Email Marketing Beginners Guide.
Connect With Your Customers
What Is Email Marketing?
You’ve probably had the request before to sign up to email marketing through a newsletter or to provide an email to ‘get the latest offers’. This is another digital marketing tool to help stay connected with your customers and keep them updated. Technically any email sent to a potential or current customer can be considered email marketing but for this, we will be focusing on specific marketing email platforms. These are CRM (Customer Relationship Management) email platforms that are data-driven so you can potentially use more personalisation in scheduled emails to your customers to keep them interested in your business.
Why Work With Email Marketing?
One of the biggest reasons you should work with email marketing is the control and directness of the channel. Compare this to social and search channels where you are somewhat reliant on algorithms. You can build audiences based on their interests.
Every time you go online your actions leave a digital footprint from your likes and what you’ve bought previously this data can be used in email marketing.
For example if Joey orders a new mattress online that purchase data could be used to email Joey about bedsheets. Another example, if you work in travel humans are creature habits and sending an email 10 months after purchase with inspirational destinations blog this should tie in when they were previously doing their holiday research.
email marketing is a powerful tool as it can connect from every moment in the customer journey from the beginning to after the purchase or lead is obtained. It can be used as a triggered reminder to retain business or connect with those that did not purchase.
Email marketing can be associated with all stages of the funnel as you can connect with the customer at any moment of his journey. Use inspirational content for ‘awareness’ and ‘interest’. Then email products and latest offers for ‘consideration’ and ‘action’.
How To Do Email Marketing Yourself
Now email marketing services should always be one of the first channels in your strategy. Not only as a free channel it can also be a high converter, as your most interactive fans will likely sign up to your newsletter. There are a number of platforms out there for email marketing our top free services being Hubspot, Mailchimp and Sendinblue.
If your business model is more orientated to leads and a more personable client relationships I would recommend Hubspot as the best free CRM system. If your business is more associated with eCommerce then Sendinblue is best. Mailchimp is an all-rounder with the best amount of free-space.
Before setting up if you operate in Europe you will likely need to comply with GDPR so read up on it before setting up your email marketing service. So you use your customer’s data legally.
Getting Started
Firstly you need to look towards your form building and what would you like to achieve. Data is gold so tick boxes for interests can help divide your audience from the start. This is the best method for the free email marketing services as usually you’ll have to pay for more advanced audience management.
You also have insight during the user journey, if someone is classed as a sale you should have the information on what and when they bought it. This can be used to upsell add on’s and to work out when they will likely be buying again if its a seasonal gift.
Educate Yourself
A/B testing is essential to get the best out of your emails and get an understanding of what your audience will likely respond too. This way you can perfect your tone of voice, you can also use data from other channels but email data should always have priority.
If a user does not respond to your emails do not keep emailing them this is known as spamming, which could see you move to the junk file. Results have shown this will likely see unsubscribes increase. If a user does not respond in 4 weeks from the start we recommend moving these contacts to another audience for retouching base at a later date like when a sale is on. You can learn more about avoiding spam folders here.
When it comes to training up there are a number of online courses, with our top pick being Hubspot as the most comprehensive. All the email services mentioned also have blogs and newsletters for tips but Sendinblue’s is the in our opinion.
The Future
The email marketing services we’ve mentioned start as free services. These can have limitations with space so you might need to invest in your email lists if it gets too big or you want to send emails more frequently. All the free versions only give you the basics for personalisation if you want to go more in-depth again you’ll need to invest.
Useful links:
Hubspot – Email marketing service with best free CRM system.
Sendinblue – Email marketing service best for integrating with eCommerce.
Mailchimp – Email marketing service best for free space and all-rounder.
Sendinblue Blog – One of the top newsletter and blog in our opinion.
Our Blog – Learn about our work with email marketing.
How We Can Help.
Email marketing platforms can get a bit overwhelming, you need to put a lot of time in to master this channel and with new features regularly added. We’re here to help! Drop us a message and we can provide some free advice. If it still proves too much you can potentially hire us if we have space. Find the contact form here.
The Author.
Tom Haynes
Worked with email marketing since 2015, has experience running newsletters and eCommerce campaigns.
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