Beginner's Guide to Email Marketing

What is Email Marketing 

In essence, Email Marketing is a conversation between you and current or prospective customers. It can be used to attract new customers, but it can also be used to maintain a relationship between your current customers and your business. 

email marketing

How Email Marketing Works

It is very easy to track and setup an email marketing campaign, very much accessible for small businesses also. A newsletter sign up option can be added for your website. As people sign up, you can send newsletters to a growing audience. You can also direct customers to the newsletter from your social media profiles.

The biggest advantages of email marketing are ease and price. Compared to other types of marketing, email marketing is less expensive way to advertise your company and your products and services.

Email marketing allows you to target particular groups of customers or even specific individuals. Offering individual customers special birthday deals on merchandise or services is one way to do this.

A restaurant, for instance, might send an email to customers on their birthdays offering 50% off an entree. This kind of personalization helps a business develop and maintain a relationship with a customer—and that can lead to increased sales and customer loyalty.

Elements for Successful Email Marketing

 A Strong Subject Head Line - 

Your subject line is like a mini advertisement all by itself. If your subject line doesn’t catch a person’s eye attention and, ideally, intrigue them, it is unlikely that they will open and read your email. Take some time to make your subject line brief, pointed, and interesting. 

Avoid Spammy Words -

 Here is a brief list of spammy words to avoid in your marketing email subject lines :

  • Sale                                   • Free  

  • Help                                   • % Off

  • Reminder                            • Days of the week 

  • Donate                               • Assistance

  • Fwd: and Re:                      • Report 

  • Webinar                             • Superlatives like perfect, wonderful, etc.

This is by no means a fully comprehensive list, but you get the point. You have to legitimately get a person’s attention in order to have a better shot at having your email opened and read.

email marketing tips: source- missionbox

A Proper Call To Action -

Requesting your audience to take specific actions just like on your website.By ending your email with a proper CTA, you give them a proper hint what they should do next.

( Will everybody perform this action? Probably not. But if you ask people to do something, more of them will than would have if you didn’t ask. After all, if you don’t ask, the answer is always no.)

Personal and Individual-

Your emails should be personable and, when appropriate, personalized. People like to feel like they are receiving exclusive information. While most people know intellectually that emails from companies tend to be mass generated, emotionally, they like to feel like they have been singled out to receive this information. 

Avoid sounding salesy and focus on sounding like a real person who is reaching out to them on an individual basis. If you decide to personalize the marketing emails you send, make sure that your system is working correctly and your information is up to date. 

Personalization can actually be harmful to your efforts if you have the wrong data or your system isn’t working right because nobody wants to open an email with the wrong name in the subject line or, worse, a place holder like [NAME]. 

As you craft your marketing emails, make sure that you keep the reader in mind. Ask yourself questions like what would I want to read? what would get my attention? and how would I feel if this was sent to me? Effective Email Marketing can be a great source of qualified, interested traffic to your site.

Simply put, this is because people who have read and reacted to your emails are more likely to complete conversions on your site.

Lead Magnet -

A lead magnet is an offer to attract your audience. You’ve probably seen this before.

Here is a list of few lead magnets :

 • Free E-book                         • Free Checklist

 • Free Cheat sheets                • Free Templates

 • Free Consultations                • Free Quizzes

 • Free Demo                           • Free Discounts

 • Free Shipping                        

You get the point. Now here’s the thing – you don’t need to develop a bunch of lead magnets. You just need one good one

Perfect Your Timing-

Timing can have a huge effect on whether or not your subscribers open and click your emails, so think carefully about what time and day you send your emails out.

You won’t be able to figure out the perfect time immediately but perform some A/B tests to identify which timeframes seem to do best and explore those in future campaigns.

Write to just one person-

When you draft your subject line and message content, it’s natural to think of the thousands of people who are about to receive it.

However, it’s far more effective to write as if speaking to an individual person, with a personal subject line and a personalized message.

To write this way, you’ll have to really know your buyer persona. You need to understand their problems, their desires, their values, their likes, and their dislikes.

source: Business 2 community

Write Like A Friend-

For example, a corporate phrase like, “We’re offering discounts to our customers!” comes off as distant and stuffy.

A more friendly alternative could be something like, “you’ve gotta check out this deal…”
That makes the email seem a whole lot more personal and makes it less likely that your recipients will simply delete your message and move on.

Remember: in this age of information, everyone is looking for a reason to ignore your emails. They aren’t looking for a reason to read them. But if you appeal to them on a personal level, you’ll stand a better chance of getting that email opened.

Optimize for Mobile-

1. Keep the formatting simple (single-column), under 600 px wide.
2. Use a larger font. Small fonts are difficult to read on mobile.
3. Don’t assume images are being displayed (Android turns images off by default). Make sure it looks good without them.
4. Use smaller images to reduce load time.
5. Use a large call-to-action button. Larger buttons are easier to tap with a thumb.
6. Don’t place two links next to, or on top of one another. That way, the user won’t tap the wrong one by accident.

How to Build Email Strategies ?

1. Set a goal for your email campaign
2. Decide on the types of email you’ll send
3. Choose your audience segments
4. Select the right technology
5. Create eye-catching optins
6. Plan emails and followups
7. Craft the perfect subject line
8. Write your email marketing copy
9. Design your email
10. Test and track your email campaign

Also, if you have suggestions related to this topic that our readers can benefit from, let me know in the comments section.

Happy reading!