If you have a strong and growing customer contact database and you are looking for effective ways to keep in touch with these contacts, then you need email marketing.
Not just keeping in touch with them but also to grow your online business exponentially. Relax; you now have every reason to smile because I have the email marketing practical step by step guide you need.
BUILD YOUR EMAIL CONTACT LISTS
This is probably the first and foremost practical step in your email marketing. It is by building redundant email list but growing quality mailing list. However, one of the most challenging aspects of email marketing is growing a quality mailing list.
There are two basic characteristics of a mailing list: size and quality.
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But building your mailing list will not happen overnight. You have to work towards that. Apply the following steps in building your email contact lists.
- Writing compelling articles on your site, you can drive your clients to signing up to your newsletter.
- Using social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook.
- Persuasively ask your customers for their email addresses.
- Integrate an email opt-in form into your home page
SIGN UP TO AN EMAIL SERVICE PROVIDER
For you to start email marketing campaigns ,you need an email marketing service provider. It is advisable to try different email marketing providers and go with the one that best suit your need.
In determining the email marketing provider to use, there are certain factors you really need to consider. For instance, you have to consider the cost, efficacy in driving results to your business and others.
Sign up to any of these email marketing providers such Mailerlite,AWeber, MailChimp, or Constant Contact. Mind you this is not free; you will pay online for you to start using the services of any of these email marketing providers. I always recommend the Mailerlite for my clients.
SEGMENT YOUR EMAIL SUBSCRIBERS’ LISTS
Doing this will definitely allow you easily identify the categories of your email subscribers. Sometimes, segmentation of email contacts is being downplayed upon which might not be good for your business.
COME UP WITH AN EMAIL MARKETING CAMPAIGN
Now that you have signed up to an email marketing provider, you have to start developing email marketing campaign.
You have to be strategic in creating your email marketing campaign; don’t be like other companies that will always send promotional emails to their subscribers.
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You don’t need to bombard your subscribers with many emails. Advisably, on the average send three times a week but it is solely dependent on your marketing goals.
Develop your content based on certain objectives and send emails to your subscribers. It has to be compelling enough.
EMAIL SUBJECT LINE
Write a brief and charming subject line, recommendable not more than 50 characters. Just below your subject line, write the name of your company or brand name.
Your email marketing campaign that you intend to send out to your subscribers should have a brief and concise summary of your entire content, that what we call the subject line. The subject line is like the title of your email.
CHOOSE YOUR RECIPIENT
Depending on how you segmented your email which I have highlighted earlier on, you choose the appropriate recipient. For instance, if you have segmented your contacts based on industry types, let say the telecom industry and food industry.
And now you have content that is titled “Knowing how best to use your smartphone”, which of the two listed industries would be your recipient? Definitely, it would be the telecom industry.Choose the appropriate recipient depending on your email content.
SET YOUR EMAIL TRACKING
Some of the features of the tracking include:
- Click through rate (rate at which your contacts click on links/ calls to action in your message)
- Open rate (rate at which your contacts actually view your message)
- Conversion rate (rate at which your contacts become leads after getting to your website)
- Deliverability (rate at which your contacts actually received your message)
- Set up your email tracking. Giving your email marketing campaign a befitting design is advisable, but it has to be very moderate.
The essence of setting up your email tracking is actually to evaluate the results of your email marketing campaign. Effective email marketing campaign results are one of the ways you can actually measure your Return on Investment.
DESIGN YOUR EMAIL OPTIMALLY
Choose the right and appropriate template for your design so as to ensure that subscribers get enticed to read your email. Select appropriate fonts and colours, as well as including the logo of your company or brand.
Designing too much of images might not give you the needed result.
From my own point of view, I think you should give preference to text more than images. 65 percent of email marketing campaign should be text while your image designs should be 35 percent.
Aside from that, you should also focus on the call to action, but present it as both text links and simple calls to action graphic.
EVALUATE YOUR EMAIL MARKET CAMPAIGN
The only way you can actually discover and correct errors in your email marketing campaign before sending it out to subscribers is by reviewing your mail. When you discover any mistakes, you have the opportunity to correct. Email marketing is very critical; always ensure that it is error-free.
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