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Email Marketing
8 Steps To Successful Email Marketing
8 Steps To Successful Email Marketing
Email marketing is a powerful tool when used right converting subscribers to paying customers over time. It allows you an opportunity to easily share what you have to offer in a manner in which the subscriber is receptive, but only when it is done correctly.
Let’s have a look at the 8 steps you should use to enjoy email marketing success.
Determine What Your Goal Is
For your email campaign to be a success you need to know what your actual goal is. This allows you to accurately target and measure the success of your goals along the way.
Here are some examples of goals to consider:
- Are you successful at alerting customers of new features and products you have to offer?
- DO you announce upcoming events in a timely manner and do people register for it?
- DO you send email to get subscribers to also subscribe to your blog and do you measure your conversion rate?
Who Are Your Emails From?
The name and email address that you send your email from needs to remain consistent on every single email you send.
That creates brand recognition, and you are less likely to land in spam.
Try to use a custom email address rather than Gmail e.g. YourName@YourBusinessName.com. It looks more professional too.
Carefully Craft Your Subject Line
Your email subject line needs to be a call to action for your subscriber.
They need to immediately know what action is required of them and why.
Remember you only have 45 characters that are visible so make sure that you use them wisely and your message does not get cut off.
Write The Email Body
Did you know that most people will read an email in under 10 seconds?
Therefore, it is important that you are presenting the most important part of your message at the top of the email.
This is also helpful because it shows as the snippet in the subscribers email program.
Also, make use of bullet points for skim readers.
Make Use Of The Email Signature
Your email signature should match the ‘from’ in the email. You should sign the email and include any other information you think the recipient should have such as your phone number, or perhaps your degree is important, or your web address.
Also include social media details if they are appropriate; the more people interact with you, the more likely they will change from a cold prospect into a customer.
Testing Your Email
It is important that you always test your email on a number of email platforms and on mobile devices, which make up a larger percentage of where email is read.
That way you can make sure that your email is coming through correctly on all platforms.
Most email autoresponders such as Active Campaign will allow you to check what they look like.
Also, sign up for a new campaign yourself with a test email address, to ensure that you receive any welcome emails and any tags are appropriately applied.
Send the Email
Always include the option to view as HTML or text.
This is it! It’s time to send out your email campaign and start to enjoy the benefits.
Don’t make emails too image heavy as they can take a long time to open.
It may be worth testing with long emails, or shorter emails which direct them to read the full article on your blog/website.
This leads onto the final step…
Measure
In order to know if your email campaign is successful you need to measure the click through rate and the unsubscribe rate.
This will help you determine what you need to change or what’s working.
All marketing is driven by the data, and email marketing is no exception.
4 Types Of Emails You Need To Use
If you are running online email marketing campaigns, chances are you are already using the popular newsletter format, which usually are sent out monthly or every couple of weeks.
The trouble is far too many of us stop right there and don’t use any other type of email campaign, and that’s a big mistake!
Let’s look at 4 types of email, other than newsletters, that you can use to connect with your subscribers.
Informational Emails
Informational emails are not very long and generally, they do not require any action by the subscriber.
They are simply there to convey a message and provide information to the recipient.
Examples of informational emails include ‘happy birthday’ messages, course ending reminders, or webinar reminders.
Educational Emails
Educational emails are very popular with recipients because they help to solve some type of problem or answer a question.
You can send educational emails any time you have new content, a popular blog post, or any other educational information that matches your subscribers.
This becomes even easier if you took the time to group your subscribers, because that way you can send the right content to the right people.
Lead Nurturing Emails
This type of email is one of the least used or when it is used it is often used wrongly. It takes a lot of time and effort to take a lead and move them through the entire sales cycle.
By using lead nurturing emails, you able to help that process occur faster and you don’t need to invest a lot of time. You can set up various nurturing campaigns with 7 or 8 nurturing emails in each and then you can simply schedule them to execute over a period of time.
Both 60 and 90 days are popular depending on what your product or service is. These should be short messages that are packed with content rich information and that try to get the lead to respond to your call to action that will lead them to your website.
Promotional Emails
This type of email, if not done right, can find you with a subscriber that will unsubscribe or simply trashing your message. Too many promotional emails and you will annoy your recipient.
The only time you should use this is if you have a new product or service, a special deal going on, or a special event coming up. You should not use this more than a couple of times a month.
What types of emails do you use in your email marketing campaigns? Now you have some new ideas so why not give them a try.
If you want to know more about nurturing you list, check out the featured resource below for a free Simple List Building report; download, read it and take action 😊
10 Things To Avoid When List Building
10 Things To Avoid When List Building
As useful and as popular as list building is, there is a chance of having some problems when not used properly.
Incorrectly using it may have consequences that can be dangerous for your business or simply make your customers feel uncomfortable.
In this article, let’s look at 10 things you should not do:
Don’t Think About List Building As A Once Only Task
List building is an ongoing effort. The process might be getting from A to B, but it hardly ever ends, because your mailing list needs to keep growing over time. You can’t just create a mailing list with your first contacts and then just set them up for your newsletter.
What you really look for when you build a mailing list is to keep the influx of new subscribers coming, engaging them, and making them bring new people. You have to reinvent what you do with your mailing list from time to time and care for it. After all, this is your business!
Don’t Think About Your Mailing List As A Short-Term Recruiting Tool
You just can’t set up an offer to give something free for signing up to your mailing list as a method to lure in prospects, because you’ll end up with a mailing list full of people deleting your messages after having got what they wanted from it.
Make It Personal
One of the key words that successful marketers, salesman and saleswomen alike use for closing a deal is the word YOU. Subscribers already gave exclusivity by granting you access to their inboxes. What they want is for you to talk to THEM individually.
What you have to do is sell in a personal manner, even if you’re forwarding a promotional sales message to your 20,000 subscribers. Don’t just talk about the product and the market. Talk about how YOU can benefit from getting what YOU are being offered.
Don’t Focus Entirely On Marketing Somebody Else’s Product
Let’s face it, if you don’t own a product, you’ll be perceived as less trustworthy, as far as marketing efforts go. If you just focus on selling products and nothing else, especially if those products are from a third party, you’ll be end up being seen as another internet marketing robot.
That’s why you need to offer something that comes from you, something that you worked on that you don’t have to ferociously advertise and maybe even lie about in order to make a quick profit.
Don’t get me wrong; affiliate marketing is a great online business model, but you will be much better off in the long run by creating your own product and then having affiliates promoting your offer to their lists!
Don’t Buy Lists Of Email Addresses
This is a big no-no. Never, ever buy email databases. An email address coming from a mailing list for hire is surely receiving lots and lots of unwelcomed emails on a daily basis. If you send them an email without them knowing who you are, your message will get dumped as spam along with the others.
If they’re receiving unknown email for the first time, they will see you as an invasive, untrustworthy source of spam. They will block you and trash you in front of other prospects, so this practice will not pay off, even in the short term.
Don’t Take Email Addresses From External Websites
Don’t just go to a website or social media site and take email addresses and start mailing them without permission (and, yes, people will do this). Remember that a mailing list is built upon the interest and trust of prospects, and by sending them unsolicited correspondence is just out of touch with that fact.
Just like with email addresses taken from a mailing list that you bought, you’ll end up blocked and with a bad reputation, plus with ever tightening laws on data privacy, it is illegal. Try not only to be careful, but to completely avoid these kinds of practices.
Don’t Flood Your Subscribers With Email
This is kind of an obvious and valid point, but companies and individuals alike tend to forget that people don’t like to be inundated with email.
It is good to engage your subscribers with news, offers and contests, but there’s a fine balance of how many times a day you should message your subscribers.
Of course, this will depend on the kind of activities and products that you promote, and we recommend keeping newsletters limited to a daily basis, mailing offers and promotions two times during the day and mailing contests at random intervals.
Remember that not messaging enough can turn out to be as bad as messaging too much. You can end up losing subscribers and worst of all, customers, to the competition.
It’s all about balance and emailing daily or every other day should be fine. You may want to send a couple more if you are promoting a launch but do this sparingly.
Don’t Send Out Information Without Value
This is also something that some marketers and especially business owners without enough marketing guidance end up being guilty of, emailing the wrong kind of information.
This pitfall can be as simple as promoting poorly selling items, thinking it would sell, or by promoting the wrong kind of content to the wrong audience. Therefore, it is important to know who you are targeting certain email content to.
Internet marketers are notorious for this. They rarely provide educational content to help their readers but are constantly promoting products to their list.
This churn and burn model is an awful way to conduct business, because you are constantly needing to find new subscribers to replace those that are leaving because you are not providing value!
Instead, try offering value and building a tribe; it’s much easier to keep someone on your list once they’re on it!
Don’t Make Your Mailing List A One-Way Channel
One of the most prevalent, yet most harmful practices in email marketing today is making email a one way communications channel. What this means is that companies use it to message customers and prospects, but not offering them a way to communicate back.
This is bad for business, because if customers feel that they don’t have an effective way to directly communicate with a company, they might start looking elsewhere. Remember, that email is not only about advertising, but also about communicating with your clients.
Encourage readers to communicate with you. This has a twofold bonus; you are building an engaged list, and the likes of Gmail will reward you for this by ensuring your emails reach your subscribers Inboxes.
Another mistake is the reliance on auto responders. Auto responders send out an automated response to an inquiry or complaint from a customer, and then another one until the inquiry is resolved. As a business, you have to think twice about how this makes somebody think about your business ethics.
Don’t get me wrong; autoresponders are an amazing email marketing tool, but they need to be used correctly.
Don’t Trick Prospects
This is obvious, of course, but it is too often used as a cheap way for attracting prospects. You use a call to action to join your mailing list to enter a contest to get a big, sometimes unrealistic, prize.
While it is true that this sometimes works, it isn’t long term. If prospects don’t receive your promised prize, they forget about you as easily as they enlisted to your mailing list.
Also, most careful and educated prospects won’t just fall into this, so please don’t resort to underhand tactics as they aren’t sustainable long term, and you will get a bad reputation as one to be avoided.
If you want to know more about nurturing you list, check out the featured resource below for a free Simple List Building report; download, read it and take action 😊
10 Things To Implement For Successful List Building
10 Things To Implement For Successful List Building
If you have been marketing online for any length of time, you will know the importance of building your own email list.
You own your list, whereas you don’t own the social media platforms you may use to build an audience, and it can be taken away from you, and where would that leave your online business?
So, if you haven’t started already, start building your list and learn some email marketing strategies.
This article will cover 10 of the things that you can implement to grow your business with an active email list, and are a key to effective email marketing.
OK, let’s dive in…
Personalize Your Emails
It goes without saying that first impressions matter, and this is triple important for emails. Quick question: What would you do if you subscribed to a company’s email newsletter only to find out that their emails are kind of boring? Simple fonts, no backgrounds, no signatures, and so on.
What will happen is that you will ignore them, and eventually they’ll automatically end up in your spam folder. This is exactly what would happen to your emails if you don’t pay special attention to your email’s presentation.
Of course, you need to be careful and limit personalization to the subject line and the first line of the message, or your email may seem forced or fake. Also, don’t overshoot its design, just use something related to what you do as a business or professional.
Use Blogging And Landing Pages
Your mailing list will go as far as the means you use to market will take it. This means that you can’t just use a corner of your website to show a sign up form and call it a day. What you really want is to get traffic, and put your mailing list out there.
You can do that by having a blog dedicated to content outside your website, with carefully structured information that can be used to get traffic from wherever you can and then insert a landing page with a call to action to join your mailing list.
Make Good Use Of Lead Magnets
Lead magnets are teasers or incentives that you offer in a call to action to motivate your prospects to join your mailing list. The trick behind a lead magnet is giving away something that can only be obtained by joining your mailing list.
For example, giving away a free eBook, tips, or pieces of content that is not going to be published on the website and is exclusive, can be wonderful lead magnets.
Even if your prospects only sign up for the promise of a one-time free piece of content, they will be on your mailing list. From then on, it’s up to you to keep them engaged.
Use 100% Effort When Creating Your Email Content
If a personalization is the appetizer, then quality content is the full meal. You already sent emails, but what you really want is for your customer to read them and make use of its contents.
Creating quality content for your emails guarantees that your customers will be waiting for the upcoming email. Build up anticipation by creating special content from time to time, hosting contests, sending gifts to random customers, anything to keep them on edge!
Allow Guest Posting
Guest posting is a great way to make your prospects and repeated customers perceive you as a reliable source of information. By allowing guest posting and announcing it on your newsletter, you can have people wanting to read something from a different perspective.
It will also generate traffic by means of word of mouth. If somebody on your mailing list sees a guest post from somebody that knows someone is going to enjoy, they will forward that email to that person, so you’ll probably add someone to your mailing list!
Use Paid List Building Services If You Can Afford Them
While it is true that you can use some free services to manage your mailing list, it is also true that their usefulness will get limited as your mailing list grows. Not only will you be limited to a low number of subscribers, but your options to refine your list will be limited, as well.
That’s why we recommend using paid services to manage your mailing lists and to assist you in expanding it. In any case, you have to remember that the costs of email marketing are the lowest among marketing methods, and it also offers the biggest return of investment!
Give Away Stuff To Your Subscribers So They Reciprocate
There’s a simple yet all too often overlooked rule for email marketing, and it is simply about not offering something for your customer to buy during their first week on your mailing list. Instead, give them something like a gift card, or a free eBook.
By giving them something that they don’t have to pay for, you are in fact building up loyalty. This way, you’re teaching customers that you trust them by giving them a gift, and at the same time you’ll be teaching them to trust you back.
Study Your Customers So You Can Properly Target Them
You can use multiple ways to study your customer base and prospects. You can do it by using metrics, by visiting the kind of websites they visit, or by the kind of products and services that they buy, but you have to do it.
This will be helpful, because if you know your customers, you don’t have to offer them everything you sell. You only have to target them and give them what you know they want. Email each of your customer segments with what they’re looking for, and they’ll stick with you.
Work On Follow-Up Emails
You need to have a follow up email ready to be sent once somebody signs up for your mailing list. It is as simple as sending out an email welcoming a new subscriber and taking them to a start page with instructions and information about what he or she can do now that they’re signed in!
Run Periodic Maintenance Checks On Your Mailing List
You need to run a periodic maintenance check on your mailing list to know where your resources are going. It is just not worth it to have users getting your emails in their spam folders, or have dead addresses on your list. Make sure you do this clean up from time to time.
If you want to know more about nurturing you list, check out the featured resource below for a free Simple List Building report; download, read it and take action 😊
Why You Need To Start Building Your List Today
Why You Need To Start Building Your List Today
List Building is an amazing tool that can help your business stay in touch.
Below, are some amazing benefits, as well as some shocking facts that will help you get the most out of List Building on behalf of your business.
You Own Your List
One of the very best benefits of creating and building a mailing list is the freedom that it grants you to manage it.
It might happen that you manage communications with your clientele pretty well through social media sites, but what if one of those social media sites goes out of fashion?
Social media platforms come and go, but email is prevalent. You have to also consider that while not everybody is on Facebook or Instagram, everybody using the internet has an email address, so it will always be good to capitalize on it.
What’s the first thing people check in the morning? Email!
Email Is Simple To Use
One of the greatest advantages of using email to communicate with your customers is its straightforward nature. Just make sure you have great content to send, and you’re done.
As for your clients, they might not know what a “hashtag” is, why they should comment on a picture, or maybe they’re just not that interested in “liking” something on Facebook and will ignore your posts, but they sure do know how to click on an interesting piece of content that you just sent to them.
You also have the advantage of getting their focus. On blogs or social media sites, users can get distracted and lost among the amount of information that they are bombarded with… even stuff that is related to yours, which may even come from a competitor!
With email, they can read from top to bottom without turning their finger in another direction. They’ll get your information in a condensed format that will only take them to where you want them to go!
It Grants You Exclusivity
When you think about what kind of content you want in your email inbox, or when you think about what individuals or companies you give your email address to, you don’t think about it as a free for all, right?
You think about it as something sacred, since years and years of receiving email junk has taught you to not expose it willingly. You have to think that your customers think about their email inboxes exactly the same way.
It Is Great For Making Announcements And Selling Products
Mailing lists are very good for sending out information that you don’t want to be buried under lots and lots of other trivial pieces of content.
People check their emails daily, and you can reach them much more easily this way.
Reminders for events, offers, announcements, contests and miscellaneous news, like items back in stock, are best sent through email.
Chances are you’ll get an immediate response, especially if you get your customers used to looking for your emails!
It Is Cost Effective
Building and maintaining a mailing list is one of the cheapest ways to market across the board.
You can use a regular service and even keep it free, or you can use a paid mailing list service and make use of better and more advanced features for keeping up with your customers.
If you are serious, you need to invest in a good autoresponder service such as Active Campaign or Aweber
This, of course, will depend on how you are planning to reach your customers, and to make sure they get the most out of the service.
It’s Private And Can Be Targeted
One of the best things about a mailing list, and more specifically about using email, is the privacy aspect, which people care about a lot. It works both ways, because you can directly address somebody and he or she can do the same with you.
People prefer it this way, because they can ask you something or complain to you without it needing to be on a public wall or post. You can also create a channel that can be exclusively dedicated for this kind of communications, which customers will be thankful for!
You can also target emails to certain people or groups of people, hence knowing their preferences and habits will be crucial. This will enhance how you communicate with them, and in turn will also change how they perceive you.
Finding The Right Balance Between Delivering Value And Selling In Your Emails
Every email marketer has to find the right balance between delivering value and promoting products. That’s the only way to ensure the longevity of your list and the loyalty of your subscribers.
If you keep mailing out for offer after offer without giving any value, you’ll appear ‘spammy’ and many of your subscribers will get annoyed and leave.
If you keep providing value and giving out freebies, you’ll condition your list to only expect free gifts and they’ll not be inclined to purchase anything from you.
So, finding the right balance is of paramount importance to keeping you in the green. Most subscribers innately know that you’re running a business and will have to promote offers every now and then to cover your business costs and generate profits.
In fact, if you do your email marketing well, your list will be supportive of your business and will purchase your products or the products you recommend. Email marketing is all about having a relationship with your list… and just like every relationship, there must be give and take.
In this section, we’ll look at 3 methods that you can employ to strike the right balance between providing value and making money through promotions.
Provide Tools And Tips
Your subscribers are on your list to learn from you. They’re looking for information that can help them with whatever their goals are.
If you have a weight loss list, your subscribers will want to know tips and tricks to lose weight. If they’re on a gardening list, they’ll want to know the latest methods to grow healthier vegetables or have a better garden.
Your job as an email marketer is to share pertinent, useful and applicable information to them on a regular basis. It’s imperative that your knowledge be shared so that they can learn something from you.
Share with them what works for you. This will keep them hooked to your emails and they’ll be less likely to leave.
Giving Gifts Or Bonuses
If you’re an affiliate marketer, you may need to give attractive bonuses to woo your list so that they buy through your link. This is especially true if you’re in the make money online niche and the product launches are highly competitive. Potential buyers will look around for the best bonuses before they make a purchase.
So, you’ll want to set up a good bonus as and when you can. That said, you do not need to provide a bonus every single time. If you’ve been providing enough value, your subscribers should purchase from you just because they like you.
It is a delicate balancing act here to get the list to purchase without always expecting a bonus… but it can be done.
If you’re in other niches, you could give out gifts like free reports or discount coupons or get special deals for your list that isn’t available elsewhere.
Offer Help When You Can
One of the best ways to increase engagement in your list is to be contactable. If you’re a successful marketer, you may hire a virtual assistant to help out here. Ask your list to contact you if they have questions or need help… and when they do, help them out.
If you recommend a product, you can always help them with any issues they may face using it. Be proactive and do what you can to make your subscriber achieve their goals.
Finding the right balance is all about showing that you care. Overdeliver and help whenever you can… and when you have something to sell, your list will support you and not unsubscribe because they think that you’re only looking out for number one.
“You can get everything in life you want if you will just help enough other people get what they want.” – Zig Ziglar
If you want to know more about nurturing you list, check out the featured resource below for a free Simple List Building report; download, read it and take action 😊
Discover How Using Honesty Will Boost Your Email Open Rates
Discover How Using Honesty Will Boost Your Email Open Rates
You may have heard marketers say, “Email marketing is dead” … or email deliverability rates are low these days. The list of complaints is many and by all appearances, it seems like email marketing is getting tougher now because more and more subscribers are wary and jaded.
Marketing emails are viewed skeptically, and subscribers are much more discerning now. This is why some marketers have started using platforms like Facebook Messenger or bot services such as ManyChat or MobileMonkey because engagement is generally higher, but that doesn’t always convert into leads or sales.
Yet, there are a handful of marketers who excel at email marketing. They have high open rates, high click through rates and their emails get them a ton of sales and commissions.
So, how do they do it?
The answer is simple. They have a good relationship with their list, and they have a good sized list. The best way to build your list fast will be to retain your current subscribers as you add more to the list. If each email you send gets many unsubscribes, it will be an uphill task.
Ultimately, you need to be an honest and transparent marketer who is unique enough to stand above the noise. This is crucial to building trust and getting you noticed by your subscriber.
Don’t think of your email list as simply a cash cow to promote your (or affiliate) products or services, but rather think of them as your tribe.
Once you can achieve these 2 goals, getting people to open your emails and buy your products or the products you recommend will be a breeze.
You must treat them well and make them realise that you are simply trying to help them. The fact that you may make money by them buying your products or services is simply a byproduct of your helping them to succeed. Of course, this need to be a genuine desire to help them; you will NOT be able to fake this, so don’t even try!
Use the 5 pointers below to boost your open rates by winning your list over with your personality
Promote Only What You Believe In
This is a HUGE factor when it comes to building trust with your list. You should always promote or sell products that are of high-quality and will get the buyer their money’s worth.
Too many marketers these days tend to promote every product under the sun just so that they can get commissions.
In the short run, this may work… but over time, their list will stop trusting them and the sales will dry up faster than a wet towel in the Sahara desert.
Do your research on the product, the product creator, the price, the pros and cons, etc. This will allow you to give an honest review of the product and if it’s something that you wouldn’t buy… do NOT recommend it.
Show Them You’ve Purchased The Product
One of the best ways to inspire your list to buy the product you’re recommending. Even if you received a review copy or a complimentary gift in return for a promotion, go ahead and buy the product if you like it.
Take a screenshot of your purchase and display it in your email to show that you actually forked out money for it.
This will show that you too have skin in the game and you’re truly recommending something that you believe in.
Test Out The Product If You Can
Test the product out and see if it works. It doesn’t matter if it’s perfume or some ‘make money online’ (MMO) eBook that promises profits.
Make sure that you test the product out and see the results for yourself. Do you like it? Does it deliver on its promises? Is it worth the money?
If the answer is yes to all of the above questions, then you can promote it knowing full well that it’s good. Do not blindly pass off the claims on the sales copy as gospel when doing a review.
Don’t Contradict Yourself
This is very common among online marketers who promote products in the MMO niche. On one day they may be praising a particular YouTube video ranking software and saying that it’s the ‘last one you’ll ever need.’
A week later, when a new but similar video ranking software is released, they’ll promote this like it’s the best thing you’ll ever need.
Your subscribers can see through these shenanigans. Do not contradict yourself in your emails. If you’re promoting a software that is really good, then you should get a copy of it yourself and try it out.
You can then share your knowledge and tips with the list and show them the results you got from using the software.
You’re supposed to promote and also help your subscribers learn to use what they buy. You can create tutorial videos, blog posts. etc. to guide them. You are limited by your own imagination as far as delivering value goes. That’s what a wise marketer would do instead of pushing every piece of junk that hits the market.
Finding Your Voice
As a marketer, you’ll need to stand out from the rest. There are many ways to do this. You could use photos of yourself in your emails or have an attractive personality that comes across in your emails.
A sense of humor or brutal honesty or links to videos that you’ve made will help your readers get to know you better.
The key to being unique is to let your personality shine. Do not try to fake it till you make it or act like an authority who is pulling in six figures a month, if you’re not even close. The age old dating advice of just being yourself applies here too.
If you can practice these 5 tips and make them second nature to your email marketing, your open rates will skyrocket, and your subscribers will look forward to your emails.
If you want to know more about nurturing you list, check out the featured resource below for a free Simple List Building report; download, read it and take action 😊