You have to meet the digital customer where they are at, and if they are not in social media or searching for information on the Internet, there’s a good chance that they are glancing at their emails.
If you think email marketing is dead, keep reading for our comprehensive guide to email marketing that will help you see its business value.
It is safe to say that email marketing has come a long way from the wild West days of spamming everyone everywhere. Now, there are plenty of guidelines for the ethical marketer to work with, both in email and other places.
Not sure where to start? This post by Amy Hall gives a quick introduction into the basics of email marketing. It is essentially a step-by-step how to. First, you need to get the right email provider. Not all email clients allow for bulk mailings, so you need one that does. Second, you need to build a list. This one has regulatory requirements that include getting the owner’s permission to send them marketing messages. Hall gives you some options on accomplishing both the gathering and permission parts of the task. Third, once you have a compliant email list, you’ll need to link it to your bulk email provider. After that, you’ll just need to write, design, and send your emails.
We marketers are all about statistics. After all, they help us to determine which tactics and techniques are working, as well as which ones aren’t.
Here, I talk about the statistical basis of using email marketing, which consistently show that email marketing works. For one thing, the ROI is huge. Just write a catchy email and distribute. For another, people really do buy things because of the emails they get. Since nearly everyone with internet access also has an email address, you can reach millions with ease. After that, I give some practical tips. For instance, you’ll want to send emails at times when people are most likely to open them. Make the email personalized, add great click through features, and use emojis for added oomph.
We marketers love our tools, and there’s a good reason for this. Sending individual emails takes a crazy amount of time, so methods of sending out bulk emails is almost as old as the medium itself. However, there are other things to think about, such as writing a compelling email and making it into something people want to read.
Here, I give you a list of 15 email marketing tools and talk about why they’re useful. First, nonprofits find Active Campaign to be a great all-round email client. AWeber does the same thing, but it also offers list-building tools. Starting out? Try Benchmark, which offers a free version for those with small email lists. Campaign Monitor and Constant Contact are intended to save you as much money and increase ROI through analytics and pruning your email list. Drip and Convert Kit are easy to use, but have fewer features. Get Response and Hubspot are both comprehensive solutions which integrate with other aspects of your marketing efforts. iContact and Keap (Infusionsoft) are both geared to the needs of small businesses. For something that’s light on features but still effective, try MailChimp or MailerLite, both of which have free plans. Finally, MailJet and Send In Blue both are geared towards large businesses that use email for both marketing and customer service.
Ready to jump in? Here is some practical advice for setting up your email campaigns.
As Amy Hall points out, your company Facebook page is a great place to collect emails for marketing campaigns. Be sure to get everyone to opt in using a compliant form. Then, she gives us a step by step guide on how to set these forms up and link them to our CRM or email client. Best of all, you can almost set them and forget them.
Both welcome emails and drip campaigns are highly effective ways of building customer relationships. In this post, Amy Hall tells us why each type of email is so important, and then teaches us how to write effective ones. Briefly, welcome emails tell customers that they are valued. And, drip emails perform a variety of functions, from keeping your brand on the forefront of the customer’s mind, to turning abandoned carts into finished sales.
One of the great things about email marketing is that it helps turn leads into customers, and customers into regular customers. But how do you generate new leads?
While public groups are generalized and open access, private Facebook groups can be used as true lead magnets for the right niche. One way to do this is by collecting emails as part of the sign-up process, and asking people to opt in to emails. Onboarding questions offer a similar opportunity but can be more targeted. Cover images can contain links that lead to landing pages, and finally, CTAs encourage next steps.
Email marketing is a more private way to reach out to people than social media is. And yet, they often go hand in hand. You can use social media to grow your email list, and vice versa.
Email is an excellent way to get more social media followers, and this post tells you how. For example, through email you can encourage customers to connect to your social media and include links in the text. Some email clients allow you to integrate social media followers into your mailing list through direct opt-ins. And of course, you can incentivize people to consume both email and social by making it fun to do so.
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