Email Marketing For Your Business: Where To Begin?

You probably are already familiar with email marketing. With an inbox full of emails from various brands, you might wonder what exactly the purpose of these emails are…

Email marketing is a process of gaining subscribers and building a client base long term.

It can be used to educate, or lure leads that aren’t quite ready to commit to buying your product or service, to make offers to those who are, and to increase referrals and repeat business from existing customers.

Even though there are other forms of marketing which seem more appealing such as social media marketing, Email marketing performs better than SEO, Affiliate marketing etc.

So how does it work?

1. An Email List

Firstly, you need a list of emails you can send your email marketing, newsletters etc out to. Make sure the email addresses you use are active users.

A way to build an email list is to attract people to give you their information through ‘lead magnets’. This can be an offer, or a coupon in exchange for an email address. It can also be through a form requesting for more information.

2. Segment Your List

Segment your list by separating your customers into different groups. This can allow you to customise the emails based on demographic.

Email segmentation can be done according to:

• Geography
• Gender
• Past purchases
• Expressed Interests
• Email engagement

3. What Email Provider will you use?

An email service provider is also a email marketing platform. This can help you manage your email list, and help you design and build automated email campaigns.

4. What kind of campaign do you want?

Some types of campaigns are:

• Newsletter: One of the most common types of marketing emails. This can be used to keep subscribers informed about latest news and updates about product or brand.
• Promotional Emails: This kind os email is used to make direct offers to your email list. This can include discounted pricing on specific products to promotional content for a product or service
• Relational Emails: These are designed to build relationships with prospects by adding value upfront. This can be free content and information, such as blogs, articles, social updates etc.
• Confirmation Emails: These are automated messaged sent to users to verify the successful completion of an action, such as a purchase, registration or booking.

Pick the one that suits your business goals the most. A newsletter for instance is a great way to keep audience engaged.

5. Track the Marketing Metrics

After sending an email track and analyse email metrics such as:

• Open rate: How many subscribers opened the email
• Click through rates: How many subscribers clicked links in the email
• Conversion rate: How many subscribers made a purchase, filled out a form, or did some other conversion you want to track
• Unsubscribe rates: How many subscribers unsubscribed from an email
• Delivery rate: How many subscribers received your email in their main inbox

Use this data to help you refine future email campaigns. See what works, and what doesn’t.

So what platform should you use?

There are various platforms you can use to start your email marketing campaigns.

Do your research and pick the one that is the best for your business.

A few different tools are:

• Mailchimp
• HubSpot
• Marketo
• GetResponse
• MailerLite

There are many different forms of email marketing and various platforms that can be used to send it out. At the end of the day, you should use the one that suits your individual business the most.