How To Do Email Marketing

Many things have changed since the first marketing tool introduced in 1998. But, what hasn’t changed is the effectiveness of email marketing. It may look like an old form of digital communication but email still has some effectiveness over others.

Studies have shown that email marketing is outperforming other digital marketing channels including social media and paid searches. There are new methods introduced to connect with your current and potential customers like social media, and many others.

But, when you see that over 4 billion people use this medium; email is still the king in marketing channels. Furthermore, it has an ROI of $38 for every $1 dollar, a marketer spends. 

Before going into details of how to do email marketing;

What is Email Marketing?

Email marketing is an act of sending emails and promotional messages to current and potential customers of your business. The basic motive behind it is to increase brand awareness, generate sales, enhancing engagement and generating leads.

How Email Marketing Works?

When you are getting started with email marketing you need to keep in mind the following things;

1. Email contact list

For successful email marketing campaigns, you are required to have an email contact list. Most of the businesses have current list of contacts. This is a database of people who have expressed their intention in receiving your brand’s products or services marketing messages.

When you are going to make a list of email contacts from scratch, you can add online sign up form to your website, and encourage your customers to sign up. From this way you can build your list of email contacts.

You can also offer some benefits like discounts, coupons or any other offer to your customers in exchange of their emails. It is called lead magnet, also known as offer and it is one of the easiest way to build your email contact list.

Don’t go for purchasing email list. Rather go for original and genuine customers, even though they can be small in number but they will know your business.

2. An email marketing service provider

Email marketing service provider or email service provider (ESP) is a software. That helps you in managing your email contact list, designing and executing automated email marketing campaigns.

It will help you ;

• email marketing automation to deliver marketing messages to large amount of audience effectively
• identifying who is opening and engaging with your messages
• increasing engagements and improving conversion rates

3. Add contacts to your email marketing account

Once you have created your email marketing account and you have gathered all the contacts. It’s time to add those contacts into that account. You can upload the list from an existing spreadsheet or you can import it from other email accounts.

Create lists according to the customer base, in a separate list on the basis of information you have about them. In this way you can separately send emails to customers on the basis of their preference, and what they like.

4. Create welcome email

Welcome email will be the first message your customers will receive from your email marketing account. They will be the first impression of yours, and can turn your potential customers into buying customers and loyal customers.

This welcome message can have higher than expected open rate, that is why you have to make sure that this message is attractive and deliver value to the customers.

Make sure that your message starts with warm greetings. It should provide an overview of your offerings. How you provide value to your customers, and what they can expect from you in future.

5. Use email marketing template

Email marketing templates are another great tool to help you in your email marketing. When choosing template, look for eye catchy and attractive templates that will grab the attention of the customer. Make sure that your templates provide a clear message to your customer.

Make sure that your template looks good on both desktop and mobile view. You can add your business logo, pictures, business name, your contact information, social media accounts, and add attractive color scheme that matches your business signature colors. 

You can select your email template from Constant Contact.

6. Write convincing messages

This is one of the most important step in your whole process because this step can turn your message into a sale, or it will remain as a message only. That is why; it is one of the scariest things for a business owner to do.

You can divide your message into three parts;

• What are you offering?
• How it will provide value to your customer?
• What should they do now?

7. Prepare attractive subject lines

Most of the people read the subject first before opening the message. Your email subject line is the most important line in your email. It is a short line of almost 40 characters.

Make sure it provides a good impression and people are convinced to open the full message afterwards. You can make it appealing by providing a deadline, or by including a question.

8. Proofread before sending

When you are sending a marketing email for the first time, it is very easy to slip on very little details. Like you can make a spelling mistake, or forgot to put an important link. But once it is gone, you cannot undo it.

So make sure you proofread it, and you can send it your close people and staff members before sending it to your precious customers.

9. Send email

When you are done with everything, it is time to send your email. But at which time? It is very important factor to consider. Every customer is different, and the best time will be different from each other.

Based on the study, it is observed that response rates of 20 million emails, 11 AM ET on Tuesday is the best time and day to send your email to your customers.

You can schedule your email. For example, if you like that your customer must receive your email by 5th of every month and at 11 AM. You can set scheduled email sending in your marketing email account.

10. Track results

It doesn’t end here by pressing a send button. You should track and trace your results, like open rates, click rates, subscribe rates and much more. This will help you in making improvements over time.

You can check for information like who opened your email, who clicked the specific link, who subscribed and unsubscribed, and which information was more attractive to your customers.

Make sure to track your customers, this will help you in enhancing your service and overall customer experience.

Top 5 Email Marketing Tools

To run a successful email marketing campaign, you need some tools. Here are top 5 tools you should know;

1. Email Service Provider

Some of the best ESPs are;

• Constant Contact
• Sendinblue
• Pardot

2. Deliverability tools

Email deliverability refers to the ability of ESP to deliver mails to your customer’s inbox successfully. Here are some top deliverability tools;

• MailGenius
• GlockApps

3. Testing & Tracking

It is to test and track your campaign, like how they are performing, and what are their results. Here is some top tool for it;

• Litmus

Final Words

If you were ignoring email marketing, it is the time to re-evaluate your strategy. Email marketing has delivered a huge amount of return to the businesses and it is not that much complicated.

FAQ

1. What are the benefits of email marketing?

Email marketing helps you in reaching a mass level of customers, generate sales, and develop relationship with your customers.

2. What email marketing regulations are there?

CAN-SPAM and GDPR in Europe, require you to protect users’ privacy rights.