2016-09-27

By Liza Skripka, Online Marketing Manager at SEMrush (@lizaskripka)

In this article, you will find six steps that you need to take in order to start doing Email Marketing. However, this article might be also useful for the amateurs, as it features some useful tips regarding different aspects of Email Marketing.

Startups, bloggers or just small businesses have often no idea, what to do in order to start with Email Marketing. Actually, some people are even skeptical about sending emails. “Is it what, some way of communication from the late 90s/early 2000s? Or is it all about spamming?”

No. Email Marketing actually deserves the title of the king of Marketing with the ROI of circa 380%! For each dollar that you spend, you’ll get 38 back. Crazy, isn’t it? 82% of B2B companies already do Email Marketing. And most importantly, at least 90% of emails get delivered to your customers’ inbox, while on Facebook, only about 2% of your posts reach your clients (Campaign Monitor).

Enough reasons to start sending emails, huh? Here are the 6 basic steps to successful Email Marketing in your company:

1. Start generating leads through a sign-in or email subscription form

Well, let’s assume you have a business and website, for example, Joomla or WordPress based. You just realized that it’s a perfect time to start sending emails to your clients. However, where would you find their email addresses?

In order to collect emails, you need to generate an email subscription or registration form. WordPress or Joomla, for example, let you create and activate your form very easily using various plugins and widgets.

To get more subscribers, some companies create various pop-up windows. It works well for bringing more users within a limited time. However, it’s better to be careful with pop-ups, as many experts suggest to avoid using them, and moreover, Google recently has announced that pages with pop-ups might end up appearing lower in the SERPs.

Another way to get more emails is through the landing pages. In case you can conduct a great webinar or managed to write an ebook, you can create a landing page and start asking people for emails, in case they want to access your content.

Tip 1: If you collect the personal information of your customers through a form, you must also create a privacy agreement and publish it on your website. An example of a good privacy statement can be found here.

Tip 2: You must never ever buy an email database!  Why? First of all, it’s illegal! You can only reach the people who have willingly given their email address to you. Secondly, this might also harm your brand reputation, because your company will be perceived as a spammy one.

2. Choose a tool, which suits you best

There is a large amount of Email Marketing tools that are beginner-friendly and fairly cheap (or even free). All of them are extremely easy to use. The most famous one is probably MailChimp. If you have a database of fewer than 2000 emails, you can use MailChimp for free (and have a MailChimp logo in all your emails).

There are some other Email Marketing tools, such as:

Vertical Response, where you can have up to 300 contacts in your database (That’s not much, but still not so bad for beginners).

Another great tool that allows you to send an unlimited number of emails to your 1000 Subscribers, is Mailer Lite.

There are also other tools such as Mad Mimi (starts at $10 per month for up to 500 Subscribers in the list).

Here you can find more information about various tools.

In case you’re looking to the future and thinking of a much more advanced system, there are Pardot, Hubspot, and some others. They all allow a very complex marketing automation with triggered emails and various funnels, but for that, they really cost a fortune.

3. Integrate your form and your Email Marketing tool through an extension or a plug-in

In order for your new subscribers to get into your email database, you need to integrate your sign-in or subscription form and your Email Marketing software. In the case of WordPress, there are some branded plugins, for example, one of MailChimp, which make the integration really easy. You just follow the steps written on the screen, and voila, everything works. For Joomla you also can find an extension, such as CMC, that integrates your software and your website through API.

4. Think of the Email Marketing strategy

Well, if you have integrated everything successfully, you can already start thinking of your Email Marketing strategy. You should decide WHAT, WHOM, WHEN and HOW OFTEN you will send. Of course, all that depends on the main aim and the positioning of your company.

What (what types of emails such as, e.g. Digest and a Promo Email)

Whom (segments of your database, e.g. the users from Newark)

When (e.g. Mondays and Saturdays around 2 pm)

How often (e.g. twice per week)

WHAT:

First of all, you have to decide what kind of emails you want to send. Remember that an email should have only one purpose (except for Digest and Newsletters that need to be informative and may have many purposes).

For example, you invite your users to a webinar. In this case, your email should have a clear purpose – the invitation. In case you also want to inform your subscribers of an update in your service, you better need another email.



WHOM:

For best results, you need to segment your email database so that the emails are relevant and interesting to your subscribers. In case you need to inform your customers in London of some disruptions in your service, you need to segment your database and send this email to the Londoners.

WHEN:

To find out which is the best time to send the emails, you can, of course, check various studies and benchmarks, but you can only find out yourself, what works really well for YOU.

HOW OFTEN:

Finally, you also have to decide how often you want to send your emails. I would recommend 1-2 times a week, but here works the same principle as in the previous point: you have to try different variants and understand what is best for you.

5. The design and creation of emails

Of course, many large companies have their templates made by a professional designer and some even have a full-time designer in their office.  In a startup, it is often not worth to have a separate specialist for the design of the email templates.

Thus, most Email Marketing tools have a visual builder, where you can create nice designs yourself, dragging and dropping various blocks. For that, you don’t even need any knowledge of HTML or CSS.

According to ConvertKit, a perfect email should be short, organized (headers, bullet points) and friendly. Mailjet also adds the storytelling: the email should tell a story of your company and leverage the customer loyalty.

Components of a good email:

Catchy subject line

Header with your logo and/or your social networks

Personal Greeting

Headings

Videos, pictures or GIFs

Structured content with bullet points

Signature at the end of the email with the gratitude

Unsubscribe link

Here are some good examples of various types of emails:

Welcome email:



Digest



Feature update

6. Analysis of the results

Well, now you have a proper Email Marketing strategy, some great templates, and a working Email Marketing tool. Now you only have to write some content in time and send out the emails, right? And that was it. Is your work over then?

No, of course not.

Email is all about testing, checking, changing and constant improving.  And how do you do that? By analyzing the results of your campaigns.

Just to start with, there is the open rate, click rate and unsubscribe rate –  the basics of Email Marketing analysis. The open rate shows how many people opened your email and it depends on many factors, namely the subject line, the sender’s name (a person or a brand’s name) and the time you sent the email.  As for the click rate, it shows how interesting people find your content and how engaged they are with it. The opt-out rate shows the percent of people, who disliked your content for some reason.

In all these cases, in order to identify, what causes the most engagement and disengagement, you can try the A/B testing. For example, it’s possible to send an email from a brand name, e.g. Tripsget or Tripsget team, but it’s also possible to send one from Liza from Tripsget or just Liza Skripka. And most probably, the open rates will be different. However, if you conduct A/B testing, you shouldn’t forget about the statistical significance of your results. In order to make sure, that your results are significant, use this service.

There are also many other metrics, such as the spam rate (how many people tag your emails as spam) or the bounce rate (how many of your emails were actually delivered). You can read more about it here.

These 6 steps are the basics of Email Marketing for beginners. If you follow these steps, gradually, you will establish and optimize your Email Marketing. Feel free to leave your questions and comments!

The post Beginners Guide to Email Marketing: 6 Easy Steps appeared first on The Creation Blog.

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