so. With time, it becomes hard as your number of subscribers grow.
What then can you do with this handful of subscribers?
Turn to auto-responders. What such systems do is automatically send out emails that you had already scheduled earlier. Such emails warm-up new subscribers in your email list. This should be done after months of constant personal follow up to create the much-needed trust.
7. Analytics and segmentation
Understanding the basics of email marketing is one thing, and taking your email campaign to the next level is another. What needs to be done here then? It is the understanding of these three components: Open-rate, click-through rate, and unsubscribes. Each of these rates helps you understand what works and what doesn’t in your email campaign. How many people open your emails-that is the open rate. How many of them give the go-ahead to follow up on your links and so on? That is the click-through rate. Lastly, there are those who dislike and unsubscribe. All these analytics will tell you how well your email campaign is working for you. Look at each instance and try to find the best solution for each of them separately.
8. How to segment your list
Segmentation in email marketing is the practice of splitting up your email list to more targeted recipients. You can have emails that target these groups of subscribers:
- Customer list (in comparison to leads who haven’t bought)
- Newsletter subscribers
- Daily email list (in comparison to weekly, bi-weekly, monthly, etc.)
This will help you know those who opened your previous email and those who didn’t. You are thus able to send another email to those who never responded, asking them why and finding new things that may capture their attention.
All in all, you need to know your email list is your most valuable asset. You need to treat it with the right respect, the cost of doing so will pay for itself. As a business owner, stay on track, analyze each element that communicates to you from your marketing campaign.
This will, in turn, tell you well how much your list is worth. If you have been ignoring email marketing, it is the right time to get back to it and focus more on making the right decisions. It is not an easy road to take, but with enough effort and the right targeting, you are sure to rip the right benefits of your marketing campaigns.
Email marketing is still alive, and everyone should focus on trying it out. All you need is to do it right, and you’ll be ready to go.