Email Marketing Introduction
If you are in the internet marketing field, you may be wondering about email marketing. It is a common misconception that email marketing has been making its way out, in fact, there are even new ways you can make it work for you. One of the reasons it still works so well is because people want their information as soon as possible, and don’t always have the time to check each blog every day that they follow. By having an email list, you can send out updates and information as they come available, saving your readers the hassle of having to search for the information.
This report is going to teach you all about how to make email marketing work for you. It covers all the basics, from getting more people to join your list, to what needs to be included in the subject line and body of your emails. You will soon discover just how important email marketing still is today.
How to Grow Your Email List
Before we get into what to include in your emails and how to send them, you need to grow your email list. Keep in mind that you aren’t going to get from 0 subscribers to 10,000 in one day. It takes time putting together a content upgrade opt-in, figuring out how to advertise your email list, and encouraging people to stick around for the daily emails. Just take your time and strategise exactly how you want to do it.
Encourage Sign-Ups With a Valuable Offer
While there are a lot of different ways to use an opt-in form on your website or blog, where people enter an email address to sign up for your daily emails. Providing them with a free gift or content upgrade is usually one of the most enticing. There are going to be some of your readers that simply want to be notified of new blog posts, but the majority need a little more encouragement to sign up. This is when offering a valuable offer comes in handy.
The type of offer you choose will depend a lot on the type of niche you have and what you actually provide as a business or blog. If you are an internet marketer that is trying to promote products and services created by others, you might create a content upgrade that gives an inside look into a certain area of your niche market. If you are a creator of products, perhaps you give a digital download for free that lets them see the type of work you do and encourages that sign-up. Others will provide a free eBook, report, or white paper that will provide some value to their subscribers.
Make the Offer Prominent
Once you have decided what type of offer you want to provide to your opt-ins, you then need to make it very clear on your website that they will get a free gift. Make it prominent, instead of putting a small box halfway down your sidebar. Many blogs prefer to have a horizontal opt-in form on the front page and near the top, so that it is one of the first things readers see. You can also have a pop-up that is triggered after someone reaches your website. Sidebar opt-ins also work great, but put them somewhere near the top.
Use Multiple Methods For Getting New Subscribers
While the opt-in and offer combo is a great way to start getting new subscribers, it is definitely not the only method you can choose. With internet marketing or any other type of business, you never want to put all of your eggs in one basket. Here are some other ways to get new email subscribers:
Have social sharing buttons – First of all, you should make it easy for others to share content on your blog and website, and within your emails themselves. You can have sharing buttons on your website, including on each blog post. This allows people to share posts with others on social media, which then encourages others to find your opt-in form. Don’t forget about adding these buttons to each email, since when you send something of great value, a subscriber can send it to their friends, who then might sign up to read your emails. You can also have a link within your emails where they can forward it directly to a friend.
Mention it on social media – Social media is one of the best ways to market an online or local business nowadays, so it makes sense that you would use it to get more followers to your email list. Mention that you send out announcements and special deals, then direct people to the landing page you have or your homepage where there is an opt-in form. If you decide to offer a new giveaway or content upgrade for opt-ins, mention it again on social media sites like Twitter and Facebook.
Host a contest or giveaway – People love getting free stuff, so not only does a contest work great for giving something of value to the winner of the contest, but it gets you more opt-ins as well. In order to turn this giveaway into more email subscribers, mention it on your website and social media networks. Say that the contest is only for email subscribers, so they need to opt-in if they want exclusive details for the discount. This is going to get more subscribers, plus your site or blog in general will get some more buzz on social media if they share it with their friends.
Mention it in your blog posts – When you have a new blog post, have a footer of the post that reminds people about your email list. You can either tell your readers that they can get updates about new blog posts by signing up, or even offer exclusive content that expands on that post in your emails.
Subject Line Rules For Email Marketing
Now that you know how to get more email subscribers, it is time to talk about the emails themselves. With email marketing, one of the most important things to get right is the subject line. The subject line should define what the reader will get when they open the email, so don’t try to promise them something and not deliver. It should be enough to where they want to open the email, but not include terms and phrases that tend to get targeted by the Spam folder.
Focus on Proper Spelling and Grammar
As with the content on your website or blog, you need to really focus on your spelling and grammatical errors. While they might seem minor, many people will notice them, and it can detract from their trust in you. This is especially important if you provide products related to writing valuable content. They might not have full trust in you if you keep misspelling judgment by writing it as judgement, or if you keep making the same grammar mistakes. Nobody is perfect, so mistakes do happen, but at least get your subject line right. Re-read it to make sure it makes perfect sense and that there are no errors. This small task will make a drastic difference in how people look at you as a valuable resource.
Find a Balance Between Clarity and Humor
This is a point that is often debated among internet marketers, because some people find better results when they use creativity and humor in their subject lines, while others simply tell the reader what is inside the email. At the end of the day, the choice is yours, and testing emails is always a good idea. However, if you can find a balance between humor and clarity, you might have the best results.
This means you are clear in your subject lines about what the content of the email has, but you add a little bit of personality or humor to it as well. Consider the emails you get in your own inbox and what makes you click on them. Is it because someone had a charming and fun subject line, or because you knew exactly what was in that email? Were there times when they managed to have both? This is what you are striving for.
Don’t Use These Words or Phrases
There are certain words and phrases that spam filters tend to pick up on. This is in an effort to get rid of spam emails, but it can sometimes hurt even reputable email marketers. Try to avoid using these words as much as possible as they might get your email sent to spam, which you definitely don’t want.
- Earn money or make money
- Prescriptions
- Income
- Cash
- Prize
- Free (within reason)
- Increase your
- Clearance, Discount (within reason)
- Help
- Buy
- From Home
- Percent Off
As you can imagine, some of these words are harmless, but it depends on the context of the subject line and what is in the email itself. For example, if you are offering a free gift, you may get away with a subject line that uses the word free, but you need to be careful with other words in that subject line. Test your email by sending it to yourself first and see if it ends up in the spam folder or not.
Keep the Length Short
As for the length of the subject line, try not to make it too long. People reading the email from their phone or tablet have a smaller screen, so they only see the first few words of the subject line. Try to omit passive or expletive words and get right to the facts.
What to Include in Your Emails
Once you feel like you have a better concept of how to write your subject lines, it is time to write the emails. The type of niche market you have is going to guide you in the right direction as far as what to include in your emails. There are definitely some decisions to make based on your target market. Some markets like to get just the facts in the emails, while others like a little bit of personality. This is something you will need to decide for yourself. However, here are some tips for writing your emails.
Make Emails Easy to Scan
To start with, don’t just write your emails in a couple long paragraphs, as they are difficult to read. Far too many people write emails as if they are writing an essay, forgetting to add bolded or italicised words, or subheaders. This helps to break up the email so that each different point and section is very clear. People often scan emails in the same way they scan blog posts, so you need to make it easy for them to do that.
Focus on the Benefits
When you are writing your email content, focus a lot on the benefits. Tell them why you are promoting something and really hone in on how it can benefit them. Perhaps you have a health-related blog and your email subscribers are a target market of adults that hope to get healthy and lose weight. If you are promoting an eBook on Amazon about weight loss, it is obvious what the benefit is. However, if you are trying to promote essential oils, you need to explain the benefits of that for their health or weight loss goals.
Always Include Value
For every email you send out, include some type of value in it. The value changes based on what you are promoting or the niche market you are in, and doesn’t always have to be time-consuming. Something as simple as sharing a helpful video tutorial you found on YouTube or a very well written blog post about your niche subject can add a lot of value to an email. The value should preferably be something that does not include an affiliate link.
Show the How and Why
Along the same lines as showing the benefits of something in your email, give the how and why. Don’t just promote a new PLR pack to your list of bloggers, but tell them how to use the PLR, and why they should use it.
What to Avoid in Your Emails
There are also some things you want to avoid doing in your emails, otherwise you might start losing subscribers. This also keeps people from sharing emails with their friends. Even if you aren’t trying to scam your readers, when they feel like all you do is promote, it gets old fast. Here are some things to avoid with your marketing emails.
Link-Stuffing
Since you are sending marketing emails, you probably want to include some affiliate links, but be careful how many you use in each email. If your email has very little text, no value, but tons of links, it isn’t going to get much attention. What this will get you is a lot of unsubscribes. Instead of doing that, focus on just 1 or 2 things to promote, but add the links sparingly. You only need enough links in the email so that they know how to find the information you are talking about.
Being Overly Personal
There is a fine line between sharing some tidbits about your life and getting too personal. Your marketing emails are not meant for a personal dialogue of your day, beginning to end, talking about religion and politics, or ranting about your family members. Add a few personal touches, tell a cute story from your day, but don’t go overboard.
Trying to Promote Irrelevant Products
This is a really important tip and one that many people mistakenly avoid. Naturally you want to promote products and services to your readers, but you should only promote products you think they would be interested in. If your readers subscribed because they follow your social media marketing blog, do you really think they care about an eBook about relationships? This is irrelevant to your demographic and is not at all helpful to them.
Sending Autoresponders
Finally, let’s take a few moments to discuss sending autoresponders. This is when you send emails in a sequence after someone subscribes to your email list. The email series should be relevant just like other emails, but they are also helping to introduce emails to new subscribers.
How Many Emails to Include in a Sequence
The number of autoresponder emails you have for new subscribers is really up to you, but try not to send too many. Don’t sent more than one in a day, and spread them out if at all possible. They will typically include a welcome email that will have the content upgrade you promised, then 1 or 2 more emails explaining what they will get and providing other valuable information.
Setting Up Your Autoresponders
You should have a good autoresponder email service before you even start getting subscribers. There are a lot of services out there, each with their own pros and cons. Some of the more popular ones include Aweber, Mail Chimp, and ConvertKit, but definitely do your research. Just make sure the basic features are there, such as creating multiple email lists for your different emails and being able to create autoresponders and decide exactly when they should be sent out.
Many of these services provide you with the ability to set the time to send out an email. For example if a person signs up to your sequence at 7pm they will receive their next email at the same time the next day. This can be a very helpful feature so your new subscribers don’t suddenly get several emails too quickly from you, which could be a cause for them to unsubscribe.
Take a look at all the features from different email providers, many will have a free or very low cost trial for the first month, so you can test them out against each other.
Using an autoresponder service is going to be an integral part of your business set up. So it’s vitally important to select one that is going to work well for you.
