Email marketing is a method of promoting products via email. Typically, the email contains a promotional offer or message and sometimes a link back to the merchant’s website. Companies such as MailChimp, Hotmail, and Yahoo! have made it easy for anyone to set up a basic email marketing campaign. With just a few simple steps, you can get your campaign up and running in no time.
Here are the steps to get started:
Step one: Find your targets
The first step is to identify your target audience and segment them into groups. You can use tools such as Google Analytics to determine the demographics and psychographics of your audience. It is also worth looking at the geographic location of your site’s visitors to see if there is a particular region that appears to be under- or over-represented. Consider the audience for your product launch or existing products and find out what they want and need. Do some research on the competition and see what their approach is. This will assist you in choosing the right strategy for your campaign.
Step two: Choose the right email marketing platform
The next step is to choose the right tool (email marketing platform) for your needs. There are a wide variety of choices to choose from so you need to consider your requirements. For example, do you need to send individual emails to each of your contacts or do you want to send bulk emails to all of your contacts at once? The choice is yours. You don’t have to use a specific tool to do email marketing, but it is worth considering the pros and cons to make the right choice for your business.
Step three: Choose the right email marketing content
Now that you have your email marketing platform sorted, you can move onto the next step which is to choose the right content for your campaign. This includes the email’s subject line, body copy, and attachment (if any). You want to make sure that your content is relevant and interesting so that your audience opens the email and takes out of the information you’re offering. When creating content for your email, make sure you keep things simple and straight-forward. Short, snappy copy is usually the best way to go; you don’t want to over-write your content with complex words or phrases. The simpler the better.
You can also use Hootsuite’s Email Marketing Wizard to assist you in creating amazing email campaigns easily. Alternatively, you can use an email marketing service like MailChimp to get started with basic email marketing. Just make sure you understand the limitations of their free service plan before you get started. You can read more about MailChimp’s restrictions here.
If you’ve followed these steps, you should have an email marketing campaign in no time. You can test out your new campaign by sending yourself an email and seeing how your recipients respond. In the meantime, you can learn a lot from experience and grow your business successfully.