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How do you currently communicate with your audience?
Email marketing is the most effective way to reach subscribers and potential customers. You can use email marketing for many things like announcing a new product or service, asking for feedback, reminding them about an upcoming event, and more.
It’s easy to set up and manage once you know-how! With so many tools and strategies to choose from, it can be overwhelming for a beginner.
In this post, email marketing for beginners, we’ll go over some of the basics so that you can get started.
What is email marketing?
The practice of sending an email to someone who has given their email address to your business is known as email marketing. It might be a client or someone who was interested in what you had to offer but did not buy.
The goal is to build relationships with people so they want to buy from you. They are more likely to remember buying from you when they need something in the future.
Email marketing has become one of the most cost-effective online advertising strategies.
Why do I need to use it?
One of the most significant advantages email marketing has over other types of marketing is that it isn’t intrusive. You email someone when they want it, so if you send them something inconvenient (or too frequently), they can simply unsubscribe or block your emails and know that you won’t pester them with email again.
The return on investment or ROI for email marketing is excellent. People are more likely to engage with and buy from an email than a social media update. And you may have those two conversions behind the scenes, which most individuals want.
What are the basics of email marketing?
There are a few things you’ll need to do before you get started with email marketing:
- Create an email list so that when someone joins, they can receive your emails and be reminded of new postings or items they may want to buy.
- Create email templates for the various sorts of emails you’ll be sending (announcing new material, soliciting feedback/questions)
- Write and send emails!
If you don’t email your list on a regular basis, email marketing won’t work. It might take some time for individuals to respond to email, but the more you send them, the more likely they are to remember you.
Don’t be excessive! If people don’t want to receive email from you because it comes too often or at an inconvenient time, they can unsubscribe and move on with their lives. Overusing email may cause you to lose subscribers.
Make sure to study your email marketing statistics so you can figure out what works and what doesn’t.
Finally, be genuine! If you don’t care about them or simply want their money, they will unsubscribe because of this. If someone emails you a question, do your best to reply and assist them!
Email Marketing For Beginners: How to Get Started
First, you’ll need email marketing software to start emailing your list, such as ConvertKit, Active Campaign, or Aweber.
Some providers charge different costs based on the number of email addresses you’re managing, and they all provide a free trial so it’s simple for new businesses to figure out what works best.
An opt-in incentive is a type of offer that you send to someone, such as an ebook, webinar, or some other piece of information, once they have added their email address into an opt-in form.
This is a good way to get email addresses from people who are interested in what you have to offer. The more emails you have, the more people can see it.
You can begin adding opt-in boxes on your website once you’ve set up these two things.
You can place opt-in forms:
- On your home page, often above the fold (the top part that you see when you arrive on the page)
- In your sidebar
- During and/or at the end of blog posts
- As a popup that appears once someone has been on a page for a certain length of time or scrolled through a certain percentage of the content
The email opt-in forms must be simple to understand and show the advantages of opting-in, but they also must not be too intrusive or unpleasant. Even Google had a restriction against “intrusive interstitials,” which are popups that are difficult to remove, especially on mobile devices.
Creating your email marketing newsletter schedule
Once you’ve got the basics under your belt, you’ll need to decide when and what to send individuals. It is recommended that you email people on a regular basis, even if your list is small.
You might want to develop a weekly newsletter with industry news as well as your own material. A monthly roundup email including past blog articles may also be useful. Or, perhaps, a seasonal email like an email in December that offers gift suggestions or just holiday decorating ideas (depending on your niche).
Another approach to use email marketing as a sales tool is by sending special offers and discounts only available via email subscribers, which may be used whether someone has already signed up or if they are email subscribers but do not yet have a customer account.
In general, it’s ideal to email at least once a week and see how your email list responds to what you communicate out – eventually, you’ll discover the right email marketing schedule for you!
Creating sales emails
You’ll want to send out marketing emails that can make you money, such as a new product or service, affiliates you work with, and/or a reminder of what you already have available. These will be mixed in with other sorts of emails and even included within different kinds of emails.
Don’t be afraid to send these types of emails. As a new entrepreneur, it can be very easy to send a lot of valuable educational emails but feel sleazy for mentioning or sending full emails about your products and services.
I get that, but you’re here to make money. And plus if you have something that will help someone on your list it’s selfish not to let them know about it.
How to set up your first campaign
1: Decide on the email list you want to send it to
You can segment your emails into different lists and then offer separate content targeted at specific audiences.
For example, if you have a blog about cats, you could create a sign-up for just those who are interested in new cat product reviews and information and another sign-up for those interested in cat care.
2: Build your email template
It’s important to have a design that best represents your business or brand, so put some thought into this.
You can use free images from sites like Pixabay or Unsplash.
If you hire a designer, consider what your goal is with your email campaign – are you aiming for leads or sales? If it leads, she will probably create a less sales-y template.
Or, if you have the budget, you can also buy an email template from sites like Creative Market or Etsy. These are pre-designed templates that have clean layouts and are free of stock photos so it fits nicely with your own brand identity.
3: Create your content
This should be as targeted as possible.
For example, if your email marketing software lets you create a segmentation for emails that are sent to specific groups of people, take advantage of that and send different content to each group.
Rather than writing just one email and sending it to everyone, write separate emails for each segment and send them out individually to each.
4: Create your campaign
An email campaign is the act of sending an email to a segmented group of people. If you have set up your segments, creating a campaign should be very easy since everything is already in place.
5: Send your campaign!
Your first email marketing campaign can feel like playing with fire. But don’t worry, it will get easier the more you practice and the more emails you send.
Be sure to check your email marketing software’s settings for best practices – such as when you should send your emails and what kind of content is and isn’t allowed within an email. Some email marketing software providers don’t allow affiliate marketing for example.
If you’re unsure about anything, ask a marketing expert or your email marketing software’s customer service for help.
The most important thing, in the beginning, is to get started and start learning how to improve over time. The more you learn, the better you’ll become and the easier it will be to create a profitable email marketing campaign.
How often should you send emails?
While the answer to this question is different depending on your goals, there are some general guidelines you can follow.
Generally speaking, email marketing works best when you are being consistent. This means that you should try to send emails at least once per week if not more. If you have the resources available, 2-3 times per week should be ideal.
In terms of timing, it’s best to avoid sending emails during traditional “prime time” hours unless your audience is highly active at these times (e.g., marketers).
Instead, plan to send your emails at off-peak times like the middle of the day or early morning. This will help you avoid emailing people when they’re likely not using their inboxes but doing other things like checking Facebook or Twitter.
You might also want to consider sending out an occasional reminder email to subscribers to let them know about your latest coupons or offers. While these emails will be more promotional in nature, they’re still important for driving sales and building consumer awareness.
What types of email marketing campaigns should you run?
There are different campaign types that work best for different purposes so it’s critical to first identify what your goals are before launching an email marketing campaign.
For example, many companies run email marketing campaigns as part of their branding efforts. These are typically designed to boost awareness for your company or build long-term loyalty with subscribers by giving them more reasons to pay attention to you.
Other marketers may use email marketing as a means of driving sales. For these types of campaigns, the focus is more on generating immediate revenue via coupons or other promotional offers.
There are also email marketing campaigns that are designed to achieve both branding/awareness and sales goals simultaneously. These types of efforts typically include multi-faceted campaigns that include multiple emails sent over an extended period of time (e.g., six months) with the end goal of driving sales and building brand loyalty.
What are the best times to send email marketing messages?
The answer to this question will depend on your goals as well as the preferences of your subscribers.
Generally speaking, mid-afternoon or early morning tends to be better for sending promotional emails since people are less likely to be checking their inboxes at these times. Depending on your industry, sending emails in the late morning or early evening can also work well since people often check their email to kill time while they’re winding down from the workday.
The importance of segmenting your audience correctly
When you’re just getting started with email marketing, there is one simple tip that can make a big difference when it comes to results: segmenting.
What does this mean?
As the name suggests, ‘segmenting’ involves splitting your list up into smaller groups based on certain factors. These could be anything from geography and demographics, to what they’ve bought from you in the past.
The benefits of this are fairly straightforward: by sending emails that are relevant to your customers, you’re much more likely to increase open rates and click-throughs. This will lead to higher overall conversion rates and increased sales as a result.
It’s also worth noting here that your emails should be more relevant to your customers than they are to you.
Sure, it might be interesting for you to find out some facts about the location of people on your list, or facts about their age group if this applies to them – however, these details are much less important to your audience.
Essentially, let’s say that you’re selling bike parts. If you segment your list by where people live, this doesn’t mean that they care about the kinds of roads their fellow subscribers have to use to get to work.
Conversely, it’s much more likely that they want to know details about the latest bike parts and how they can upgrade their ride. So make sure you’re sending the most relevant information to your subscribers!
Finally, it’s a good idea to break down your segments further where possible. For example, if you’re selling clothing and accessories for men, divide them between those with different body types – such as skinny or broad shoulders etc. You can then tailor your content accordingly – so skinny guys might get tips on what looks good on their body shape, while broader guys might hear about styles that suit them.
How you can get started with segmentation
The easy way to get started with segmenting would be to simply make a list of all the things your subscribers have in common (such as location or age). Then you could delete any subscribers who don’t fit into any of the categories.
However, this is not always the most effective way to proceed. For example, if you’ve just started out with email marketing and only have a small list of subscribers so far, it can be difficult to accurately predict what everyone’s interests are. So in many cases, it’s better to start with one segment and then learn more about your audience as time goes on.
One way to do this is to ask subscribers what they want from your emails by adding a checkbox to your sign up form that asks, ‘What’s your area of interest?’ This will enable you to split them up according to their responses later on.
It can also make sense to split your list according to what they’ve bought from you in the past (i.e. do people who buy bike parts tend to also buy accessories?).
Just make sure you don’t go overboard and create too many segments for yourself when you’re just getting started, or it will be difficult to keep track of who should be getting what content.
As you improve your email marketing skills, it becomes much easier to accurately predict the interests of your subscribers by using things like purchase history and browsing behaviour on your website.
Based on this data, you could create more niche segments for groups of people who have very similar interests – such as ‘cyclists that buy bike parts for road bikes on Mondays’.
You could even take this one step further by creating more personalized segments based on information like age, gender and location. While it’s not always necessary to use these kinds of data points, they can be really useful if you’re trying to send emails that are relevant to certain groups of people – such as mothers, students or gamers.
The most important thing to remember is that the more relevant your emails are to your subscribers, the more likely it is they’ll be interested in what you have to say. And this will keep them coming back for more!
Analytics and Tracking Results of Your Campaigns
One of the most important aspects of email marketing is tracking and analyzing your results.
It’s therefore important to focus on metrics that show how people are interacting with your email campaigns after they’ve received them – such as how many people are opening, clicking links and bounced rates.
If you do this, you’ll have a much better idea of which types of content are working well for your business and where you need to improve things moving forward.
While some email marketing service providers offer basic tracking options, it’s often more effective to use a third-party service like Google Analytics (which allows you to see how many people are visiting your site or landing on certain pages via emails).
The more you understand about why your subscribers are engaging with your emails, the easier it will be to deliver content that gets results.
Once you’ve got a good understanding of what makes a good email marketing campaign and how to track the results, there’s no limit to how much success you can achieve as a marketer.
It all comes down to knowing what your audience wants and understanding how they behave when it comes to your content – before you even get started.
Just remember that email marketing is a long term strategy and doesn’t always provide instant results, which can be frustrating for some marketers who like seeing ‘quick wins’.
However, if you’re willing to put in the effort required to create quality campaigns that deliver value to your subscribers, you’ll soon start seeing positive results.
Tips for writing effective copy.
Writing the copy for your email marketing messages can be a daunting task. It may not seem like it, but there are actually rules to follow if you want to get the most out of your emails.
Use these tips for better results with your next email campaign:
Be personable and friendly when writing your email messages.
People don’t like automated messages, so it’s important to show your unique personality in your emails. Using a friendly and personable tone will get you further than coming off as robotic and impersonal.
Use powerful headlines for compelling reasons to open the email.
If people don’t want to read what you have to say, then they won’t bother opening the message and engaging with you. Headlines should engage the reader and capture their interest. They should be written to grab attention and pique curiosity, and they can even incorporate humour if it is appropriate.
Clearly identify yourself at the end of your messages so people know who you are.
If prospects don’t recognize the name on an email, then they won’t trust you, and they may even mark your messages as spam.
Keep it simple when writing copy for your email marketing messages.
Don’t try to be too formal or use long words that people may not understand. Make sure all paragraphs are short and avoid including complicated information in the main body of the message. In fact, keep messages to just one or two short paragraphs.
Use proper spelling and grammar in your emails to make them easier to understand.
It is not necessary to use perfect English, but you should make sure all of the words are spelt correctly. Sending out messages with poor grammar makes it difficult for people to know what you are trying to say, which will lead them away from your company. I like to use Grammarly to help me correct my spelling and grammar quickly.
Finally, proofread and edit your messages before you send them out.
It only takes a few minutes to proofread and catch mistakes that may confuse the reader or make them think you are not serious about communicating with them. Remove any incorrect information from the message, such as an email address or phone number, if it is no longer up to date.
What not to do when it comes to email marketing
Knowing what to do is just as important as what you should do.
Avoid annoying your customers with endless, spammy marketing emails. Always think value first.
Keep in mind – if you continue to send useless emails to your followers, they will unsubscribe.
A great way to build an audience
Email marketing is a fantastic technique to expand your audience and keeping in touch with them on a regular basis. This helps to promote brand recognition for a new business.
It’s important to set up an email system that will help you build a relationship with your list.
In an effort to help you start your email marketing journey, we’ve provided a few tips for writing copy that will engage subscribers.
Remember: keep it simple and send valuable emails to your subscribers. If you need more information on how to write a compelling headline or edit your messages before they go out, let us know!
