Email marketing as a business promotion strategy is becoming more and more popular. At the same time, its complexity is on the rise.
Sites like BestEmailMarketingSoftware.com are good for learning the pros and cons of specific tools, but this article will focus on some tips that will help you perform better on any email marketing platform.
As Content Marketing is beginning to lead the digital space, it would be an error not to exploit the phase of it that involves you creating and completely owning an asset – email list. You can then use engaging newsletter templates for improving your email marketing ROI.
We are going to be looking at some evergreen tips that have been proven to boost results in Email Marketing. Before we get into it, for reasons of easing our understanding, let’s quickly wrap up some reasons you need to be doing email marketing for your business.
Why you should be doing email marketing
Any business can benefit from understanding and properly implementing Email Marketing. It actually involves sending commercial messages to people using emails. Here are a few reasons I think you should get involved:
1. Your email list is your business asset:
Unlike social media profiles and following, your email list is your asset. Like your domain name and website, you have full ownership of your list. You decide what, when, and how to use it.
Your social media accounts are at the mercies of the platform owners who set the rules and decide how you function. Facebook, for instance, doesn’t need your consent to change their Fan Page rules. Some of these changes often lead to serious consequences on a business built around them.
2. A steady source of traffic
One of the reasons I build and maintain an email list is steady traffic I get each time I send out a message to it.
Neil Patel on his blog, shared with his audience an amazing email marketing experience where he quickly generated 13,544 visits to his blog with a single email sent out:
Of course, Neil has a massive list. But it’s just proof that maintaining an active list could be a good source of targeted traffic.
3. Source of quick sales
When I launched my ebook “Affiliate Marketing for Bloggers”, it took me less than 24 hours to bank a nice amount of dollars. That’s because I had a list of active subscribers who quickly responded to the massive discount I offered during the soft launch of the book.
With an active list, you can turn to it anytime for quick sales and profit. We’ve been told the money is in the list and that is still true.
4. A way to build a close relationship with your audience
One of the ways to keep in touch with your readers and build a stronger and long-lasting relationship is to get them to your email list.
This allows you to reach out to them with both commercial and personal messages. We will be discussing the types of messages to send out a bit later.
5. People still actively use their email address
Come to think of it:
How many times do you log into your email address per day?
According to DMA Insights, across home, work, and mobile, respondents check their inbox 20 times a day, and 99% check their personal inbox every day.
In a survey by Salescycle, 59% of respondents admitted that marketing emails influence their purchase decisions.
Many and more stats across the net point to the fact that Email Marketing still has a huge space on the table.
Isn’t it an error to kick it out?
4 Evergreen Email Marketing Tips To Promote Your Business
Now, let’s get into discussing something even more exciting. The reason I call these tips’ evergreen’ is because they will always be needed for as long as Email Marketing remains an active part of digital marketing. You can hire an email marketing consultant to get started the right way.
1. Choose the right email marketing service
One of the factors that drive success in email marketing is the platform or tools you use. If you use a broken email marketing service, there is no way you should expect improved results.
I started email marketing with AWeber, but because they lacked some required facilities, I made a wrong move to a service that almost completely ruined my activities. Because of inefficiency and inability to cope with challenges in the industry, the service folded up.
There are tons of free and premium email marketing services out there, with MailChimp being one of the most popular free and paid services.
I personally do not use MailChimp for the simple reason I find MailerLite a better option. The free option may look attractive, but after taking a closer look at Mailchimp pricing plans by my friend Aron, I think there is more to simply rushing behind the free plan.
2. Build your lists wisely
Your email list is your business asset. I believe a huge amount of attention must be attached to building it.
You must be careful about who submits his email address to your list and how he does it. It’s more important to have a small targeted list than to have a large list of random subscribers.
Here are a few points to help you careful build a responsive email list:
#1. Give your readers reasons to subscribe
There are many ways to lure your readers into subscribing to your list. Commonly, you are going to find subscription forms on many of the websites you visit. But personally, I do not think it’s more about these forms.
I agree where you place the form on your site is important:
- Sidebar
- Within Content
- Below content
- Popup
- Exit intent
- Etc
Sometimes, you may need a professional plugin to help with these lead capture forms. Take a look at Rachel’s post on list building plugins for WordPress bloggers.
But what makes the forms more effective is the reason you give your subscribers to submit their addresses.
Generally, you need bait. Something locked behind the signup form, that should only be accessed upon confirmation of signup action.
The problem with this approach is that some readers will sign up just to access the free gifts. Once they get it, they are gone.
Some marketers simply ask their readers to sign up to receive post updates without promising any free gift. This approach leads to a slow but sure list building action.
Three other ways marketers get subscribers to their lists:
- Through the comment form on their blogs
- Through the contact form on the website
- From the checkout forms on their eCommerce websites
- From the signup forms on membership sites
Any of these methods will certainly need the reader’s action by submitting the form. However, you must request their consent to add them to your list.
A few months ago, I contacted a renowned marketer and blogger (name not mentioned) through a form on his contact page. Without my consent, he captured my personal email into his marketing list. The next thing was a series of promotions from him. Of course, that got me really pissed off, and it’s something I would not recommend.
#2. Enable the double opt-in option
One of the ways to build a list of real people is by enabling double opt-in. This allows any email that is submitted through the signup form to receive and click a validity tracking link sent by the email service
If that link is not clicked within a certain active period, it will be assumed that the address is invalid.
Enabling double opt-in will automatically filter out invalid and fake addresses from your list of active subscribers. I know some marketers have their reasons to stand against this point. But I believe the advantages of having a sizable (or even tiny) list of real people are far more than an almighty list of fake and invalid addresses. Some marketers also choose to use an email verification API alongside double opt-in for extra security, ensuring even higher list quality by catching any potential issues at the point of capture.
#3. Don’t use email scrapers.
One thing that’s getting popular in the Email Marketing industry is the use of software to collect keyword-based addresses from web pages into a list randomly.
While this is a huge spam approach, it can completely ruin your business by way of these subscribers blacklisting and marketing your campaigns as spam. Noncompliant email campaigns can be also the cause of it going to spam. This will lead to important negative consequences on your domain and overall online business.
3. Segment your list
List segmentation is a conversion boosting list email marketing activity. Segmentation is the simple act of cutting a large list into different segments based on set criteria.
I have a blog that cuts across a wide variety of topics, from blogging, SEO, Email Marketing, Social Media, Affiliate Marketing to Cryptocurrency. These categories have different lists that are further broken into segments:
- Geographical location
- Purchase history
- Interests
- Etc
This allows me to deliver more relevant materials to different segments thereby increasing my lists’ Open and Click-Through rates. Moreover, I can customize email copy and write personalized subject lines for each group.
4. Don’t burn or fatigue your list
Once readers sign up to your list, they expect to get what you promised. In order to be relevant and maintain an active and responsive list, one of the things to do is segmentation.
But you need to avoid some other actions to keep your list healthy and stop list fatigue from happening:
- Don’t send out irrelevant content
- Avoid emailing your list too frequently
- Do not keep your list too idle for a very long time
- Make sure the links in your messages don’t send your subscribers to harmful pages
- Ovoid being overly promotional
- Etc
Make sure your list members are excited about being around. Write professional emails and sometimes, be informal and friendly.
One of the things that have worked for me is special offers for my subscribers. Besides the general promotions that everyone has access to, I often come up with unique offers only available to my subscribers. This is an extra advantage that goes a long way to make them stick around for more.
Gaetano DiNardi from Nextiva Cloud Phone System says special offers work like a charm to keep their subscribers (both big and small) glued to his VoIP service.
Making this a habit, in my opinion, will keep your subscribers always expecting and far from hitting the unsubscribe button.
Conclusion
Email Marketing is here to stay because it’s a quick and easy way to get straight to someone without hurting their privacy. But sticking to its ethics is a way to guarantee success in the business.
While there are enticing shortcuts to jump over some necessary processes, you have to know that it ends up with you having to deal with people who have the power to decide whether or not to remain your subscribers.
Get them on the list the right way and treat them properly.