Email Marketing Tutorial

Email marketing is an online marketing strategy where emails are sent to people who have signed up to receive them. Consumers then use these email marketing leads to perform an action, like read your blog post or make a purchase. 

It’s essential to use email marketing for small business because it offers a direct line to customers. It’s also a great way to solicit feedback, and it can help you build a target audience quickly.

Keep reading for a quick rundown of what email marketing entails. You’ll learn:

• When and why to use email marketing
• The role of email marketing leads and lists 
• Which email marketing tools to use 
• How to launch an email marketing campaign

When and Why to Use Email Marketing 

Email marketing for small business can be used for several reasons, including: 

• To conduct surveys or gather feedback 
• To generate website traffic
• To build an email marketing leads list
• To boost sales 
• To encourage repeat sales
• To connect on a personal level

Email Marketing Leads and Lists 

Before you create an email marketing plan of your own, you need to build a mailing list. 

A mailing list is a set of email addresses you’ve received over time through a form on your website. When someone visits your website and likes what you offer, they may input their email address to ensure they receive updates about your company. 

Over time, you can use this mailing list to send emails to promote products, services, and special offers. 

Typically, you will use email marketing to generate leads. Leads are the people behind the email addresses that make up your mailing list and who have expressed interest in what you have to offer. People on your list are a targeted group of consumers to market to. 

To collect leads, you can use a variety of forms on your website or blog. A few options include: 

• Static opt-in forms, landing pages, and lead magnets
• Calls-to-action that appear at the end of pages and blog posts
• Pop-ups, sliders, and other eye-catching lead generation forms

 

Email Marketing for Small Business: Your First Campaign

After you collect email marketing leads, you can create your first campaign. First, decide what type of email you want to send. 

Within most email marketing for small business services, you can select from a variety of templates that simplify the email creation process. A few examples of templates include:

• Thanks for signing up: Once someone submits their email address, you can configure an autoresponder email that greets the email subscriber and thanks them for joining your list. It’s a great way to acknowledge them and welcome them to your mailing list.  
• Newsletter: Not everyone is going to read your blog regularly. You can send out a monthly newsletter to update email subscribers on the status of your business, as well as new projects, products, or upcoming sales.
• Seasonal: If there’s a holiday coming up, it’s a good idea to check in on your email list. It gives you a chance to touch base and to inform them of upcoming promotions.
• Abandoned cart: If you have an e-commerce website, it can be effective to send an email to those who’ve left something in their shopping cart without making a purchase. That nudge could encourage them to complete their journey through the sales funnel.
• Post-purchase follow-up: You can also configure an autoresponder for a set time after someone makes a purchase. It’s an effective way to encourage repeat business and nurture leads. 

How to Write a Marketing Email

While the type of email you want to send will inform the email content you write, most emails you send will follow a similar structure. Use the following guidelines as you prepare to send an email to your email marketing leads for the first time:

1. Write a great headline: Take time to write a snappy and compelling headline or subject line. It’s the first thing readers will see in their inbox, so make it count.
2. Follow web copy rules: Break up text with bulleted lists, add images, use web-safe fonts, and keep your message concise.
3. Speak to your customers: Keep language personable, light, and social. Use I/you/we. 
4. Add personalization: Use automation to add the subscriber’s name to your emails to give the impression you’re speaking directly to them.
5. Offer value: Give away e-books, guides, and checklists to attract attention and provide value to your subscribers.
6. Always split-test: Most email marketing tools provide A/B testing tools. Use them to gauge the effectiveness of headlines, text, and images. 
7. Set email marketing KPIs: Lastly, set email marketing KPIs (key performance indicators) to ensure your campaign is working. A few KPIs worth tracking include email open rate, click-throughs, and conversions.

Final Thoughts: Getting Started with Email Marketing Leads, Lists, and More

It takes a lot to generate email marketing leads but the effort is worth it to gain new and repeat customers, as well as a loyal following for your company. 
Once you’ve gained email marketing leads, ensure you’re sending them back to a well-hosted website. Domains Buy Design prioritizes easy setup and security with plans starting as low as $10.00/month. CLICK HERE FOR MORE INFO.

Make Sure Your Emails Get Read

 

Until recently, making sure your email was read wasn't too difficult — you just needed to avoid spammy keywords and anything that would look bad in Gmail or Outlook.

Unfortunately, recent changes in technology have meant the approaches from previous years will not work anymore. Here are three secrets to help you get ahead of these changes to succeed while your competitors continue to get ignored.

1. Avoid the dreaded "U" word

While marketers are required to include an unsubscribe link in email messages by the U.S. CAN-SPAM Act, the word “unsubscribe” is a trigger that causes emails to be pre-sorted into Gmail's promotional tabs. Research has found that using the word “unsubscribe” reduces open rates in marketing emails by at least 25 percent, and since our audience isn't exclusively using Gmail to read email, 25 percent is understating the impact of this word.

Fortunately, there are ways to get around using “unsubscribe” and still comply with government regulations. Use more casual language such as “click here if you prefer not to hear from us” and hyperlink to your unsubscribe page.

Other words to avoid are "preferences" and "read online" — no friend who's ever sent you a personal email has started it with a link to "read online" have they?

2. Optimize emails for a small screen

More consumers are viewing emails on their smartphones rather than desktops. This has pros and cons for marketers.

On one hand, people will read your messages in real time and your interactions are highly personalized. On the other, people who view messages on their smartphones are not likely to reopen the email later on their desktop, giving marketers only one opportunity to make an impact.

Regardless, it’s critical to design your email marketing campaigns specifically for a mobile user. If your email templates were designed for desktops, throw them away.

Additionally, ensure your email load time is fast since mobile devices and networks are generally slower than desktops. Unless you're selling a particularly visual product, we'd actually recommend dropping images entirely. The more an email looks like it was written from Gmail rather than Photoshop, the more likely it will be read on a mobile device.

3. Keep it simple

Last year, Google replaced its single inbox format for all incoming mail with a categorized inbox featuring five tabs: primary, social, promotional, updates and forums. Gmail’s new "promotions" tab, although great for staying organized, is basically where messages to your customers go to die.

While not everyone uses Gmail as their inbox, competitors like Microsoft, Apple and Yahoo have a habit of copying the innovations that work, so you can be confident that most of your audience will soon be looking at an inbox pre-filtered to exclude marketing emails.

These changes, combined with growth in smartphone adoption, should lead to a return to simple, plain marketing emails. By creating more personalized email messages in plain black text with a standard font, you can increase the effectiveness of your email campaigns, avoid Gmail’s promotions tab, and encourage reading and response from users on mobile devices.

Limit your use of links, bullets and bold text. Most importantly, avoid using images. It may seem counterintuitive, but this is the key to getting your marketing message through on mobile and into the inbox.

There's no doubt that pre-sorted inboxes are the future of email, and mobile-first email consumption is already the reality. Instead of fighting this change, marketers need to take these three proactive steps to address this change and increase open rates.

Create and track emails that integrate with your website.

EMAIL MARKETING

Add a signup form to your website to gather email addresses from visitors.  Easily see how your emails are performing — how many were opened, which ones got the most clicks and stay connected with your customers.

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