How to Create Your First Email Marketing Campaign

Email marketing is a marketing strategy that many business owners gravitate towards on account that the practice is straightforward, inexpensive and extremely effective if successful. If you are looking to refine your overall marketing strategy, sometimes it is time to create an Email Marketing Campaign. Here's how you can begin creating and launching your very first Campaign:

Objective

Begin by determining the objective of your email marketing campaign- What purpose will the send email convey? Most campaigns contain emails that either educate their user base, announce events, or promote products and services. Decide on a call to action you want the email readers to perform and what counts as measurable success metrics for your campaign. It is also imperative to know your email contact lists and which lists of people you want the email to be sent to.

Service Providers

When it comes to creating an email marketing campaign, you will often be required to send bulk emails and track them. Email platforms are ill equipped for that, so it is highly recommended that you consider choosing and using email marketing service providers like Mail Chimp. Mail Chimp allows you to create and manage email databases, as well as furnishes you with campaign management services and free to use customizable email templates, thereby simplifying your process even further. Make sure to import the email addresses of your existing and potential customers and set up email lists within Mail Chimp.

Campaign Creation & Tracking

Using Mail Chimp, create and name your email marketing campaign with something concise that you can identify with no risk of confusing it with other subsequent email marketing campaigns. One good recommendation would be to name your campaign with the purpose, followed by the date. After which, set up tracking measures. You will typically be able to view them through the Reports Overview page.

Email Creation

After the campaign is created and named, you will then be required to create the email that is to be sent to existing or potential customers. Email marketing platforms like Mail Chimp usually assays by providing customizable templates that users can make configurations to. Include the logo, address and contact details of your corporation with links to social sites and your business website. Come up with strong subject lines to further compel readers into opening your emails, include attractive headlines, and advantage / feature driven content. The content of your email should be engaging but short, with a heavy focus on either features or benefits that are advantageous to email readers. In addition, the email should also contain a good text to image ratio, balancing out the whole visual aspect.

Schedule

Upon completion, your campaign is now ready to send and test out. Schedule your emails and test out the performance of your emails based on the open and click rates. Experiment with different timings and days to see if the effectiveness increases. This will allow you to essentially find out the optimal timing for your emails to be received- the same timing can be used for other email marketing campaigns subsequently. Determine a specific length of time for your email marketing campaign before you take a look at the performance results.

Assess

Mail Chimp allows users to track both open rates as well as click rates. Take a look at how often your emails are opened, identify which links are clicked on the most and analyzes other relevant data that can be of use to your next marketing strategy. This enables you to make changes for re-targeting and further improve results.

If you have managed to complete all the above mentioned steps, you would have successfully created your very first email marketing campaign!

Expert Guide to Setting Up Your First Email Marketing Campaign

Email proves an extremely efficient marketing channel when done well. It’s very affordable and I believe that anyone can create successful campaigns when equipped with the right advice, which is why it’s ideal for small business owners or solo-preuneurs.

Email gives you a chance to really engage with your audience, nurture your leads and ultimately turn them into customers. You can also automate all your campaigns, which means you won’t need to spend hours each day working on them, giving you more time to devote to other areas of your business.

With over ten years’ marketing experience under my belt, I’ve put together a simple step-by-step guide to setting up your first campaign.

Step 1. Build your list

Of course email is no good unless you have a group of people who have given their permission for you to contact them. So you’ll need to start thinking about building a list.

By permission, I mean, they’ve willingly given you their email address. Just asking customers to enter their email address is often not enough to convince them to do so – they want to know ‘what’s in it for me?’ so you need to provide what’s called a value exchange (sometimes referred to as a lead magnet) such as a discount code, free pdf download, eBook or email series.

Also, tell them the kind of things that you will send them – for example, that as subscribers they’ll be the first to hear about our new offers / ranges / releases.

In addition, emailing people who have not asked to be contacted are much less likely to turn into customers.

Step 2. Choose an email service provider (ESP)

Put simply, an ESP enables you to send out email marketing campaigns to a list of prospects. Most ESPs also provide a broad range of related services including the ability for you to create and build your subscriber list, customise your email templates, add personalisation and dynamic content (content that’s tailored to a particular audience), reporting and analysis.

To get you started, here are a small selection of ESPs that you might want to consider:

Constant Contact

MailChimp

Campaign Monitor

When choosing what provider is right for you, we recommend you start by thinking about how you plan to use email in your business, and what features you think that you will need to fulfil this.

If you’re just starting out you don’t need to overcomplicate things, so we’ve put together a handy check-list of the main things you should look for:

  • Does the provider have a range of eye-catching templates to choose from? Plus, these days most people open emails on a mobile device so check that their templates are mobile friendly, ensuring that your emails will look awesome no matter what device they are viewed on.
  • The ability to schedule your campaigns.
  • Easy to understand tracking and reporting – you’ll want to monitor how your emails are performing so make sure that your ESP offers an easy to navigate reporting dashboard so that you can quickly check your opens, clicks, bounces and unsubscribes.
  • Support – There will be times when, no matter how easy their platform is to use, you will need a little help. Check that your ESP has a support team that you can contact day or night.
  • Budget – Once you’ve shortlisted a few ESPs based on the points above, you’ll now want to dig into their fees as you will need to ensure that the service fits into your budget. A lot of the providers will offer monthly plans based on the number of customers on your list.
  • Delivery – It’s no good spending precious time creating your campaigns only to find that they don’t end up in the customer’s inbox! Check that your chosen ESP has delivery rates of above 98%.

3. Create your email!

This is the exciting part where you get to be creative. And if you’re not creative – don’t worry, it’s not an essential prerequisite for creating effective campaigns!

Here are a few best-practice tips that will help ensure your email doesn’t end up in the trash!

  • What’s the objective? You firstly need to consider the objective(s) of the campaign – what is the email trying to achieve? And be specific. Also, think carefully about who you are talking to. Be sure to keep your customer front of mind when putting your email together and make sure that the content is benefits driven – the reader will want to know within seconds what is in it for them.
  • Copy: Try and keep the copy concise and make use of bullet points to break it up a little. Think about what you want the recipient to do – what action you want them to take. Tip: Make it really obvious! Which leads on to…
  • Call to action: Make the call to action stand out so it’s impossible to miss. A coloured button with text on that tells them exactly what to do (ie: Get a quote / Register here / Get your free eBook) should do the trick here. Remember, you can use more than one, in fact two to three buttons is recommended. But you can always test this in future.
  • Subject line: Don’t neglect the subject line! A lot of people treat the subject line as an after-thought, but it is a vital consideration as it is the thing that gets your email opened in the first place! Make it benefits lead and not too long. It should make your recipient feel like they’re going to miss out if they don’t open the email to see what’s inside – they just can’t help themselves, they need to open your email!
  • Images: Can really bring your email to life and give it a polished and professional feel – but don’t overuse them! Why? Although the email will look fantastic when images are enabled, a lot of email clients won’t automatically enable images, or they won’t load if there is a poor internet connection, so the customer could just see lots of blank boxes and your message will be lost. A pro tip is to append “alt tag” descriptions to your images so that even if the images are not displayed a text alternative will be shown to fill in the blank. For example, if you’re showing an image of a product, pop the product name in as the alt tag.
  • Logo: Make sure that your logo is at the top of the email, so that the customer instantly recognises who it’s from, which means they are more likely to want to know what you’ve got to say.
  • Personalisation: At the very least you should be including the person’s name in the email. You can also try including it in the subject line too (to find out the impact on your open rates you can always test this – ie send 50% out with no name in the subject line and 50% with the name and see which one performs better).
  • Footer: You should always add a valid contact address at the end of your emails, usually in a ‘footer’ area, not in the main body of the email.
  • Unsubscribe: You must give customers a chance to opt out of receiving further communications from you in every communication you send – and you need to act on it too. It’s always worth familiarising yourself with the data protection laws that apply in your country. In the UK, you need to comply with the Data Protection Act and in addition, for electronic communications including email, the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations. For more information on PECR visit: https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/guide-to-pecr/what-are-pecr/
  • Proof read: Or, the boring bit! Once you’ve written your email, go through it a few times and check for spelling mistakes, typos and grammatical errors. It can be helpful to show it to someone else too, as they’ll often spot things that you missed.
  • SEND! Once you’re happy with it, you can select who you want to send it to (or hit up your entire list) and press send!

Step 4. Measure success

After all that hard work, did anyone actually read your email?

When analysing your campaign, re-visit the original objectives of the campaign in order to determine what metrics you are going to use to gauge performance. Typically you’ll always be interested in open rates and click throughs (how many people clicked the call to action), but you may also want to establish what the customer did once they’d clicked through – the onward journey. For example, if you were offering a free download of an eBook – how many clicks turned into successful downloads, if you were trying to get them to buy something – how many sales did you get off the back of that particular email campaign? You get the picture.

And finally…

Step 5: Test and Learn

As you get more confident and experienced in email as a marketing tool, you can then start to think about testing various elements such as subject lines, time of day, day of week, offer types (ie a percentage off vs a £ discount), length of email (short v long copy), images… The list goes on! Even a small increase in your open rates can have a powerful knock on impact on the success of your campaigns.

I hope you’ve found this guide useful and I wish you the best of luck with your first campaign!

Best Email Marketing Software – Engage More Customers

In the age of the modern company, email marketing is vital to results. Along with social networking advertising, a powerful email campaign may draw customers to your business and build connections with coworkers and clients. However, it’s not as easy as shooting off several messages into a subscriber list. Not only would you need to draw in readers with an attractive message, however, you have to keep them curious therefore that they do not click on the dreaded “unsubscribe” button. A quality email advertising service will offer you the templates and tools that you want to not only create attractive emails but to easily manage your subscriber list and track your own progress.

MailGet Bolt

MailGet Bolt can be an emphatic email marketing assistance, with which you can send bulk emails to all of your prospective users, in just one click and then change your promotion strategy by linking with them online.

It’s a lifesaver for several of the non-tech savvy people as it removes lengthy procedure for linking SMTP and later causes confusion. Since here in MailGet Bolt, there’s no necessity to connect any SMTP that means you can simply verify your email and begin sending emails to mass audience fast.

Constant Contact

Constant Contact’s email marketing service will simplify and streamline your business. It provides multiple choices for assessing your email marketing campaigns and planning ahead so you can concentrate on running your company. You have hundreds of templates to customize depending upon your preferred market and special objectives. You can even schedule emails in front of time based on special contact information.

Benchmark

Benchmark gets you started with a totally free plan that manages up to 2,000 subscribers. If you are a small company just starting out, then this could be just what you want. It sets you up with a customized signup form on your website so you are able to lure your subscribers. You do not need to provide a bank card to begin and may wait patiently to upgrade whenever your subscriber list surpasses 2,000. Benchmark provides mobile-friendly features, therefore, your emails are easily read anywhere. You will also get regular updates regarding how many folks are opening and reading your emails.

iContact

iContact offers two free trial options with a variety of features. You can try standard iContact or iContact Pro with no credit card. iContact offers personalized customer support which can help you make a customized email effort to best reach your target audience. iContact lets you set email marketing goals and reach them effortlessly. You may receive comprehensive reports concerning the results of your advertising and marketing campaigns and may track opens, clicks, and landing page views all in one spot. You can even integrate present campaigns and that means you are able to track everything.

Use This Simple Email Marketing Tool In 2018

Years ago I wrote emails for a very high-ticket item. It was a six-month leadership-development program.

How did I vary my thoughts from selling a single item to this classroom face-to-face ten subject course? Less than you might think. I had to start with five thoughts.

  1. I had to explain how this program was different and better than all others on the market. So I explained the process participants undertake to complete a meaningful-workplace project during the training.
  2. I had to overcome objections. So explained how this program delivers real results and not just hand participants a piece of paper.
  3. I had to remember ‘people buy’ – ‘not businesses’ so I focussed on human emotional needs.
  4. I had to remember there would be many decision makers during the buying cycle so this was included in my emails.
  5. I had to remember decisions on expensive purchases take a long time so I had a series of emails and strategies designed to provide buyers with details to help them decide to buy.

So yes, high-ticket items are indeed different.

But Sales is Sales.

And the concept of my three-step sales cycle still works regardless of the item.

Create the Interest, Overcome Objections, Close The Sale.

Plus with a high-ticket item you will have different decision makers who have different emotional and motivational needs.

The higher the price the harder it is to normally get a quick sale or at least more steps are required.

Here are a few thoughts to bear in mind.

  • Long copy almost every time beats short copy.
  • The more you say the more chance you have of a sale.
  • Of course, you cannot bore your prospect into a sale so follow proven formulas.

Need help to get started in 2018?

Use this simple email marketing tool to help you decide what you wish to say in your emails. It will help you list your emails into a logical sequence.

This diagram serves two purposes:

  1. It helps you build your case without sending out mindless emails.
  2. It allows you to hit different emotions and trigger points of prospects.

If you have read this far I suppose you are saying to yourself, “Yeah it’s easy for you!”

And you would be right as I have spent over ten years mastering my skills in email marketing.

But this doesn’t mean you can’t give it a go.

So here are a few more tips.

Don’t ignore old prospects – especially if the item you offered was expensive. Big chance they have not done anything yet and the opportunity is still there. Generally, old prospects are more interested in what you have to say rather than a brand new prospect.

Likewise, customers (people who have bought from you before) are generally easier to sell to again so don’t ignore them either.

Believe in Yourself

Kurt

Business Coach, Mentor, Trainer & Author

Email Marketing – Avoid Getting Left in the Spam Folder

With all the different kinds of ways you can market your product or service, one of the best ways to do this is through good old fashioned email. It’s a great way to market without spending a ton of money, and keep track of what audience you are targeting towards. But more often than not, most emails are simply waved passed and ignored, ending up in the ever-increasing void that is the internet. With these tips, you’ll find that your customer count will get larger and you will have a much larger subscriber count.

1. Make it easy to subscribe to emails – It may seem tedious, but it pays to have a subscriber form everywhere you possibly can. If you run a blog, post it there. If you run a website, have it at the end of every possible page. If you run social media groups, have referral and signup links everywhere you can. People won’t subscribe if you don’t have an ease of access, and if it’s difficult to sign up, then its obvious that your business won’t be booming with customers.

2. Make easy to unsubscribe – If you make it easy to subscribe, then unsubscribing should be just as easy for clients. If clients decide that they no longer want your services, then don’t make it difficult for them to opt out. It may feel like you’re cutting the conversation short, but if your e-mails are reported as spam simply because a client couldn’t unsubscribe, then it will just spell more issues in the future for your business.

3. Make sure subscribers know what to expect – Whether you run a blog or a business, it is always important for your subscribers to know exactly what to expect. When you gain a subscriber, it may pay off to send a welcome email. This makes sure that they’re aware of what they’re getting themselves into. If you specifically market baby items, then make that clear when people sign up. Customers won’t subscribe if they are constantly sent the same stuff over and over again, so be sure to mix it up now and then, but keep it so that your customers know what they’re signing up for.

4. Make it mobile friendly – This tip should be a given. Statistics show that over 60 percent of emails are dealt with through handheld devices, including smartphones and tablets. If your emails are friendly to these devices, then your customer base has already become much bigger than you anticipated. If your emails aren’t optimized for these kinds of devices, then odds are that you’re going to miss out on a massive number of subscribers, lowering your client count by margins.

5. Encourage customers to reply – Largely unlike old fashioned paper mail, email provides a large opportunity to open a world of meaningful conversations between both parties. This can lead to gaining one more valuable subscriber, and in some cases, business partners. Simply loading up your emails with information and sending them out can sometimes end up being a bit of a bore, so make your emails fun and entertaining to read, most likely securing another person to add to your client list to market toward.

16 Simple Ways to Grow Your Email List for Email Marketing

What is Email Marketing?

Email marketing has become an essential tool for every online business. Email marketing is a form of direct marketing that uses electronic mail to promote commercial or fundraising messages to an audience. However, the term is used to refer;

• Sending emails with the purpose of making the relationship of a merchant with its current or previous customers to encourage customer loyalty and repeat business.
• Sending emails with the purpose of acquiring new customers to purchase something immediately.
• Adding advertisements, offers and coupon codes to the previous customers to utilize something immediately.

If you have your customer's email database, then you can use email marketing to grow your business. As a marketer, it's your job to make sure the database you have is updated with fresh contacts. If you are not working on building your email list already, then stick with this article till the end because I'm going to share 16 ways to grow your email list.

1. Create Awesome Content:

The 1st thing is why people subscribe to your newsletter? If you write something new & unique that people find it by your side only then they will stay connected to you otherwise they will unsubscribe your email subscription or newsletter. Your content plays a major role here so, it should fresh and unique.

2. Share Your Emails:

You can encourage your current subscribers to share or forward your emails by including social media buttons and email to a friend button in your emails. If some of your subscriber share or forward your email to their friends or family then you have chances to get new subscribers.

3. Free Giveaway:

You can run an online contest or free giveaways for your readers on social media and on email. Create an online form and add emails and personal details columns in it. So, any of your readers who want to participate in the contest, have to give you their email.

4. Create an Engaging Opt-In Message:

If you have an email list and you have some of the clients who do not get involved with your business then you can create an engaging opt-in message and send them. If they respond you back them keep them in your email list otherwise remove all of your current email list. So, these activities may help you to get to get up-to-date with your older clients.

5. Offer Free Content:

If you are running a blog or if you are a web developer then create eBook or demo version software and give your readers a free exchange of their email. You can insert email subscription box and if they provide their email only then they will download that eBook or demo version software. So, you will get email and if they share your eBook with their friends or family then your visitors may increase.

6. Use Facebook Page for Promotion:

Facebook is the major platform for online marketing & make money online. You can make money from Facebook page and you should use your Facebook page to promote your offers. You can post your offers on your timeline of your Facebook page. And do not forget to add a call to action button or email sign-up form on your website. So, if there any new product launch or service, you can share it on your Facebook page and add your website link so your people can easily check your website. So, you should use the Facebook page for promotion & also build an email list.

7. Add Call-to-Action Button on your Facebook Page:

You should add a call-to-action button on your Facebook page. So, anyone can easily sign up or subscribe your newsletter.

8. Promote Offers on LinkedIn:

Promote your subscription link on a different company page and discussion groups. You should share your links on different LinkedIn groups. So, if they like your products or services then maybe they contact you or they share their email to you. You should start playing around LinkedIn.

9. Promote Offers on Pinterest:

You should create a board for your offers, coupon codes, special discount and festive offers. So, you can easily pin banners and offers on it. So, people can easily find your board and you may generate some leads and grow your email list from there.

10. Add Cards or Annotations on YouTube Videos:

You should start making videos and publish it on YouTube because YouTube is the 2nd largest search engine. So, people may notice you from videos. You can also add offers and email sign-up cards & annotations on your videos. While watching your videos people notice this annotations and cards. You can also add offers and email sign up the link in the description box. So, YouTube can help you grow your email list.

11. Promote Offers on Google+:

You should make a brand page on Google+ because sometimes Google+ post rankings on search results [only if you are logged in to your browser]. So, you have to create your brand page on Google+. Post your offers and email sign-up links on Google+. You can also add links on About section on your Google+ profile.

12. Put Your Offers Banners on Your Website:

You have to create offer banners and put it into your homepage and other pages like About Us and Contact Us. So, if anyone misses the email sign up a pop-up then they can easily get back to your offer. So, create some offer banners or call-to-action & email sign up on your homepage, blog.

13. Add a Call-to-Action on Guest Post Content:

While writing for Guest Post you have to add link and call-to-action in your content. And add an email sign-up link in Author Bio. So, people can reach you easily.

14. Run a Promotion on a Partner Website:

You can promote your email newsletter or any offers on partner website which is very helpful and great way to get new customers and readers. Like if you find any website which has the same niche as yours and they have daily readers. So, if you put a banner or email subscription link on their website so, people may notice your banner or link and then sign up your newsletter. So, in this way you can build your email list by promoting on another website.

15. Arrange an Online Webinar:

You can host an online webinar and put email registration to join the online webinar. So, people can register to your webinar and you will get emails.

16. Add QR Code:

You should create your own QR code of email subscription or free eBooks. So, people can directly scan QR code and download eBooks or subscribe your email newsletter. So, it's a unique way to get emails from your readers.

Email Marketing – Can It Really Be Helpful for Your Business?

You must be quite familiar with the term email marketing, but have you ever got into the depth of this topic? Very few might know the actual meaning of it. So, to get into further details it is important to know what exactly email marketing is. Basically, this strategy is adopted to promote products and services of any business.

Email marketing is a part of internet marketing. The term itself explains what it does. Through email, it is possible to develop relationship with clients and customers depending on which segment your business target.

What benefits do you get?

Why to use email marketing as your promotional tool? The answer is simple because of low cost incurred and ease of use. It’s a fact that email is an inexpensive mode of advertisement and ensures that your company gain visibility among customers.

It can easily be set up and also perform a campaign. For small businesses, it has proved to be an effective strategy. Newsletters can also be sent to customers who have subscribed on the websites for newsletters. The potential customers can receive news updates and upcoming events of company.

But, what makes an email really effective…

We are all familiar with email newsletters that finally go into spam and mostly annoy the receiver. So, this signifies that those emails are a complete failure!

What actually works is when you exchange value with customers. It is important to share value information in concise way so that readers can get to know your intentions while not wasting much of their time. Building up faith among customers should be sole objective of any business and this would finally restrain you from getting into spam list.

So what are the key ingredients for any good email? But, again it all depends on what kind of relationship you possess with the audience. An effective subject line would brief your content. The concise and compact body of email and niche specific content that would actually speak in favor of prospect needs.

Know the different types of emails

1. Marketing emails: This may either contain informational or promotional messages and is sent to listed members who can be your prospect customers, reporters, vendors etc. Though there is a chance of creating different types of content, but usually newsletters, press release, announcements are included in mails.

2. Operational emails: Such emails do come up with important information that speaks about your business. This may include if the business would be closed on holidays or for any planned maintenance. Though this does not create any direct impact on sales, but it is important to adopt some best practices in business so that you can always be in good relation with audiences.

3. Transactional emails: It is an automated mail and gets triggered based on customer’s activity. Few examples of such emails are order tracking, registration confirmation etc. Sending such emails may develop relationship with customers and you can engage them as well in your business. Generally operational emails are informative in class and are crafted to reflect the positive angle of a business.

The intense competition experienced by every entrepreneur can easily be handled through email marketing. The powerful subject line can deliver a strong message to recipient. To arouse curiosity among customers, this is said to be an effective strategy.

How to Do Bulk Email Marketing

Bulk email is a type of email that you send to several people at a time but here is what happens when you send bulk emails.-

1. Risk of being spammed

2. Sounds like a promotional email

3. Not relevant to most of the people

4. Risk of un-subscriptions

5. Time consuming

So, you want a solution to overcome these problems?

Is bulk email marketing dead?

You may have heard that bulk email marketing is dead, but is it true?

Well no, but yes if you are doing it in a wrong way then it’s surely dead and not only bulk email marketing if you are following the old practices even email marketing itself is dead.

The world is evolving and things in it will be considered as dead if they are not evolving.

Consider iPhone as bulk email marketing and remember when apple introduce iPhone 4 people were crazy about it right?… but what about now?… they prefer latest versions on previous versions.

Imagine if apple wouldn’t introduce later versions then we must be saying iPhone is dead, won’t we?.

So is the case with bulk email marketing it’s not dead at all but the old methods of bulk email marketing are dead… So stop following the old methods and practice the new proven methods.-

Let’s learn about the right methods and practices of bulk email marketing–

1. Choosing the right bulk email service provider

Email service provider is hot topic these days because service providers are serving their facilities to millions and millions of businesses, bulk email tools are one of the facility those service providers offer and there are many more just as automation tools, drag and drop email creators, plenty of premade templates, analytics and many more, after all they are email service providers which means they promise you providing all the email marketing facilities, and some of the softwares actually do provide those facilities, Moreover service providers are easy to learn and they save time in a huge amount.

But whenever we think of email service providers, a question pops up about which service provider is worth choosing, there is a huge amount of email service providers but honestly on a serious node only a few are worth looking while others have lots of draw backs and limitation,you can try some email service provider with high ratings.

2. Building targeted mailing lists

Bulk email service providers will do almost everything for you but there are certain thing you will need to do by yourself and list building is one of them

The reason of building mailing lists is to collect emails of those people who are actually interested in what you sell and they are always active on the internet

There are plenty of ways you can collect you email lists but we are going to mention some of the effective methods.

A. Offer the button to join your own mail list

Place a form on your webpage asking the users subscribing your mailing lists, place some information prompt fields i.e. Email address, name, country/city/state and criteria of interests… A simple form asking email address is recommendable because it doesn’t need to much efforts to fill in and subscribe.

B. Facebook fan page

Facebook fan page is another way of getting mailing lists, simply ask the users like your Facebook page and there on fan page you can place a subscribe CTA for subscription, there is a huge amount of people using Facebook everyday and they love Facebook interaction if your company is active on Facebook giving lots of offers to the fans then bring those fans into real business.

C. Paid ads

Another effective way of getting mailing lists or making your brand famous is using paid ads, Google AdWords are the most famous and Facebook also offers an advertisement plans and they call it Facebook business.

D. Buying mailing lists

This is the least recommended because it has some drawback like spam email lists and non suitable mailing lists, but it also works for some users if it matches with their business.

Note: We recommend collecting mailing lists by genuine methods like first three in the list‚

3. Time management

You are sending emails in bulk to thousands of users and if your timing is wrong then all the efforts are being wasted.

There are lots of researches and surveys about what time most of the people check their emails and what type of people are more connected to the mailing services.

One of the survey tells us that most people open the emails they received at the beginning of the week i.e. Monday-Friday and number of people opening up there emails on Saturday and Sunday is very small as compared to week days.

While the timing of most of the emails being opened is around the mid day during the lunch break.

But type of your email also matters, for example if you are sending a coupon to your subscribers and you know most people do purchases on Saturday then Saturday morning is most suitable.

On the other hand suppose people like to sleep on Sunday then announcing your new product is surely going to be ignored, so manage your timing by figuring out very details of your business.

4. Think about giving benefits

Your subscribers are your everything, they are going to take your business to the next level but first you need to attain their loyalty and if you only think of your business and don’t care about your subscribers or clients then you are not gonna attain their loyalty for sure, try thinking the other way and benefit them with you every email once you got their attention and successfully attain their loyalty your business is gonna grow automatically.

I’m going to give you two examples neither one is good or bad but one of them cares about people and the other one doesn’t.

Example 1:

You got an email about latest products from a big company and they look really cool in photos.

They say “Don’t miss the chance of getting our latest products”

Example 2:

You got an email from another company also selling their latest products but they come with a different approach that makes you feel it’s you.

They say “Don’t miss the chance for having 40% off special Friday discount on our latest products”.

Well, which one would you like to choose?, obviously example 2 because they are offering you 40% off on their latest products.

Got the point?.- we recommend thinking about the people first and try giving them lots of benefits.

5. Email quality and design matters

Your email design is your identity in the email world and if it’s not beautiful and attractive it is not going to get enough attention, although strategy is the most important thing but if you practice good strategies and have beautiful email look then you will appear like a brand.

I saw some companies sending emails with no style at all, either they are copying others or they are just not paying attention to the email look and in both ways it’s a week marketing technique.

Making your emails look better doesn’t mean how beautiful they look, it rather shows how organized and serious you are about your company or brand, your emails not only be appealing but they should look appealing as well, consider it as inauguration and yes it is that important.

Also keep your designs simple, short and easy to read and follow, don’t over beatify them so that they don’t get complex and nearly hard to read for the readers.

Making your emails mobile friendly is also very important as 69% people open their emails on smart phones 4 times a day according to the recent research.

Dos and Don’ts of Email Marketing

Email marketing has been proven time and again to be an effective method for communicating with your customers, including sending updates on your new releases and promotions, and even asking them for their opinions that can help you improve your business.

According to a benchmark report from MarketingSherpa, 72% of people prefer to receive promotional content through email, compared to 17% who prefer social media.

Why use email marketing, you ask? To begin with, an email is a more personal approach when it comes to connecting with your customers. An important thing is that it expresses how much you value your customers. An email delivers your message far more effectively than social media.

While email marketing is certainly an effective marketing campaign, you must consider the Dos and Don’ts. And here are 4 of each:

The DOs of Email Marketing

DO conduct A/B testing. You need to pay attention to the data from your previous campaigns so that you can find ways to get better results. Test the subject lines,image placements, colours, and designs; gather the data; and take note what areas you can improve.

DO strategise your email campaign. Failing to plan is just planning to fail. To save time recovering from errors that could have been avoided in the first place, deliberate, discuss, and construct a plan with your team. Remember that your e-mail represents your business-your brand.

DO use email automation. Sending one email at a time consumes a great amount of time and energy. It’s a good thing technology has solved this problem. An email automation product makes efficient use of your time.

DO segment your lists. The point of email marketing is to personalise your approach, but if you send mass emails to a non-segmented audience, then it defeats the whole purpose. Your customers have a variety of wants, needs and desires. Make sure that you are sending relevant emails to your customers: the key is to send the right message to the right person at the right time.

The DON’Ts of Email Marketing

DON’T be generic and boring! Using a weak subject line with your email marketing loses your brand value-and with it transactions. First impressions are critical when it comes to this. Since customers receive a lot of email every day, they don’t want to waste time opening something that don’t sound interesting or relevant to them. Write simple, concise, yet catchy subject lines.

DON’T break spam laws. (CAN-SPAM Act outlines several restrictions that apply to e-mail marketing. Recipients have the right not to receive unwanted emails from companies.) Sending spam is simply illegal, and hence unprofessional. Needless to say that this will negatively affect your email campaigns.

DON’T forget to be mobile friendly, or else you will miss a huge audience. Stats reveal that a third of all emails received were read on mobile devices 50% of the time.

If your emails aren’t designed to fit into the smaller screens of the mobile phones, then your email simply won’t work. Go with a responsive design (this can increase email clicks by 130%).

DON’T buy lists! Though this may quickly expand the reach of your email campaign, you won’t definitely get what you paid for. Aside from negatively affecting your campaign as well, lists aren’t even reliable for your business.

A wide reach is essential for marketing, but you should never neglect quality. Email marketing works best when you are able to send a relevant message to people who need that certain information.

When Email Marketing Becomes Spam

In some ways, we can consider email revolutionary. It even predates the internet’s ancestor, the ARPANET. In 1965, the first version of email was found in computers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology for a program dubbed “MAILBOX”. In a little over ten years, people saw the potential of marketing in email, but because such method was non-existent at this point, Gary Thuerk ended up pioneering the first spam message when he sent the same email to 400 people in 1978.

Today, we know there’s a clear distinction between spam and email marketing. But usually when people think of spam, the first thing that comes to mind are messages that tell you one million dollars is waiting for you and all you have to do is click the button. By this standard, almost everyone is able to identify what messages are considered spam.

Since nobody falls for that anymore, spam senders have gotten more cultured with their techniques. And sometimes, this means even your techniques can get lost in the strategies of spam. So if you’re constructing your own email marketing campaign strategy, here are a few pointers for you to distinguish legitimate email marketing from spam.

Spam is sent with no permission, email marketing asks

If you’ll notice, legitimate campaigns begin with an opt-in form on websites. As entrepreneurs, you have to respect your customers enough to let them decide if they want to receive weekly updates from you via email.

Spam messages are intrusive, and there’s almost never a way for you to opt-out of their mailing list. But one takeaway from spam is that they offer their readers something (not real but it’s the thought that counts). Mention what you can offer to your readers, like a free trial or free PDF, to let them know what they can get from subscribing to your emails.

Spam enters deceptive subject lines, email marketing sends specific ones

Spam messages usually promise something big in their subject lines. But even legitimate email marketers get carried away with using subject lines such as “Your invitation from us” or “Your gift is waiting”. Studies show, the click-through rate of emails with deceptive subject lines is next to zero. Why even bother?

Everyone knows this tactic, too. Admit it; you’d never open an email that says, “your gift is waiting for you”.

At this point, one of the best methods to get users to open your emails is to use open loops, or incomplete ideas. For example, you could use “The one thing I wish I learned from college is… ” to make recipients want to find out more.

Spam makes it impossible for users to opt-out of mailing lists, email marketing honors opt-outs

As email marketers, you should make it a point to give your recipients choices to opt out of getting your emails. Along with this, not only does good email marketing allow users to opt out, they present clear and concise explanations on how users can opt out. Make sure to give your recipients a return email address, too.

It’s worth noting that some email marketers still act intrusively, still sending certain types of emails to people who have already opted out. You must honor recipients requesting to opt out of all commercial messages. Remember, at its core, spam is a bulk of unsolicited messages.

When you follow guidelines on email marketing and respect your customers, you know your campaign can and will succeed. It all boils down to your strategy. With the help of some experts on email campaign management, your company can deliver the best email campaign without bordering on spam.

Freelance Web Designer | WordPress Developer | Hong Kong