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Guest Post by Fiyinfolu Obisakin
Email marketing is a branch of digital marketing that can be used to attract audiences to any services you offer. This form of marketing can be very reliable if you are realistic and consistent.
Email marketing is a tool used for informing customers and also develop a contact list basically. It functions as a newsletter carrier. It is used to send special offers/discounts to customers for sales.
Email marketing plays an important role in building valuable relationships with customers and developing a reliable contact list, creating loyal clients.
There’s a reliable result that everyone who creates a proper strategy with this tool will get, that is targeting the right audience without investing so much money. This means communicating with subscribers based on their interests in an affordable way.
The ultimate goal of email marketing is turning subscribers into loyal and repeat customers.
Here are the steps to help you make use of email marketing in your business.
EMAIL MARKETING: CREATE A STRATEGY
Have you heard of the popular quote “purpose aligned with planning saves you a whole lot of stress” Yes! I totally agree with this point. Once, you decide to use email marketing as a strategy for your business, you must decide on what and how, and develop a plan.
First, what do you want to use your email marketing for? Is it for an advertisement? Or to increase sales? To drive traffic to your website/social media page? Or better still to acquire reviews about your services? Be specific on the purpose, plan and work towards it for results.
Also, how do you want to achieve these goals? Create a strategy. Every plan needs a strategy. Do not forget to create different strategies, observe the results and stick to the most favorable one.
EMAIL MARKETING: CREATE CONTENT SPECIFICALLY FOR YOUR AUDIENCE
Create useful and relevant content and understand that what is useful to Subscriber A might be a junk to Subscriber B. You want sales from all your subscribers and even people that just clicked through your business page but you need different content to get their attention.
Create a survey at the early stage to understand each subscriber’s specific interests and create content that relates to their niche. This would most likely lead to sales because people are only attracted to information that is relevant and of interest to them.
Ask for their opinions and wants early. You should always make inquiries from each subscriber what they think about your website/social media page early and go further to ask for their permission on how many times they would love to receive your emails monthly.
This attracts their attention because it implies some form of responsibility and also the assurance of not sending them too many messages. Too many emails signify irrelevance, indirectly and it can lead to unsubscribing early and that’s not what you need.
PRO TIP*Do not spam subscribers with emails all the time, have a pattern with each subscriber and be consistent.
Most importantly, avoid using currencies for the subject line of your email, concise, trendy and relevant subject lines should be used. It sends a bad signal to your subscribers which always leads to ‘unsubscribe’.
EMAIL MARKETING: UNDERSTAND YOUR METRICS
Give your analytics special attention to help you serve your subscribers/ future clients best. Analytics doesn’t just help you serve your customers better, they enable you in making business-wise decisions and enables you to be business smart. Three metrics that you should pay attention to are:
The bounce rate – this metric would provide you with information about the emails that were opened and then immediately left. This could show that your headline was great, but there may be something wrong with your email content.
The click-through-rate – this metric provides the number of emails that were opened and the number of persons who visited your website/social media page via the emails you sent out. Click-throughs are good.
The conversion rate – this metric indicates the number of subscribers who took the specific action you want. This is the goal!
Measuring these tools on a regular basis can help you identify problem areas in your email marketing campaigns and help you to make changes for better performance in the future.
Keys to amazing email marketing:
1. The three R’s of a successful email marketing is Reason + Relevant content = Reliable results.
2. Email marketing is used to build a Contact list and also gather information about the individuals.
3. Email marketing is a reliable tool for Converting subscribers to loyal customers. Content is key in email marketing.
4. Using Data in the form of metrics can help you readjust your strategy to market to your audience
5. Email marketing requires little budget for results. Many email service providers offer affordable or even free solutions when starting.
Fiyinfolu is a trained linguist with her interest in digital marketing, business development, and hair trends. An expert in content creation and email marketing. For collaborations and inquiries contact her through fiyinobisakin@hotmail.com.
Interesting information I will think about when I am figuring out how to market to people. I’m new and didn’t realize how much marketing and selling there is out there.
Yes, Susan! Email marketing is such a huge part of any business. I’m glad that you found this info helpful!
This is the part of blogging which I have yet to learn. I created an account with Benchmark and I have some subscribers but could not start sending an email. I am waiting for the day to finally be able to sit down and start composing my first email. Thank you for sharing this helpful post. It gave me an idea of what to focus on when creating one.
I’m so glad you found this post, Sharon! You will be so happy once you get started with your email marketing. It’s a great way to connect with your audience outside of your blog. Let me know if you need a hand with any setup- I would be glad to help!