What Email Marketing is All About?

Email marketing is not just sending out promotional letters, but it’s a channel of communication with customers. In essence, e-mailing is close to content marketing, the purpose of which is to give the reader useful information. But subscribing to the newsletter, the reader shows interest in your products or services, so in letters, it is important to find a reasonable balance between advertising and the benefit for your reader.

Email marketing is based on the fact that you have a subscriber base. It is on this basis regular email newsletters are made. Creation or acquisition of such lists is the first necessity for a good email marketer.

The more the base is segmented, the more precisely it is divided into groups and the interests of recipients, and the more precisely the individual marketing proposal for each group is formulated, the higher effectiveness of each mail.

What business tasks does Email newsletter solve?

[1] Direct sales:

• people subscribe to the newsletter when they plan to buy a product or service, but they cannot do it now (they doubt in their choice, they do not have enough money or time). Letters should remove any objections, answer the subscriber’s questions and bring them to the purchase.

[2] Reminder and repeat sales:

• sending out to customers who have already made purchases. For example, an online store of contact lenses sends a reminder to replace the monthly lenses 25 days after the purchase.

[3] Attention to customers:

• letters can train and entertain a subscriber, for example, congratulate him on his birthday or talk about the improvement of the product that the customer was interested in. This increases customer loyalty.

[4] Feedback:

• send the customer a questionnaire after purchase and receive feedback about their work and products.

In this guide, we will consider the means and methods, the use of which will make email marketing for business as efficient as possible. You will learn how to avoid common mistakes that many make by applying an unsuccessful and banal mailing template.

Why You Should Definitely Use Email Marketing For Your Business?

Well-structured email-distribution gives your business many advantages in terms of working with customers.

You can use it not only as a tool for effective communication and retention of the audience but also as a means to generate repeat sales and motivation to commit the desired conversion actions. mail-marketing for business is a key tool in the field of E-commerce, the effectiveness of which cannot be overemphasized.

By registering on the site and making orders, the customer must specify his/her email address.

According to statistics, email-mailing for business contributes to the completion of about 7% of the total number of transactions. This is a very significant figure, so do not doubt that this tool will not lose its relevance for a very long time.

Despite the fact that in recent years, many other tools and channels for working with customers have appeared, according to studies of experts, email marketing does not lose its popularity, remaining the effective tool with high returns.

E-mailing for a business with the correct configuration of segmentation is a very reliable option because you send letters to the target audience for which your information will be really interesting and useful. Moreover, email-distribution for a business will provide you with a number of such advantages in e-commerce, which no other marketing channel can give:

=> Formation of a subscriber base of clients

=> Keeping and building up a loyal audience

=> Maintenance of regular and repeating sales

=> Motivation to commit conversion actions

=> Establishment of long-term relationships with customers.

It is also worth noting that one of the advantages of email distribution for any business is the relatively low cost of maintaining activity on this marketing channel.

Basic tips for maintaining an email marketing:

Effective email distribution can be a task that cannot be solved in one day or even a month, so be patient. But correctly made newsletter allows you to get the right results. And you need to understand that the main goal that you pursue is to push the customer to make a purchase if not now, then in the future.

You do not hold an entertaining magazine and are not going to just get more friends. You have other goals, and they should promote business development.

First of all, it is necessary to understand that in order to subscribe to your newsletter, a user must have a certain motivation.

Email sending should encourage them to action. Usually the promise of a quick notification of news, discounts, promotions works, and the opportunity to receive exclusive offers that are available only to subscribers. Thus, you get a motivated “warmed-up” audience, initially set up to commit an action.

The process of creating a quality email-distribution for a business can be divided into several main stages.

To begin with, you need to set the goals that you want to achieve by email marketing. These can be sales, promotion of certain products, promotion of loyalty, retention of the audience, or any other motives.

Depending on the chosen goals, a strategy of mailing is being developed. It is determined in which style letters will be made (entertaining or serious), what will be the design of the mail, whether segmentation and personalization will be used.

Creating a distribution plan is determined by the frequency of sending letters. As an optimal option, even 1 letter per week is enough.

If you do this less often, the effect of email marketing is reduced, and if too often, it can irritate subscribers and they will start unsubscribing.

The mentioned moments for an unprepared person can hardly be called simple and understandable. Therefore, it is better to delegate such tasks to professionals who will provide you with really high-quality results, while you yourself will be engaged in establishing business processes.

Why Email Marketing is Better Than Social Media?

Email marketing is one of the best and most cost-effective channels for a wide audience of consumers who already know or are interested in your products or services. In an email, users are very active – 91% of users check their email at least once a day, and most users do it firstly in the morning.

But remember that your email newsletter will be among dozens, and even hundreds of letters, so create your mailings with strategy and passion.

Although many may argue that email marketing is hopelessly outdated and you need to keep up to date (how many such posts and articles in blogs have been written), but statistics are inexorable and figures show that emails are the most powerful tool for marketing and sales.

Email marketing also has a higher conversion than any other marketing channel. One important report reflects that 66% of online consumers make purchases as a result of email letters. Conversely, only 20% people made a purchase as a result of an advertising action on Facebook.

Email marketing allows you to achieve a high level of conversion at a lower price than advertising campaigns in social networks, it has a greater potential to provide a better profitability than social media.

How You Can Build a List From Scratch?

You may collect subscribers both online and offline. In a store or point of sale, for example, you can offer customers to give business cards with email, saying that you will send the newsletter.

How to gather subscribers online:

[1] Place a simple subscription form on the main page and in the contacts. Next to the form, briefly describe what the person will receive if he subscribes to you.

[2] Use the pop-up window (block BF501 or BF502N in Tilde) or the subscription form, fixed at the bottom of each page (block BF905)

[3] If the newsletter is an important part of your product or the product itself, create a separate page for the newsletter on the website or lending. Tell about the newsletter, show the archive of issues and put the subscription form.

This method is suitable for newsletters and brand dispatches that want to learn a lot about the user at the subscription stage to send personalized letters (in this case, you can put a questionnaire for the subscriber and justify why it needs to be filled out).

What to consider at the stage of subscriber base gathering?

[1] With the help of tilda website, specify the validation rule (validation of addresses for correctness). This will exclude errors when subscribing. The tilda checks whether the entered email contains the required characters – a “@” sign and a period.

[2] Add a link to the privacy policy – subscribers will be calm that you do not transfer their addresses to third parties, and authorities will make sure that you comply with the law on personal data.

[3] We recommend using double opt-in – in this case, an additional letter is sent to a person asking to confirm the subscription. This will reduce the conversion to subscriptions, but it will improve the quality of the address list.

If you have an old subscriber base, be sure, they have long forgotten that they once subscribed. In the first letter, remind of yourself and tell them what and when you want to send. You can add a promotional code or another bonus to motivate people not to unsubscribe from you.

Creating content for the newspaper:

Decide on the type of content. What do you want to write about in the letter? Automation service Zapier has compiled a list of six universal content types that are interesting to subscribers.

[1] New content:

• Digest of the industry news, articles of your blog, infographics, reports from conferences, etc.

[2] Unique content:

• Links to useful materials closed sales, or discounts only for subscribers of your newsletter.

[3] Collect product reviews:

• Offer subscribers a small incentive in exchange for participating in the survey.

[4] The launch of a new product:

• Do not hesitate to tell your subscribers about your fears before launching, share your successes and thoughts. By showing real life, you are gaining trust from the subscribers.

[5] The holiday as an excuse for mailing:

• Combine congratulations with sales – you can always give a card or a promotion code.

[6] Upcoming events:

• Invite subscribers to your events.

To create a content plan for your distribution, determine the list of topics that are interesting to you and your subscribers, and make a schedule.

If you have a seasonal business, tell your product about the season before the season (for example, everyone starts to think about gifts for the New Year at the end of November), and during the season, plan reminders about the purchase – tell about the delivery time, new products, help the reader to choose.

List Building Strategies That Really Work:

A large database of email addresses, that is, subscribers – is a real way to get loyal customers.

And while Facebook or another social network is an excellent way to communicate your brand with customers, email newsletters will help you gain the trust of each of them personally. Here are 5 working list building strategies:

[1] Pop-up window:

• For businesses with blogs, pop-ups are a great method.

• You can create a pop-up for collecting e-mail addresses using the mailing list services. This functionality is in all the largest tools: MailChimp, Constant Contact, and Mad Mimi.
  

• And this is the most convenient way, because email addresses for mailing will be collected immediately in the list on your account, and you can track the replenishment of this list when each new subscriber is added. And also to create automated dispatches when adding a subscriber.
  

• You will send to him a series of letters and simply send out the entire list without the need to transfer the list from tables collected by plug-ins or self-written tools.

• However, you can also make pop-ups using plug-ins. If you have an online store on WordPress website with a different focus on the same CMS, here’s a small list of such plug-ins:

• Popups is completely free and easy to set up. You can create a window in a visual editor, which greatly simplifies the task.

• Popup Maker – there are many settings, free themes, but it takes a little more skill to install such a window (knowledge of CSS required).

• Ninja Popups is also free and not inferior in its features plug-in.

[2] Website subscription form:

• The subscription for the newsletter is a convenient tool that can be used absolutely anywhere – in a blog, on a website, and even in the letter itself.

• It is better to set them on a page, for example, at the top or side of the page, as well as one form or button below, for example, as SeoProfy did on its blog.

• You can make a subscription form or button using the MailChimp, SmartResponder, or Constant Contact mailing services. By the way, the last is most enjoyable because of the user-friendly interface, as well as flexible settings for sending and creating the letter itself.

• To find out where it’s best to embed a subscription form, use the free Crazy Egg website. There you can see a map of clicks and understand exactly where users most often stop. In this place it is possible and to establish the form.

[3] Contest:

• If the subject of your website allows you to hold a contest, you can safely organize it. Everyone can participate, right after they leave their email addresses.

• To create a contest and collect subscriptions will help you ViralSweep service. After the standard registration, you will be taken to a page where you can create a special form into which your visitors will enter their addresses.

• The service can be used for free (does not affect the quality) or change the tariff (if you intend to use it on a permanent basis).

• Do you want to teach your visitors something new? Then you should hold a webinar, the entrance to which can only be gained via email address. Usually the event is not attended by all the signers, but their addresses will still remain with you.

[4] Facebook:

• To replenish the subscriber base, you can use one more social network – Facebook. Thanks to the AdWeber plugin, you can add the registration form directly to your group.

• From time to time you can make a post in the group with a link to the bookmark with the application, and ask your fans to subscribe to an interesting newsletter.

• If you do not want to understand how to install the plugin, then clicking on the button in the group “Create a call to action”, you can make it so that when you click it, the user will be taken to the registration form on your website.

• To create your first advertising post you need to pay $ 1 (in test mode) or monthly subscription (from 24$ per month). However, you practically do not need to do anything – you will have ready-made layouts, you need to come up with what you will sell (a new book or the announcement of a new super article) and make descriptions in Russian.
  

• For those who know English at a basic level, it will not be difficult to understand the functionality and capabilities of the site, especially since you can also look at the detailed manual there.

[5] Affiliate:

• You can ask friends to announce your email newsletter. They can do this in their own mailing, in their articles on the blog, etc. In your mailing list, you can also ask readers to distribute it among friends and colleagues. Check These Awesome 61 List Building Strategies By moosend.com

Tools You Need to Start Building Your List:

The collection of the mailing list is a long process, which gives the result on an increasing basis. There is always a temptation to buy a ready database or change lists with partners, and not to collect your list from scratch. But this approach has disadvantages. First, it is not environmentally friendly or ethical. Secondly, if you send mail to someone else’s database, you can be blocked by mail services.

Nobody even talks about searching for email addresses manually. For this purpose there are specially created programs and tools that search and extract e-mail addresses from websites.

=> Addresses from websites:

• To start extracting addresses from specific websites (or from one site), you should have a list of their URLs. We did not add specific sites to this guide. Why? This is unreal for the simple reason that a large number of sites are constantly changing and it is almost impossible to cover at least 20% of their total number.

• Moreover, each user determines for himself which websites are important to him and which are not. Therefore, the most relevant sites for email marketing you should choose yourself.

• When working with the program, you only need to enter the site URL (or a list of several sites). After that, a tool like ePochta Extractor extracts e-mail addresses from them, and you get a target list of recipients for your mass mailing.

=> Addresses by keywords:

• This is just an ideal option for those who find it difficult to find and highlight a list of the most relevant sites. The search process is just as simple: the user enters one or more keywords, after which the program finds the best websites that match the specified search queries. And already from these target sites will be extracted e-mail addresses.

=> Addresses by keywords on a website:

• The maximum orientation of the search for the collection of the target list of addresses can be by filtering the information on a specific site for a keyword. It happens this way: you enter the URL of one site, and then you specify the keyword, which will be used to filter content. The software will select the information that corresponds to the key query and extract the e-mail address directly from it.

• Most likely, this is the best way to compile a targeted address list. The only limitation in this case is that you can specify the URL of only one site, but the number of keywords can consist of several.

=> Addresses from Facebook:

• The world social network, in which almost everyone is registered, is this not a great source of contacts? Thematic groups, personal profiles, company page. ePochta Extractor explores them all and generates a list of targeted email addresses.

• You can use a keyword to search on Facebook, or you can specify specific URLs for pages. The program will extract both email and other public information regarding its owner. And this, in turn, additional criteria for the segmentation of the mailing.

• Similarly, you can extract contact information from the social network using a special built-in plug-in. Pay special attention to additional plug-ins for searching addresses on Yelp, Craigslist and within your mailbox (Mailbox plug-in).
  

• You define the keyword, region, and category of search – the program works and finds the addresses.

• Moreover, you get not only a list of addresses, but also the names of their owners, because ePochta Extractor extracts names from site content in conjunction with e-mail addresses.
  

• And this means that the collected address databases are becoming more valuable and more qualitative, because they allow you to use the opportunity to personalize the marketing message in your letters.

Must-Have Elements When Building A List:

There are many additional elements and methods by which you can collect an impressive email list.

Here are 9 elements that will help to start building your list:

[1] Announcement of a newsletter:

• Tell the client what you will share with him. He should understand that your materials will be useful to him. It can be an archive of past mailings, main theses from the mailing, part of the text or something else.

[2] Videos:

• Users are willing to watch videos. People tend to trust the real person more than text. You can embed it in the subscription form or create a separate subscription page.

[3] Place and time:

• It is important to determine the moment when you already know that the visitor is interested in your content and will most likely subscribe to the newsletter.

• In Carrot Quest, you can collect all the data about the actions of the visitor and offer to subscribe to the newsletter just at the moment when the visitor is already “warm”. On average, due to these actions, the conversion to the subscription increases by 12%.

[4] Feedbacks:

• If you already have subscribers, collect their feedback. Not an unknown fact that the reviews have a fantastic impact on us. Quickly add them to your subscription page. On the Internet you can find many examples of video synthesis and reviews.

[5] Subscriber counter:

• Imagine, you see two forms of subscription. In the first case is has inscription- “we have a lot of readers”, in another – “Already 5672 happy readers”. We think that the choice is obvious. Figures are a strong argument.

[6] Note under the article:

• “If you enjoyed this article, then you are sure to be interested in our weekly newsletter for marketers from the tourism industry” and below the button to subscribe. The conversion will make 1-5%.

• When commenting on articles, customers can also leave their emails, do not forget about it.

[7] Online chat:

• Gather customer email addresses in your chat. In Carrot Quest, the chat is integrated with the rest of the channels and allows you to store data about the user in his individual card.

• We advocate a polite attitude to the user. Therefore, ask his email only after he has already written something: he asked a question, said “hello”, etc. It does not annoy the user to leave an email address to ask anything.
  

• At the same time, this increases the conversion to the left email. Because by asking a question, the user is more willing to leave an email. He understands that to receive an answer, he does not need to wait, all communication will go in parallel by email. The user chooses by himself, which is more convenient for him.

[8] Remarketing.

• You can offer to subscribe to the newsletter to those who have already left the website and can never return. Thanks to your content, you will return them and lead to the purchase. Retargeting has long gained momentum. Often this tool is used to advertise products and services, and you will offer useful material. This will necessarily “hook” your customers.

[9] Reference in the presentation:

• Do you often hold presentations? Be sure to insert a link or a QR code at the end of your presentation. Say that listeners will be able to receive your presentation and additional material. And you, of course, have to ask their email addresses.

Mistakes People Make When Building an Email List:

There are several ways to create a database: independently build a subscriber base, exchange your base with someone for money, buy a ready database of email addresses, or to download email address database somewhere.

Do you think that by buying an already prepared email list of email addresses, you will save your time and start earning money faster? If you sincerely believe in the power of purchased email list, then you may lead yourself to a disappointment – such a list most likely will not bring any good for your business.

=> Mistake 1:

• The sale of such an email database can be beneficial only to those who sell them and earn money on it.

=> Mistake 2:

• The first thing that a person from the purchased email address list will think when he receives a letter from you: “What the heck? I did not subscribe to it! “Most people from the purchased base have no idea about existence of your company.

• Therefore, the likelihood that the reader will immediately send your letter to the spam-list is close to 100%.

=> Mistake 3:

• You do not know the quality these lists. Who are these people? Are they interested in your products? They may not be your best buyers. Because you cannot be sure about the thematic focus of the entire audience.

=> Mistake 4:

• There is no such thing as a “good email list” for sales. Do not believe the one who claims the converse.

=> Mistake 5:

• If sales are important to you, and not just receiving the addresses of subscribers, be aware that it is almost impossible to sell anything to people from the purchased email address database. This chance is zero.

=> Mistake 6:

• You are not the only owner of the purchased list. Because you are not the first one who bought it or, perhaps, someone else is going to buy it. Most likely, one of your main competitors has already spammed on the email addresses that you now have.

=> Mistake 7:

• These contacts, most likely, have set themselves a complete blocking of Spam and will calmly send all your letters to the Spam folder. And this means that the probability that someday they will open your letters is almost zero.

Therefore, purchased lists of email addresses are absolutely useless. It will be much more effective to create a subscriber base, a blog, high-quality content, social networks, etc.

If there are 100,000 email addresses in your real email list, this does not mean that all of them are people of the same type, with the same desires, and the same probability of making a purchase. In it gets people with an absolutely different level of preparation and willingness to buy.

When you have several sources of traffic, depending on the lead magnet, they will be different. It can be partners, email mailing, RRS, Google Adwords, or social networks.

How to prevent your mail from getting spammed?

=> Before starting the campaign, send mail to several of your addresses in different mail services:

• Go to the mail and check if the message is in the “Spam” folder.

• Postal services are able to take into account user behavior.

• Gmail will put a letter from you to the Spam folder if a subscriber has already marked your email as spam in his mailbox.
  

• Mailchimp blocks an account in the service if the number of those who sent the message to the spam exceeded the critical level of 0.5% – you can unlock it only if you can confirm the legality of your database.

=> There are technical reasons for emails getting in spam:

• to get a message in the Inbox, the sender needs a reputation – the history of successful mailings.
  

• If emails leave the mail on a domain that does not work well (emails from such mail have already been sent to spam), the probability of getting back into spam is very high.
  

• Therefore, the first campaigns should not be massive – there is a risk of losing their reputation without even having time to earn it.

• If you are just starting to do newsletters, send letters first to a small list of addresses and look for the response of the recipients.

=> The regularity of letters is also important.

• Frequent letters are annoying and rare letters are no better.

• Start with one or two letters a month and carefully increase the frequency, if you have new reasons for mailings.

I hope You This Email Marketing Guide has covered all information you are searching for and If you want me to discuss More ideas, Comment Below And I will Try to include your opinions In My coming Guides.