Marketing for Beginners: Email Marketing
Posted on September 5, 2018 by Matt Morelli
In our next installment of Marketing for Beginners, we’re going to discuss email marketing. Email marketing is an easy and affordable way to reach out to your customers and prospects. It provides you with a reasonably effective way to foster a relationship and help make them return customers. Several reports have shown that email marketing has the highest ROI compared to any other marketing channel; it’s a formidable tool that’s widely used and can be leveraged by any internet marketer.
In this article, I will walk you through the basics of email marketing and how you can get started building your list and generating leads with it.
What is email marketing?
Wikipedia defines email marketing as the act of sending a commercial message, typically to a group of people, using email. Simple enough. Effective email marketing is geared towards converting prospects to customers and one time buyers to loyal fans.
Who needs email marketing?
Most businesses can benefit from effective email marketing, because it’s a simple way to nurture a client base and turn them into new or return buyers. Even with the rise in the popularity of social media platforms for marketing purposes, email marketing remains one of the best and most cost-effective ways to reach out to your base.
Here are some of the reasons email marketing stands out amongst other marketing channels.
How do you get started?
The first step to email marketing is to begin building an email list. This means getting the email addresses from your prospective clients.
However, you can’t just get the emails anywhere. Following shortcuts like scraping emails from the web or buying unverified email lists aren’t recommended, because such processes are not ethical, nor are they legal in many cases. Also, the recipients may not respond positively to your efforts, which may lead to a waste of time and resources, and ultimately get your account marked as a spammer. If that happens, your email sending days are over.
For you to be successful in email marketing, you need to reach out to your core target audience and ask for their permission to send them emails. This implies that your email list should only consist of those who willingly gave you their email addresses in order to receive your marketing communications. We’re looking for quality here, not quantity. 1,000 quality email contacts will net you far more value than 100,000 random email addresses who have no desire to ever hear from you.
To begin your email marketing campaign, you will need an opt-in form and an email service. With these in place, you are set to start building your email list.
Building your list
For a simple start, you can place an opt-in form on your website, so anyone who visits has the option to sign up. However, you may find it difficult to grow your list with this strategy alone, because people aren’t always excited about signing up for a newsletter without any call to action to get them engaged.
For this, you want a lead magnet, something to compel people to submit their emails to you.
How to use a lead magnet
The term “lead magnet” isn’t some technological jargon. It merely means offering your prospects something of value for free, in exchange for their email addresses. The operating term is something of value, for free. It could be an e-book, video, coupon or just about anything that will excite your clients. Other items you can use include audio files, free webinars, free consultations, free trials, a white paper, a chance to partake in quiz, games, etc.
Below are some pointers for creating more effective lead magnets.
Opt-in form
Once you narrow down some good options to use for a lead magnet, the next step will be to create your opt-in form.
Remember, the opt-in, or opt-in form is the term used to describe the form where your visitors input their emails. The opt-in form bears the message that persuades your visitor to subscribe to your list.
To maximize conversions…
Note that the opt-in can come in various forms. It can be a pop-up, around your footer, on your about page, as a floating bar, etc. You can choose any type that best suits your website. You can and should also run A/B tests to see which form(s) bring in the most sign-ups.
Upon implementing these practical steps, you should be ready to start harvesting emails from your target audience.
Tips to enhance your email marketing campaign
Email marketing provides an affordable and effective way to reach your target prospects. If you have not yet begun, it may be worth looking into! We’ll be back soon with more marketing tips for beginners!
If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to reach out by email at sales@u-pic.com or by phone at 800-955-4623!