Email marketing is a form of online marketing that allows businesses to connect with customers through email communication.
The appeal of email marketing is that you can target the right audience with content that is relevant and interesting to them. This makes the form of marketing feel more personal and, therefore, boosts engagement. Moreover, you can measure the success of your campaigns in terms of clicks, opens, and click-throughs, making it easy to track performance.
Despite its apparent popularity, engaging with customers through email can be challenging. To ensure that your efforts are not wasted, you need to set up automated campaigns that will nurture and grow your mailing list.
Set Up Automated Campaigns To Nurture Your List
To start engaging with your audience via email, you need to make the first move and establish contact with prospective customers. One of the best ways of doing this is through the use of email campaigns. These automated campaigns will help you to nurture and grow your mailing list by sending messages to groups of people who have expressed an interest in your product or service.
Depending on your company’s information technology (IT) department, your email marketing campaign may be relatively easy or challenging to set up. For example, if you’re using a third-party email marketing platform, such as MailChimp or HubSpot, you will need to do some configuration to integrate with your company’s email system.
Why Automated Email Marketing Is the Best Way Forward
While it’s always nice to receive an email message from a stranger, cultivating a mailing list is almost essential for any business. Why? Because having a mailing list allows you to communicate with your customers and prospects on a regular basis, ensuring that they continue to value your brand and continue to have faith in your product or service. Moreover, having a mailing list allows you to keep in touch with those who were not interested in your product or service initially, providing you the opportunity to grow your audience and gain new customers.
The advantage of an automated email campaign is that it allows you to build a database of contacts that can be accessed on an ongoing basis. Moreover, depending on the software used, you can set up email campaigns in mere minutes, enabling you to get started straight away.
Automated email marketing is, therefore, the best way forward for any business, as it provides the opportunity to build a database of contacts who can be engaged with on a regular basis, regardless of whether they were interested in your product or service or not at the start of the campaign.
Create Email Campaigns To Grow Your Audience
To begin establishing communication with your customer base via email, you need to generate interest in your product or service, as well as engage with prospective customers with content that is both relevant and interesting.
In general, people prefer to receive marketing emails from companies they know and trust, which is why it’s a good idea to establish a connection with potential customers through relevant content.
As a rule of thumb, aim to have at least one email campaign per week, sending content at regular intervals throughout the year to encourage engagement and, hopefully, convert some of your subscribers into customers.
With an established email list, you can send out regular emails containing useful information, product discounts, or special offers to provide value and incentive to keep the recipient engaged.
Moreover, you can use email marketing to disseminate information about new products and developments, as well as to encourage people to visit your website and make purchases. While many marketers obsess over the numbers, the ultimate goal of email marketing is to grow your subscriber base and gain as many potential customers as possible.
Use The Right Email Marketing Platform
Nowadays, there are many reputable email marketing platforms available, making it easy for almost any business to get started with a campaign. Before choosing one, take into account the following.
- Features
- Cost (free to low-cost)
- Pricing
- Support
- User-friendliness
- Track Record
- Data Security
- Integrations
- Extensions
- API (Application Programming Interface)
- A/B Testing
- Content Personalization
- And More
With these seven things in mind, you’ll be able to pick the right email marketing platform for your business.
How to Nurture Your Subscribers And Grow Your Email List
Once you’ve picked the right email marketing platform and started establishing communication with your audience, you need to learn how to nurture and grow your list. To do this, you need to make sure you’re sending relevant, interesting, and high-quality content to your subscribers on a regular basis.
The following are some easy ways of growing your email list and nurturing your subscribers:
Content Is Key
To begin with, you need to make sure that your content is both relevant and interesting to your audience. In general, people prefer receiving marketing emails from companies they know and trust, so you need to establish a connection with your subscribers through content that is both relevant and interesting to them. Moreover, you can use a tool like Google Analytics to track the success of your campaigns and determine the types of content that your audience values the most.
As a general rule of thumb, you should aim to have at least one piece of content relevant to your subscribers per week, or at least twice each month. Moreover, you should look to create unique and valuable content that will encourage your audience to engage with you.
Regular But Not Too Regular
A frequent emailer can become annoying to your audience, particularly if they’re receiving a barrage of messages every week. To avoid this, you need to space out your emails so that your audience does not feel bombarded by too much content.
To determine how often you should shoot off an email, look to other businesses that are similar to your own and see how often they email their audience. If they email their audience too frequently, it could be that your subscribers are annoyed by the constant marketing messages and would rather you didn’t email them so often. On the other hand, if these other businesses email their audience less frequently, it could be that they’re confident their content is valuable and will encourage people to engage.
Make It Suitable To All Ages
When picking a platform to host your email marketing campaign, you need to make sure that the content is suitable for all ages. While it’s great to have a platform that is particularly appealing to millennials, if the content you’re sending is not suitable for all ages, you could upset some of your subscribers. Moreover, if you’re sending adult content, you might run the risk of being marked as a spammer by the recipient’s email service provider, so it’s important to ensure the content is family-friendly. Alternatively, you could pick a platform that is restricted to adults only and ensure that all your content is appropriate for that audience.
Offer Them Value
When picking a platform to host your email marketing campaign, you need to make sure that the content is valuable to your audience. To do this, you need to make sure you’re offering your audience value through your content in some way. Sometimes this can simply mean providing more information about a product or service. However, if your content is simply infographics or dull copy, your audience may find it difficult to value what you’re offering and, therefore, be less likely to respond.
Measure The Results Of Your Campaigns
To track the success of your email marketing campaign, you need to pick a tool that will enable you to measure the results of your efforts. The best tool for the job is Google Analytics, which can be integrated with all kinds of email marketing platforms, providing you with the data you need to make informed decisions.
To start using Google Analytics, simply visit your website’s analytics page and follow the on-screen instructions. For the best results, make sure you’ve logged in to your Google account before you start monitoring your site’s performance.
Use The Right Keywords
To determine the right keywords for your campaign, you need to make sure that they are both relevant and appropriate for the content you’re producing. For example, if your goal is to gain more website traffic from search engines, you might want to focus on using keywords such as “marketing advice,” “search engine optimization (SEO),” or “digital marketing.”