Email marketing is not dead, actually it is still one of the best ways to find new customers, make more sales, or create a tribe of loyal followers.<\/p>\n
Small businesses have a lot to gain from email marketing but yet many of them ignore it, losing many opportunities.<\/p>\n
Whether you are running an online shop, blog, or small business website, email is a great way to retain your current customers and one of the most efficient ways to convert new visitors into customers.<\/p>\n
Many people believe that the growing use of social media altered the role of email as a powerful digital marketing tool<\/strong><\/a> but this is far from the truth.<\/p>\n Recent email marketing statistics<\/a><\/b> indicate that:<\/p>\n At the core of every email marketing campaign is the email list and having a quality email list can make the difference when it comes to conversions and ROI from your campaign.<\/p>\n Growing your email list takes time and effort and the following email marketing tips will help you do it correctly.<\/p>\n This is the first and perhaps one of the most important steps. You need to make it easy for people to register to your list.<\/p>\n No need to ask for too much information (a name and email is enough) or to have long and cluttered registration forms.<\/p>\n Try to make it \u2018single click\u2019 i.e. people enter their name and email in the registration box and they click \u2018Register\u2019.<\/p>\n Once they confirm their email, they are on your list.<\/p>\n If you want to take it a step further you can also allow people to register to your email list using their social media accounts. It\u2019s easier for them and you also get to connect with them on social media as well.<\/p>\n Why should someone give you their email address, what is the benefit<\/i> for them?<\/p>\n Make sure that the benefit is shown clearly in the registration form\/box. Are you going to help them with something, do they get free ebooks, discounts for their next purchase, coupons, etc?<\/p>\n The position of the email registration box affects the number of people that will register on your list.<\/p>\n Best practices include having the registration box:<\/p>\n Tell your subscribers what kind of information to expect from you (new posts, infographics, coupons, offers, etc) and when (every day, every week, whenever you have a new post, etc.).<\/p>\n Be honest and try not to promise something you cannot deliver otherwise your email marketing efforts will fail.<\/p>\n Try to make the registration process easy and inform the users of what is happening at each stage.<\/p>\n For example, once they enter their name and email the first time, let them know that they need to confirm their email address in order to finalize the registration.<\/p>\n Spend some time and customize the messages that go out with each email. When you send an email, greet them by their name, and avoid too general terms.<\/p>\n The latest email marketing trends indicate that email engagement<\/strong><\/a> is rising with the use of AI technology and this means that personalization is becoming more important than ever.<\/p>\n Don\u2019t expect that people will read your email every time or that they are willing to spend too much time on it.<\/p>\n The best practice is to assume that you have a couple of seconds to grab their attention (from the time they see the email) so work on your titles and the formatting of your email to make it easy to read but and scan.<\/p>\n Use headings and small paragraphs and if you decide to use images make sure that you also set the ALT tag since most email clients do not show images by default.<\/p>\n Your website is not the only medium to increase your email subscribers. You can use Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and any other social network you are using to get more emails.<\/p>\n Don\u2019t be afraid to ask your followers to register on your email list but don\u2019t forget to also explain the benefits of doing so.<\/p>\n Sending more emails than promised will not necessarily generate better results.<\/p>\n If you promised to send one email per week then do not start sending more but create a weekly digest instead. You can give them options to change their subscription preferences and get more emails from you but don\u2019t break your initial promises.<\/p>\n Yes, emails are a great way to get more visitors to your website but when running an email marketing campaign to increase sales, your primary objective is to generate more conversions and not more visits.<\/p>\n For example, let\u2019s assume that you are selling online SEO courses<\/strong><\/a> and you run an email marketing campaign using the targeted list from your blog.<\/p>\n In the email, make sure that the recipient can read everything they need about the course within the email content. They should only need to visit your website to make a purchase.<\/p>\n It\u2019s no surprise that:<\/p>\n The above statistics show two important things.\u00a0 First, is that your emails should be mobile friendly and second that you need to have a mobile strategy.<\/p>\n So, before finalizing your next email marketing campaign, make sure that it is tested against all major mobile devices (you can use mobile emulators to see how the email looks on different devices).<\/p>\n Whether you are running an SEO campaign, social media marketing or email marketing campaign it is important not to \u2018set it and forget it\u2019 but to run it, monitor the results (email open rate, click rate, unsubscribe rate, conversion rate, etc.), take corrective actions and run it again.<\/p>\n This is a continuous process until you get the desired results. As you get more experienced, you can also do market segmentation and pre-pilot and pilot phases but in the majority of the cases what is important is to perform some basic monitoring and control.<\/p>\n Register on your competitor’s email list and see what techniques they are using, what kind of emails they send out, how often, what kind of products they promote, etc.<\/p>\n Your intention is not to copy or mimic your competitor\u2019s practices but to make sure that you are ahead of them.<\/p>\n Don\u2019t try to hide the unsubscribe button believing that this will keep someone on your list. It\u2019s better to have them unsubscribed rather than have you on their spam list.<\/p>\n You should clear out some basic concepts about marketing strategies. Content marketing is not the same as social media marketing<\/a><\/b> and certainly not the same as email marketing.<\/p>\n On the contrary, your email marketing campaign needs to have a content marketing strategy i.e. what type of content to deliver by email and when to deliver it.<\/p>\n In simple words make a plan on what type of content you will send out in the next few months and ensure that it has a purpose and meaning.\u00a0 You can also use some of the content marketing tips<\/b><\/a> to make your content more interesting for your subscribers.<\/p>\n If you haven\u2019t already registered with Amazon.com, make sure that you do so and watch what they are doing with their email marketing strategies.<\/p>\n When you view a product on amazon you will receive an email in a few days with similar suggestions and when you buy a product you will receive an email with more products to buy.<\/p>\n Maybe you don\u2019t have the means to do this kind of analysis but if you get to know your list better, you will also understand your customers and niche.<\/p>\n I already mentioned that you should use social media to grow your email list, but you should also use your newsletters as a way to grow your social media profiles as well.<\/p>\n The simplest and most effective way is to add the social media buttons in your newsletter so that your subscribers can share the content but also connect with you on the various social networks.<\/p>\n Most common email marketing mistakes made by small business owners<\/strong><\/p>\n Besides the above tips that will help you increase your subscriber count, you can also learn from the mistakes of others and get better results by avoiding these common mistakes made by small business owners.<\/p>\n This is silly to even say it but the first email marketing mistake is not having a list in the first place! There is absolutely no excuse for not maintaining an email list for your online business or website.<\/p>\n If you are reading this and have no email subscriber list yet, you now know the first thing you should do, after you read this article.<\/p>\n The second mistake, it to keep a list and gather customer emails but never send them a newsletter or email.<\/p>\n This is perhaps the most common mistake I\u2019ve seen all these years and the excuse is always the same: \u201cWe were planning to send out a newsletter but never made it\u201d.<\/p>\n There are no excuses, you have many benefits to gain from communicating with your customers or readers and if you can\u2019t do it, hire someone to do it for you.<\/p>\n If you have a content-driven website the incentive to signup is the content itself but if you are selling goods or services then you may need to give some incentives (i.e. discounts, special deals) for someone to sign-up.<\/p>\n Not taking the time to think about incentives and other ways to increase your email list is a major reason for not getting a good return from your investment.<\/p>\n Shortcuts do not bring results \u2013 this is true for almost all online activities. If you think that you can have success by purchasing emails from some site on the Internet then you are wrong.<\/p>\n Try to grow your email list naturally using white hat techniques and don\u2019t get into trouble by buying email lists or false hopes.<\/p>\n Resources to Learn More<\/strong><\/p>\n\n
Email Marketing Tips<\/h2>\n
1. Give them different options \u2013 Make it easy to register<\/h3>\n
2. Offer incentives \u2013 Why should someone register on your list?<\/h3>\n
3. Position of the registration box does matter<\/h3>\n
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4. Set proper expectations<\/h3>\n
5. Make it personal – Customize your messages<\/h3>\n
6. Make the text easy to read and use alt tags for images<\/h3>\n
7. Use social media as the medium to get more email subscribers<\/h3>\n
8. Don\u2019t overdo it and don\u2019t break your promises<\/h3>\n
9. Send them the info they need to read in the email<\/h3>\n
10. Most emails are read on mobile<\/h3>\n
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11. Monitor results and take corrective actions<\/h3>\n
12. Keep an eye on your competitors<\/h3>\n
13. Make it easy to unsubscribe<\/h3>\n
14. Create a content marketing strategy for your email marketing campaigns<\/h3>\n
15. Use email to make cross-selling and up-selling<\/h3>\n
16. Include your social media profiles in your emails<\/h3>\n
17. Not having an email list in the first place<\/h3>\n
18. Having a list but not sending out newsletters<\/h3>\n
19. Not offering incentives for signups<\/h3>\n
20. Buying emails from other sources<\/h3>\n