What Is Email Marketing?
The term email marketing encompasses the procedure of generating a list of email addresses for your website and employing it as a means to advertise your content and merchandise.
To make it effective, it’s important to permit (and promote) individuals to subscribe to your website. This will enable them to become part of your email list, which allows you to send them valuable information. Having a large number of subscribers on your email list is crucial.
Your email list consists of your top clients who have subscribed to receive more content after finding your site interesting. Therefore, they are highly receptive to any offers you may send them such as product sales, discount coupons, and affiliate promotions. This is why bloggers and website owners value a sizable email list, as it can lead to increased profitability.
Email lists are not only valuable for monetary purposes, they also serve as excellent avenues for generating traffic. You can disseminate updates from your website, like notifications for newly published articles or regular newsletters, which entice people to visit again. This allows you to establish a loyal base of audience who frequently revisit your website.
Email marketing tips to get you started
1. Create an email marketing plan.
We’ve identified some recommended methods that you should take into account when developing an email marketing plan, in order to simplify the planning process.
Determine the demographic of the people you want to reach or communicate with.
It is essential to have a clear understanding of your target audience to effectively communicate, regardless of what you are selling. Mailchimp allows for deeper segmentation within your audience, enabling you to send personalized and targeted emails that boost engagement, develop trustworthy relationships and generate higher ROI.
Sources of registration
The information concerning how and where subscribers signed up for your list on the signup form is highly significant. For an e-commerce business linked to Mailchimp, this data can assist in determining the appropriate communication strategy and pinpointing areas to target for marketing activities.
Groups and segments
By identifying smaller groups of individuals within your larger audience, you can create segments and groups that allow for more personalized and relevant emails to be sent to recipients. This leads to higher success rates for campaigns as the more relevant the content, the better the results. While there may be occasions when you want to send emails to your entire list, utilizing Mailchimp’s segmentation tools to segment users can significantly improve click-through rates and generate more e-commerce orders through your campaigns.
Make a decision about what to write.
After identifying your audience, it is important to consider the content of your message. What message do you wish to convey to your audience and what strategy will you employ to market your content? Your emails should be focused and aimed at your subscribers, taking into consideration their interests and purpose for signing up.
Determine your sending schedule and objectives.
The frequency of customer emails is not written in stone, but excessive sending may lead to subscriber disinterest or unsubscription. Some bloggers and news sites may choose to send communication daily, while others may choose bi-monthly to maintain reader excitement. It is recommended to determine the appropriate email campaign pace based on unsubscribe rates and click-through rates, and adjust the frequency accordingly.
Create a timetable.
Creating a content calendar is a way to ensure that you are staying on schedule with your campaigns, social media posts, blog posts, and other content.
The frequency of your email marketing will be determined by factors such as your industry, the nature of your content (content marketing plan), and the frequency of your sending.
2. Design your emails
Tips for designing
When designing email campaigns , focus on your message and keep your design straightforward. We suggest laying out all the elements for your campaign in a hierarchy, putting your most important information or the main takeaway toward the top so people can quickly scan your email if they’re short on time.
Create your own templates through coding.
If you are seeking greater command over the appearance of your emails, it is possible to create your own HTML template and upload it to Mailchimp.
3. Test your emails
Perform tests across various email clients and internet service providers.
Due to variations in email clients, the appearance of your Mailchimp campaign may differ in the inboxes of your recipients. It is important to verify the mobile display of emails, as they can appear distinct in responsive designs.
Dispatch trial emails to pals and colleagues.
Sending a test email to your friends or colleagues who can proofread your email and provide feedback on the design would allow them to view the campaign in their inbox.
Discover the optimal version through A/B Testing initiatives.
Running an A/B test enables you to try out different variations of your emails to assess the impact of any alterations made on your results. You can use this technique to determine the best subject line for getting the maximum opens and clicks, as well as to discover the ideal time of day for your customers to become more likely to make purchases via your campaign.
4. What you can do with marketing automation
Automation refers to a focused email or series of emails that can be programmed and left alone, unlike typical campaigns. From a series of introductory emails to follow-up messages post-purchase and even providing special incentives, automation can help you enhance customer communication processes, allowing you to concentrate on generating content and boosting the return on investment (ROI). Additionally, you can craft, dispatch, and follow order notifications to notify customers about their purchases made from your store.
5. Measure your performance
Your Mailchimp reports’ gathered data on marketing analytics will facilitate the optimization of your marketing strategy moving forward.
Click-through rates and email opens
The statistics that primarily measure campaign engagement are the ones that reveal how effectively the subject lines and content of your campaign connects with a specific list. However, it’s crucial to take into account the open and click-through rates of other businesses in your industry to avoid interpreting your statistics in isolation.
Data related to electronic commerce
Once you have linked your store to Mailchimp and activated e-commerce link tracking in your campaigns, you will be able to access purchase data for your subscribers through campaign reports, subscriber profiles, and the account dashboard.
Increased online visitors to a website.
By sending campaigns, you can increase the traffic to your website or online store. Additionally, Mailchimp provides integrations to monitor website traffic or e-commerce activity and detect any patterns following a campaign.
Isn’t Email Marketing Spam?
In brief, the answer is negative.
There are two main reasons why email marketing is not spam.
- People signup themselves.
- They are free to unsubscribe at any time.
It’s important to refrain from including individuals in your email list who haven’t willingly subscribed. Only those who opt in to receive updates will be contacted, and they can opt out at any time. It’s essential to provide a clear explanation of the content they will receive, to avoid any unexpected emails.
What Is AWeber?
AWeber is the go-to email marketing provider for the industry. With tens of thousands of professional sites utilizing their services, including ours, they simplify the process of setting up and maintaining an email list.
AWeber’s popularity is attributed to the abundance of useful features they provide. Let us examine a few of these.
Easily Create Signup Boxes (Web Forms)
To encourage people to register, your website must have a visible sign-up box. AWeber simplifies this process by enabling you to generate several sign-up boxes, also referred to as “web forms,” for various sections/pages of your site.
To make your own sign up form, just log in to your AWeber account and navigate to the ‘Sign Up Forms’ section, then select ‘Create A Sign Up Form’.
When you click on it, you will be directed to the ‘Web Forms Editor’ where you can create your signup box. You have the option to use pre-existing templates that you can modify or start from scratch to design your own. The process for creating them is the same for both options.
Ensure the appropriate size of your signup box by modifying the ‘Form Type’ settings. It is crucial to consider the placement of the box on your site. If it is intended for the sidebar, it should be reasonably small, roughly 250-300px wide. However, if it is for after your post, it may require more width, such as 600px.
To edit the web form, all you need to do is progress through each dropdown tab one by one. The crucial details that you REQUIRE are;
- Form Type Labels (i.e. Name, Email),
- Subscribe/Submit button (you can edit what the button actually says),
The remaining characteristics are not essential, only the mentioned features are indispensable for the functionality of your web form.
Including details about the subscription or providing a reference link to a webpage with relevant information is beneficial. This is where landing pages prove to be useful – gain more knowledge about landing pages.
Finally, consider the appearance of your web form. It should be consistent with your website’s branding, fonts, color scheme, and other elements, yet also stand out in order to attract attention. Experiment with a few different web forms to determine which one is the most effective.
Please note that you don’t have to limit yourself to static web forms for signups. Read our article on how to design a lightbox form and discover how it can significantly increase your subscriber count.
Create An eCourse
AWeber’s standout attribute is its capacity to generate a succession of emails that get dispatched to newly added subscribers without manual effort. This feature empowers you to design either an eCourse or introduction manual for your fresh audience. It’s a great benefit as you can promote it as motivation for individuals to subscribe to your newsletter (such as “enroll and receive our 7-day eCourse as a gift”), and once configured, it will automatically get sent out to subscribers.
After confirming their subscription through your signup box, new site users will receive a series of emails that you have created. You have the flexibility to establish multiple emails and schedule them to be distributed at various intervals such as daily, weekly, or monthly.
To accomplish this task on AWeber, navigate to the ‘Messages’ section and select ‘Follow Up Series’. Next, click on ‘Create A Follow Up’.
Similar to creating web forms, there are numerous templates available that you can utilize to compose your email follow-ups. Alternatively, you can effortlessly design your own using the straightforward features provided.
Ensure that your emails are visibly branded to avoid confusion about their origin and to project a more professional image. Including links to both your main website and social media accounts could be a useful strategy in offering multiple avenues for staying connected with your audience.
Create Newsletters/Broadcasts
In addition to an eCourse, you have the option to broadcast emails to your entire list whenever you desire. These will be distributed simultaneously, making them valuable for advertising, deals, website modifications, etc.
Why not consider creating a newsletter instead of sending out random broadcasts? By doing so, you can compile all of your promotions, offers, website updates, and more in one place and send it out weekly or monthly. Your subscribers will appreciate getting everything in your regular newsletter and won’t get frustrated by too much content being sent out separately.
The process of creating newsletters is identical to how follow-up emails are produced. To gain insights on our newsletter creation approach, refer to our article on establishing a newsletter in AWeber.
