Email Marketing Basics
If you’re looking for an effective, affordable way to engage with prospects, email marketing basics are a great place to start. Email marketing offers so many benefits, and it typically costs about $20 a month – which makes it a no-brainer for virtually every business or non-profit on this planet.
What Is Email Marketing?
Email marketing involves sending some sort of commercial, business-related message to a targeted group of people using email. The preferred method of email marketing is to use an Email Service Provider to create and send good-looking, colorful, branded emails to a group of people. Examples of Email Service Providers include:
- ConstantContact
- MailChimp
What’s The Difference Between An Email Service Provider & Sending Emails Using a Group List?
There are HUGE differences between sending a group email yourself using a group list and using an Email Service Provider like Constant Contact.
Group Vs. Individual Transmission: When you send an email to your group list, the email is sent to the whole group at once. This red flags the email to the recipient’s spam filter, and also can get your email blacklisted on third-party spam tracking websites. In contrast, when you send emails through an Email Service Provider, their technology sends all the emails individually to each recipient instead of as a group. This helps your email get past spam filters and helps you avoid getting your email or Internet Protocol (IP) address blacklisted.
Email Design Templates: Email service providers have pre-developed email design templates. Just pick one, and then start applying your corporate colors, a logo, content & photos.
Email List Management: Email service providers also have strong list management functions. You can easily upload new contacts, delete contacts, and the emails themselves will have a “Unsubscribe” button for those folks who decide they no longer want to receive your emails.
Email Analytics: When you use an Email Service Provider, you’ll also get access to analytics about who opened your email, who clicked through to your website, who unsubscribed, and overall statistics on your open rates and click-through rates. These analytics can tell you who’s most interested in your emails, and also the topics that are more interesting to your customers and prospects.
DID YOU KNOW:
Email marketing can help you grow your business by driving customer acquisition & retaining customers.
Source: WBR Digital Research Study
How Does Email Marketing Help Your Business or Non-profit?
When you deploy email marketing basics, you help your business or non-profit in the following ways:
- Cost-effectively send marketing messages, product information & promotions to customers & prospects
- Remind customers & prospects of your product or service offerings
- Fast-track the distribution of special offers & promotions that convince someone to buy something immediately
- Educate your customers & prospects about what makes your product or service better or different
What Kind of Content Belongs In Your Email Marketing?
- Links to informational, expert articles on topics related to your products or services that are housed on your website
- Case studies on how your product or service is being used to save time, generate revenue, or make someone’s life easier or more joyful
- How-to information
- Photos that tell a story about your product or service
- News of new customers or product / service offerings
- Q&As
- Descriptions & links to new videos you’ve produced
- Highlights of new white papers
- Announcements of trade shows & conferences you’re going to attend
How To Set Up An Email Marketing Program That Truly Helps Your Business
Here are the steps for setting up an Email Marketing Basics program that will drive your business or non-profit forward:
Step 1: Develop a permission-based list of customers and a permission-based list of prospects (You need to get permission to send emails to these people before you add them to the list.)
Step 2: Sign up for a monthly subscription with an Email Service Provider like Constant Contant.
Step 3: Choose a design template & make it your own with your company colors, logo.
Step 4: Build an annual content calendar of the emails you’ll send out based on the trends & patterns in your particular industry. Example: A veterinary hospital email sent in January that covers how to identify hypothermia in your dog or cat.
Step 5: Write content for the email that includes a link back to your website highlighting a specific content asset, and also some short content snippets that educate, inform, or provide helpful tips that can be read in their entirety in the email.
For frequency, send at least one blast email to your customers & prospects once a month. When you have a specific offer for a special promotion, send up to 3 emails about that special offer within 2 weeks of each other.
Common Mistakes In Email Marketing
There are some universal mistakes being made in Email Marketing that are easy to resolve.
- Send emails from your own group list – As explained above, spam filters will block your emails at higher rates when you send to a whole group at once.
- Cover topics not relevant to your product or service – The only reason you are sending these emails is to highlight your product or service. Do NOT add un-related content. Focus on your own offerings.
- Don’t brand your emails – The quality Email Service Providers make it easy to add your company colors & logo. Be sure to include these items in the design of your blast email design template – or hire an agency to help you do this, so the emails include your branding and are visually inviting.
When you follow email marketing basics as you deploy an email marketing program, it increases the success and effectiveness of email marketing.
Need help developing and/or maintaining an ongoing Email Marketing Program? Contact DeWinter Marketing & PR to help you deploy this massively cost-effective marketing strategy.
