This blog is the second in a series on email marketing. We learned what an email autoresponder is in the first blog in this series. Now, we’re moving on to how to set up your email marketing campaign. It’s time to gain subscribers – the top asset of any business. Having a subscription box on your website will give your website visitors a place to subscribe. Your subscribers – your list – is your most vital business asset. In another blog, we’ll discuss how you can gain more subscribers and boost your email list.
Benefits of an Email Marketing Campaign
With your email marketing campaign, you can send updates to your subscribers. If your newsletters (also known as ezines or e-newsletters) are informative, helpful, and entertaining, your subscribers will devour them (and hopefully recommend colleagues to subscribe too). The chance of your newsletter readers becoming return customers increases with a compelling email marketing campaign, which we will also touch on in the next blog in this series.
Social media is a good marketing tactic, but email marketing can be better. Here are some email marketing facts that show how important email is to online business:
- Forty-one percent of marketers use email as their top source of analytics data (Forbes).
- Nearly 90% of marketers say email is their primary source of generating leads (Mailigen).
- Targeted personalization increases customer engagement, according to 74% of marketers (eConsultancy).
- When marketers use personalization in the subject headings of their emails, they notice a 26% increase in openings (Campaign Monitor).
- Emails related to transactions (those emails you automatically get when you purchase something) are eight times more likely to be opened and clicked on than any other email, and six times more likely to produce even more sales (Experian).
- For every $1 spent, email marketing ROI averages $38 (DMA National Client Email Report 2015).
There are hundreds, maybe thousands of more stats and facts showing how powerful email marketing is when done right. I think you get the point. Let’s get started!
How to Setup Your Email Marketing Campaign
Choose an email campaign provider. The top three email autoresponders are ConvertKit, GetResponse, and Aweber. Any one you choose will be good. The pricing for your email autoresponder will depend on how large your list is. Check these out, and register for an account. You’ll be able to get started on your campaign right away.
Get a subscription box on your website. Your website visitors will be able to enter their email addresses to subscribe to your newsletter. In another blog in this series, we’ll discuss using incentives to get visitors to subscribe. For now, just get that box up so you can gain more subscribers. Your autoresponder choice will have good instruction on how to do this.
Set up your autoresponders. Take advantage of the awesome power for autoresponders. These will be sent out automatically for a variety of reasons, including:
- When someone subscribes to your list (send them an email confirming their subscription)
- When someone has purchased something from your website (send a confirmation of their purchase with a “you might like this too” section of similar products)
- When it’s a subscriber’s birthday (send them a happy birthday wish with a discount code)
Your list is your most important asset for your business. These are the people who are already interested in your business and its products and services. Harness that selling power, and increase your revenue.
Your next step is sending out a welcome email, which will be the first message/newsletter for your email list.
This is the third post in the email marketing series. Check out the others, if you haven’t already:
