Does email marketing seem overwhelming? Did you find that a lot of the guides and books out there are very wordy and make it all seem impossible to do? We did too. That’s why we wrote an easy simple and smart guide to email marketing.
This email marketing easy guide was written because Email marketing is one of the first and still most efficient marketing tool there is. Either you have a blog, an online store, a website to promote your services and portfolio, email is the most direct connection of any website owner with their followers. With the growth of social media, many website owners think that email is no longer essential. But recent changes in many of the platforms proves that email is the one method to reach your visitors and your followers regardless of the changes that are constantly happening in the dynamic world of social media.
How to use this guide
The best way to think about this guide is like a checklist. It is written in a summary format to get you to take action and step by step to build your email list. You can print it, or save it to your bookmarks. Take one action at a time and once you are done, move to the next step. Email marketing is not easy but with the tools out there today it can be easier.
Email Marketing for Beginners
Why is email marketing important?
This Email Marketing easy guide will help you:
- Get more traffic
- Reach more people
- Make more sales and conversions
- Keep your audience up to date with new releases
- Build stronger, long lasting relationships with your audience
Who should be using Email Marketing?
- all types of businesses and websites
- blogs
- online or offline stores
How you get started
This email marketing easy guide will give you the essential steps to get started
- build an email list asap to prevent losing potential and return customers
- set your goals and focus your email marketing on that.
- promote a product launch, webinar, course
- promote your blog/website
- increase traffic, sales conversion
What Incentives should I offer for email sign-ups
Do you like SPAM? Nobody does. That is why your email should always:
- offer instant value to make it worth it to receive one email
- offer long term value to make it worth it to stay on the list
Examples of Instant Value
- eBook
- Ultimate guide
- Checklists and cheat sheets
- Templates
- List of useful tools
- Educational podcast
- Educational video
- Webinar
- Coupon
- Secret Sale Access
To figure out the best incentive, study your competition and offer something better.
Example of Long Term Value
- Don’t miss our future posts on the subject from Industry Experts
- Don’t miss our Secret Sale Coupons we have every week
- Don’t miss our SUBSCRIBER ONLY content, sales, coupons, free samples etc
The First Email
The first email is the first contact with your potential customers. Therefore, make sure you do the following.
- Provide what you promised
- If possible, provide an unexpected bonus (above and beyond)
- Set the expectations (email frequency, future e-mails, long term value)
- Thank them
- Don’t forget the legal requirements (address, unsubscribe option, privacy policy etc)(good e-mail provides will make you include them)
The following emails (newsletter)
The following emails are the ones that will build the relationship. Make sure you do the following
- Focus on value for subscribers.
- Build a relationship
- Ask Questions to understand how to provide further value
- Don’t be pushy
- Don’t SPAM
- Keep your promises (frequency, content, etc)
- Add a personal touch, share stories, engage
The Sales email
You do start an email list so that you could eventually monetize and make some money. So the Sales email will have to come eventually.
- Don’t be afraid to sale.
- Sell only things that bring Value to your audience and are relevant
- Do not sale in every email. Experiment with your list to see the right frequency for including small sale messages or longer sales emails.
Focus on mobile
- E-mail is mostly on mobile these days.
- Keep it simple and short
- Do not add attachments
- Do not add large photos that are hard to view on phones.
Email subject lines
This email marketing easy guide will not be able to create the best subject line for you. However keep these in mind when you write your subject lines. And check out some of the examples below.
- This is a science.
- Study copy-writing and marketing messages.
- Notice your habits. What e-mails do you open and what triggers you to open them.
- A/B test (good e-mail provides will help you with that)
Email Subject Line Examples (customize to your audience and business)
- Keep it short and sweet – realize that on mobile only the first words are seen
- Personalize where possible, by including the recipients’ name / location in the subject line (good e-mail providers will help with that)
- Be specific on goals: “Increase your sales by x%” or “Reduce your waist by # inches”
- Deadline subject lines: (“Expiring soon”, “Closing Tonight”, “Last day to get your free gift!”)
- Exclusivity (“Only for my values subscribers”, “Exclusive Coupon / promo for my List”)
- Use numbers: (“10 ways to increase your sales”, “5 tips to get things done quicker”)
- Use action-oriented verbs first – (“discover” or “find the best way to…” or “get the new…”)
Email Automation (Event Based)
- Setup an e-mail sequence based on events
- A sequence for new subscribers (get familiar, introduce the brand, ask questions)
- A sequence for subscribers that do not open e-mails (edgier titles)
- A sequence for customers that purchase a product (ask for feedback, explore opportunities for additional products etc)
- A sequence for an abandoned shopping cart (additional discount, asking for clarification on reasons for abandoning etc)
- With the right tools, setting these sequences is not a very difficult task. You set them once and they run forever based on rules
Email List segmentation
- Group people in your email list in segments
- Examples
- By the date they joined your subscriber list
- By interest
- By customer type and past purchases
- By location, age and gender
- By job title and industry
- By shopping cart abandonment
- This will allow you to customize the experience with each segment
- You can set automation sequences based on segment
- Can improve results
- Can increase conversion
Best time to send emails
- Based on what you learn from your audience, determine the right time to send the email to each list / segment
- Consider when is your audience more receptive to open e-mails (morning coffee, lunch break, after dinner)
- Consider Time Zones
- Think about when does your audience have time to take action
- Split test by sending e-mail at different times to segments of your list and look at the open rate.
- Optimize based on data (most good tools will offer that data)
Continuous Improvement
Starting an email list using this email marketing easy guide can get you started but it will not make you successful. That requires hard work and perseverance. It requires failure, learning for failures and Continuous Improvement.
- Test everything, Evaluate Results, Improve, Test again
- Small changes can make a big difference
- Test one change at a time
- Examples of things to test:
- Subject line
- Time
- Call to action
- Email layout
- Email content
- Images
- From name
- Measure the following using tools built in analytics
- Opt-In Forms Performance
- Open Rate
- Click Rate
- Unsubscriptions
Email Marketing Tools
Here are 43 of them that I know of in alphabetical order. Feel free to waste your time and evaluate the pros and cons of each one. That will only make you NOT take action.
If you want to take action and move ahead with your business, start with a MailChimp FREE plan and once you got the hang of it and you exceed the minimum number of subscribers offered, move to a paid plan or switch to a ConvertKit paid plan.
Or yeah, like I said, feel free to waste time researching.
43 Email Marketing Tools
- ActiveCampaign
- Act-On
- Automizy
- AWeber
- BombBomb
- Cake Mail
- CallidusCloud
- Campaign Monitor
- Campaigner
- Comment Redirect
- Constant Contact
- Contactually
- ConvertKit
- Drip
- E-goi
- Emma
- GetNotify
- GetResponse
- Goolara Symphonie
- Gumroad
- Hatchbuck
- HubSpot
- Infusionsoft
- Intercom
- Knowtify
- LeadSquared
- Litmus
- MailChimp
- MailGet
- Mailgun
- Mailjet
- Marketo
- Moosend
- OptinMonster
- OPTINMONSTER
- PageModo
- Rafflecopter
- Reach Mail
- SendinBlue
- Sendloop
- Sendy
- SmartBribe
- Zoho Campaigns
