Basics of Email Marketing - You Need These 6 Things!
It might seem like email marketing is a blast from the past. But actually, it’s still an (incredibly) important part of your marketing strategy. Inboxes are more full than they’ve ever been. But people still open emails from people they care about and brands they trust. Learning the basics of email marketing is an absolute must.
So, how does it work? Let’s walk through the process so you can come up with an email strategy that captures the eyes of your dream clients.
choose your provider.
Before you choose a platform to use, it’s important to understand your goal. Do you simply want to stay in contact with your list subscribers? Or do you have a more robust long-term plan to develop and sell e-courses?
If you just want to stay in touch, you can use the free or minimal-cost options out there. If you want to create and sell courses, you may need to purchase more options.
Once you know your goal, take a look at the options, pricing plans, and services and decide what will work best for you.
who are the top providers?
Mailchimp. This is my preferred platform. They have more customizable design options and it syncs seamlessly with Squarespace, which I use for my own website and for sites I design for my clients. They have a solid free version and they offer affordable paid monthly subscriptions that run between $10-15 per month. They also have a super high-end version for corporate clients.
Constant Contact. Many of my business friends use this option and they love it as much as I love Mailchimp. Constant Contact also has a good free version. Paid monthly subscriptions run between $20-45 per month.
Kajabi. An all-encompassing product for high-level digital marketing, the Kajabi platform has a lot to offer. Subscriptions run north of $100 per month for even their basic package, but if you have e-courses or big growth in mind, it might be a great product for you.
create your opt-in offer.
Once you’ve signed up with a service, create a free opt-in offer. This is a basics of email marketing must: something you give someone for free in exchange for their subscription to your email list.
For an e-commerce store or shop, a free offering is usually a promotional or discount code for your products. For a service provider, it’s usually a downloadable free PDF guide or a list of tips and tricks.
Come up with an offering that’s 1) valuable to your potential customer and 2) doable for you. If you’re offering a discount code, create a digital graphic that you can send to your new subscribers. If you’re offering a guide or how-to PDF, write and design it so it’s ready to go when your new subscribers sign up. Then pop it into your automated “thank you” email that subscribers receive once they sign up.
create a quiz.
Here at FFM, we created a quiz asking: “What’s missing from your digital marketing strategy?” This quiz allows our audience to discover actionable advice that they can implement same-day based on the weakest element of their strategy.
According to our favorite quiz maker, Interact, quizzes are not only fun for your audience, they’re useful for your business, integral in “generating leads, driving traffic, and segmenting your audience.”
How does it work? A visitor takes a quiz and is prompted to enter their email address in order to get the results. The results are much more detailed than the kind of quiz results you see on Facebook, with actionable tips based answers to your questions. Ideally, the participant receives a bit of free consulting and you get a new subscriber! When it’s done well, a quiz is a win-win.
set up a rhythm that works for you.
Decide right away how often you’ll send out an email. If you run an e-commerce store, you might send out an email to your list as frequently as once or twice a week. If you offer a service, once or twice a month would be effective.
The goal is strike a balance between two extremes. You don’t want to spam your list but you also don't want to disappear. Think about how often it makes sense for you to email and stick with it.
If you’re not sure how often to email, try signing up for a competitor’s email list and observe what they do. You can also research best email practices online.
make it easy to subscribe.
Whatever web builder you use should have an easy way for people to sign up for your email list, such as a pop-up invitation, a form, or a prominent button. (Or all three).
Since FFM is part of the Squarespace Circle, we use their features and find them incredibly easy to use through the Newsletter block on their dashboard. My preferred signup tool is a form that appears on your home page. I also suggest that my clients add the form to the end of every blog post in case a visitor finds the post before visiting the Homepage of the website.
The bottom line? Make it easy to join the fun!
kick it up a notch with automations.
If you offer a freebie or promo code, you’ve already dipped a toe into automations: once someone signs up for your list, they get a free promotional code or PDF file immediately through an automated email response.
But you can do more with automations: crank up the heat and add a challenge series! This is a set of emails that send automatically on a schedule. That’s right: build it once and it sends forever. Try creating a five-email challenge series that’s triggered when they subscribe. It gives them one more reason to sign up and one more thing you can use to promote your list on social. You can even go all-out and create multiple automations that are going at once.
Why would people want to participate? It proves your value and gives them an opportunity to try you out before hiring you.
Want more information about how to design a marketing strategy for your business? Sign up for my email list below! (See what I did there? I’d love for you to join me for even more basics of email marketing and content-boosting strategy.) :)
