Disclosure: This blog post contains affiliate links.  

I am sure that you have come across the term email marketing but what exactly is it? Email Marketing is a way of marketing your business to promote more interaction and ultimately sales for your website.  

 

Everything You Need To Know About Email Marketing For 2018

 

There are many email service providers available to choose from for email marketing, making your life so much easier.  Email service providers are designed for email marketing. Usually, they contain lots of features and resources to make it easier for you to manage your email marketing strategy. Popular email service providers include; AWeber, MailerLite and MailChimp.

I have recently discovered a popular email service provider, ConvertKit, who I have found to be a company that generally wants to help you to grow and succeed. ConvertKit have a vast range of features available in their platform including; landing pages, automation services etc.

They also offer a free 14-day trial, so that you can try out their services before committing to use them. Click here to sign up to their FREE 14-day trial!    

 

 

Why Should I Care About Email Marketing?

A very good question… I decided to research this question, in relation to how this affects us in 2018,. I found some pretty interesting facts from surveys and campaigns, which highlight the importance of email marketing in this modern techno world that we all live in!  

 

 

INTERESTING FACTS ABOUT EMAIL MARKETING

 

• In 2017, global e-mail users amounted to 3.7 billion users
• 89% marketers said that email was their primary channel for lead generation.(Mailgen)
• Tuesday is the best day of the week to send emails. If you send two emails a week, send the second email on Thursday. (coscheduleresearch)
• By the end of 2018, worldwide mobile email users are expected to total over 2.2 billion. (radicati)
• 72% of customers open an email due to the discount it offers and 62% customers open due to the personalized subject line. (campaign monitor)
• Subject lines including words like “urgent”, “important”, “alert”, etc. are proven to increase open rates. (MailChimp)
• Interactive email content increases the click-to-open rate by 73% and adding videos to your email content can boost click rates up to 300%.  (Martech Advisor)
• Social sharing buttons in email increase click-through rates by 158% (Sarv.com)

 

 

Different Types of Emails

There are different types of emails that you can create, depending on the email service provider that you are with. It also depends upon what your intentions are, and the results that you would like to produce. These include;

• Broadcast emails – Where you can draft and send an email whenever you want, to your subscribers.
• Autoresponder – These are pre-set emails sent automatically, for e.g. once somebody signs up on your website, they will get a series of emails that you have created and set up beforehand.
• Marketing Emails – Including newsletters, sales, promotions etc.
• Transactional emails – These are more important if you run an online shop, for e.g. welcome to new account / order update, payment confirmation etc.

 

 

I have 50,000-page likes on Facebook, why do I need to bother with an email list?

Very simple- You do not ‘own’ your Facebook likes, and what if someday you lose your Facebook account and all those precious likes?

However, with an email list, you can export all of your contacts into a .csv file, (readable on excel). You can save this list to your computer, (perhaps look into database protection laws to do it correctly!), and you can even swap email service providers, because the important data that you have, are your subscribers’ details.  

 

How Will Email Marketing Improve Business?

 

• Increase sales
• Increase repeat visitors to your website
• Increase repeat customers
• Helps to build your brand
• Gain trust from your users – emails allow you to connect with your potential customers on a more personal level
• Showcase your social proof – testimonials, share social links etc.

 

So we can see the importance in email marketing and what we can achieve from it, let’s look at how we can use the different types of emails…  

 

8 Ways to Use Email Broadcasts

• Newsletters – These can be weekly/ bi-weekly/ monthly. Newsletters are great to share your news, updates, info, and any new blog posts
• Questionnaires for new product research – This is a great way to research and ask your audience what they want, helping you to create a produuct which is more likely to sell, as you are hitting your customers needs. Remember I mentioned ConvertKit at the beginning of this post? Another great feature that they offer is the ability to include links in your email for your subscribers to click on, which would then group your subscribers. This is a great way to utilise surveys in your emails and to learn more about your potential customers. Click here to get started with ConvertKit!
• Pre/post product launch reminders; use emails to help you build an atmosphere for your product launch.
• Contests
• Affiliate marketing deals for your favourite products, you can help generate sales
• Special deals on products / services that you sell – to hep generate business
• Weekly summary for blog posts
• Invitations to courses/ events / webinars

 

 

7 Ways To Use Automation Emails

• Teach something- build a relationship with your subscriber by giving away knowledge for free e.g. knowledge on an industry problem that you can solve.
• Pitch products/ services – You can arrange a series of 4 emails starting by sharing your knowledge, and then gradually introducing your products and what results they can provide for potential customers
• Bringing people through your product launch process to build the atmosphere
• Creating your marketing funnel; give away a freebie to encourage people to subscribe to your email list. Once they have subscribed, you can arrange a series of emails for e.g. an email asking for feedback on their freebie, an email explaining more about yourself, and then you can gradually bring in emails with further details on your products
• Best blog posts to solve a certain common problem in your area
• Getting people to connect with you on social media platforms
• Asking your subscribers questions – It is great to learn more about your customers needs, as this will help you target your product/ services correctly.

 

 

Tips For Writing a Great Email Marketing Strategy, That Connects With Subscribers

• Be yourself, not a robot – If people want a robotic message, they would call their bank!
• Deliver good valuable information, for FREE – this helps to build trust with your audience.
• Tag your subscribers into groups, for e.g. a group of subscribers who subscribed for free checklist, a separate group who signed up to free mini course etc. This helps you to create a different autoresponder email for the different groups of tagged subscribers, and helps with your targetting.. ConvertKit offer this brilliant feature!
• Use their first name with personalisation fields inside the email
• Encourage discussion through email – build a community around your brand!
• Make a subject that stands out in email boxes, you want your email to be opened
• Let your personality stand out
• Make sure your email is optimised for viewing on mobile phones

 

 

 

 

How Do I Get Email Subscribers To Begin With?

 

The easiest way to get people to subscribe to join your email list is by offering them an incentive to do so… Everybody loves getting something for free! A Lead Magnet, is where you include an email optin, where you give away something for free for people to subscribe, but where your freebie is actually related to a product that you can then target your subscribers with.

E.g. If you have an online course as a product, a great way to create a lead magnet to generate more subscribers could be by giving away the first lesson on your course, for free! This not only gives away something valuable to potential customers, but at the end of their free course, they have had a taste of your teaching style, and will feel more lead to purchasing the rest of the course.

There are different ways to include an email opt-in on your website/ blog.  If you are a member of Elegant Themes and use the DIVI theme, (which is an amazing WordPress theme). By selecting the package with the plugin upgrade, you have access to the BLOOM  plugin.

This is a brilliant feature where you can include opt-ins in a variety of ways, including; pop-ups, header opt-ins, sidebar opt-ins etc. Click here for further information on Elegant Themes, DIVI and the BLOOM plugin!

 

Landing Pages

 Another great way of gathering subscribers with your lead magnet opt-in, is by having a dedicated landing page. The reason for this is because if a user navigates to a web page with a menu, lots of detail, images and your opt-in… they are more likely to get distracted with all that content! The beauty of a landing page is that it is clean and simple. No navigation links. No unnecessary detail. Just a page with your opt-in, and the user is more likely to focus on that one detail!

If you want to create a landing page, but you dont know where to start, Leadpages is a company that offers a very easy to use interface, for creating landing pages.   Another company that offers the feature of creating a landing page is….. you guessed it! ConvertKit  Can you see why I am raving so much about this email service provider!? 

 

What Can I Offer As A Lead Magnet?

Struggling for ideas on your free giveaway for email subscribers? Here are some ideas which I am sure that you can use for yourself;

• Free mini email course education series
• Free eBook (it only needs to be 5 pages, remember quality over quantity!)
• Checklist
• Printables, such as a work calender
• Access to a hidden page on website
• Access to webinar
• Video education series
• Discount on your services

 

REMEMBER to set up your autoresponder/ automation email series, to work in your advantage for email marketing.

E.g.

• Website visitor subscribes to receive free email course
• They receive autoresponder (maybe an email a day over 5 days for their mini course)
• Then arrange a series of emails for after their course;
• 1st email requesting feedback/ any questions
• 2nd email offering bonus content from the mini course
• 3rd email asking about them, perhaps in a survey
• 4th email telling them your story and what inspired you
• 5th email sharing blog posts related with the course content and mention your related product
• 6th email focusing more on your related product

 

 

 

Convertkit the ultimate email marketing resource

 

 

Wow, that was a lot of information! Definitely time for a brew now…

I hope that you enjoyed this post on email marketing and that you are full of ideas on how to create and implement your own email marketing strategy, to build your subscriber list and ultimately, build your business.  

 

Just to remind you that you can access a FREE 14 trial with ConvertKit, who offer a wide range of features that were covered in this post.

Click this link to start your trial or purchase your email marketing plan now!    

 

 

 

 

Have a great day!  

 

Emily x