Email Marketing for Beginners
Despite what you may have heard, email marketing is still the most effective form of online marketing. It’s one of the few marketing methods that gets you up close and personal with your audience on an individual basis. Some business owners think they should give up on email marketing but nothing could be further than the truth. The money is still in the list and that’s not changing anytime soon. But, there are some tricks of the trade.
Know Your Audience
Study your target audience so that you can create personas that describe who your individual audience is. For instance, maybe your target audience are mothers of children between the ages of 11 and 14, who home school and are housewives with a family income of $80,000 per year. If you know this information you can know a lot of things about your audience, such as the types of products or services they need as well as how much they can afford to pay for them.
Understand the Point of Your List
Is the point of your list to sell a particular product? Is the point of your list to teach and inform your subscribers about your services and how they can benefit from them? Do you know the point of your list? If you do, stick to the point of it so that your subscribers know what they’re signing up for. You can segment your audience as they purchase something or take various actions so that you can market other items and services to them.
Build Your List
In order to build your list, create an eCourse, or give away something like an eReport, or simply create a sign-up form and ask visitors who come to your website to sign up to stay up to date. If you’ll notice, to the right of this blogpost there’s an invitation to subscribe and receive my 42 Social Media Tips report. If you provide something of value, people are much more inclined to subscribe. Very few people who visit your website will sign up just to stay “up to date.” Demonstrate your expertise by giving value. Promote your list at every opportunity in order to get targeted subscribers. Ensure that the information you provide speaks to your audience in a way that resonates with them that this is something they need.
Send Your List Members Regular Information
Once you have members on your list, it’s important to keep sending them information. The information you send them must be relevant, targeted and useful. It must also be sent on a regular basis. If you don’t communicate with your list often, they might forget that they signed up and then think you’re sending them spam when you’re not.
Also make sure the information you send to your list has a meaning. It should lead your subscribers back to content on your website, or to products and services that you recommend or created.
Check Your Metrics
Pay attention to the numbers. Check open rates, click-through rates, and conversion rates of every email that you send. Every email that you send needs a reason, and that is how you know what metrics to look at. If your reason is to send them to your website to read an informative blog post, check to see if it worked. If your reason was to tell your list about an affiliate product you believe your audience needs, check conversion rates.
Repeat
Keep doing what works, and change what doesn’t. You can know what is working by studying the metrics and testing out different scenarios. This is called A/B testing. For instance, you might send the same email with two different subject lines to half of your list, or a small portion of your list, to see which one gets opened the most. Then what works the most should be done over again.
As you build your list, and use your list, your traffic will go up—as will your income. Keep building your list with your targeted audience; keep sending them relevant information, and you’ll soon discover that your most valuable online asset is your email list.
I know creating pertinent emails is one of the most challenging parts of developing good content for your audience. Don’t let the challenge keep you from doing it, though. The rewards will be worth it.
If you’re looking for more tips about email marketing, subscribe to the blog and stay tuned for the next blog post. On Thursday I’ll be posting, “Email Marketing: Content and Design Tips to Set Yourself Apart.”
