When trying to run a business email marketing is one strategy you should definitely use because this strategy will help your company increase your brand awareness and sales. For one it's a very personal approach, you land right into your clients inbox. It will give you the opportunity to share valuable content right on your clients doorstep at a minor cost.
Many well known marketers such as Neil Patel say that email marketing continually outperforms other marketing strategies such as social media. Why do you think ecommerce sites like Amazon send you customized offers on a regular basis? Because they have proofed to work.
There have been studies that proved that email marketing can have a ROI of 4,300% which makes it crucial for your revenue generation.
Driving traffic to your website to build your email list
Of course before you can even start to implement this marketing strategy you first have to build your own mailing list. There are many ways you can do this so let's go over the things you need to do to create your own valuable email marketing database.
The first thing you need is lots of traffic to your website
- Make your website findable in search engines
- Promote your posts on social media
- Make the user experience on your website easy to navigate with a clear layout
- And of course make sure your on- and of page SEO is up to Google standards
There are a lot more things you can do to attract a huge amount of traffic but we will not go into this in detail in this post
Opt-in form
To engage in email marketing the first thing you have to do is place an opt-in form on your website in the header or sidebar that stands out so if they decide to sign up it will be an easy process. Your optin form is the first thing that should catch their eye when they land on your website. Try and keep the form in the same place all over your website so your visitors don't have to look for it but instantly now where it is.
I recommend you also create a popup window with your opt-in form that appears after a certain amount of time or when they intent to leave your website in which you simply ask your visitors to sign up .This a proven method to increase the conversion rate of your signups.
If you want to convert your visitors into subscribers it is vital to create SEO optimized valuable content for your visitors, but please do not stuff your pages full of keywords. The articles you post must be of high quality and definitely not promotional but informative and helpful to your readers. Write for your customer, not for your company. This will make them come back to your website and more inclined to sign up for your newsletter which is the ultimate goal if you want to use email marketing as a strategy to increase your sales
Email Conversion
Since everybody these days is offering newsletters it's not that easy anymore to persuade people to sign up. Simply posting "enter your email for updates" isn't going to cut it anymore. Visitors ask themselves "what's in it for me" before they will even consider signing up. That's why use should do something extra such as give away freebies like an e-book, whitepaper, free download or a free demo.
Email Segmentation
You can also segment your lists because not every subscriber might be interested in the same thing. To get better results in email opens and clicks from your list it is better to have targeted lists to certain segments of customers. With segmented lists the open rate is about 39% higher and the click thru rate is about 65% higher according to a study by Hubspot.
Ideas for segmented lists can be
- · Downloadable lists and guides
- · Breaking news and updates
- · The option for HTML or plain text
- · Weekly or monthly emails based on customer preferences
Newsletter
When people sign up for your newsletter always send a welcome email in which you explain the content that they can expect from you and in what timeframe. This way you start building a relationship right away. Otherwise they might unsubscribe before you had the change to send them your first newsletter. This process can be automated using autoresponder software such as Aweber.
After the welcome email keep sending them follow up newsletters on a regular base but not too frequently so you don't bombard them but keep their interest. According to certain studies the open rate of an email series is 80% higher than from a single email campaign.
The most compelling newsletters are those that do a great job of mixing messages and updates. Once in a while you can pitch new offers but don't overdo it, 9 out of 10 newsletters should be valuable to your readers and the 10th newsletter is one for you to cash in on your efforts. If your call to action is strong and your follow up is consistent then you can count on a positive campaign.
Every now and then you can clean up your list by checking in with your subscribers if they still want to receive your newsletters. People who don't respond can be removed from the list at that time.
Email marketing Automation
This whole process can be automated using autoresponders or email marketing software. There are many good autoresponders out there but we recommend using Aweber as this software will give you all the tools necessary to build your mailing list.
Analytics
Email analytics is also an important aspect of email marketing .You should check your statistics on a regular basis. The 3 most important statistics are open rate, click through rate(CTR) and unsubscribes. If your open rate is low it means that people delete your newsletter upon receipt. This means you have to work harder on value. When your CTR is low this means your message is not targeted enough or simply not getting through, so you should focus on your copy. When your unsubscription rate is high in relation to your opt-in rate this means you are not writing good copy and you have some serious work to do.
Your email analytics are critical in you paying attention, they will give you perfect clues if you are doing a good job or things are going wrong, so pay attention on a regular basis to your email statistics.
Are you ready to build your email list or if you already did ? How did email marketing serve you best and what practices help keep your numbers growing? Please share in comments or click here to sign up for your email marketing software to get you started.
Image courtesy of Stuart Miles, Sheelamohan and ddpavumba at FreeDigitalPhotos.net
