Email marketing is one of the most effective ways of getting the word out about your product or service. Statistics show that 92% of people use email to get in touch with businesses, and 74% use email to read marketing messages. It should come as no surprise that businesses are looking to send larger and more frequent emails to keep up with the increasing demands and to remain relevant to their audience.
One of the main concerns for businesses sending large volumes of email is making sure that their emails are not flagged as spam. It is a common misconception that using a free email service will get your emails marked as spam. In fact, using a well-known free email service to send emails marked as spam can get you into trouble with the authorities. To avoid this, businesses need to take the time to understand how to use a free email service correctly.
Set Up Your Accounts Correctly
There are plenty of free email services available, but that doesn’t mean that you can use them without thinking about the ramifications. When you sign up for a free email service, you will be presented with a few options regarding how you want to configure your account. It is important to understand that these are optional and it is up to you to decide which one you want to use. Depending on your needs and the service provider you decide to go with, there will be different settings you will need to configure. With that in mind, here are a few tips that will help you get the most from your free email service.
Make Sure Your Domain Is Valid
Before you even think about sending an email, it is essential that you check whether or not you can send emails from that domain. After all, if you get a bounce back due to a name or email being invalid, you will have wasted a lot of time and email credits. Luckily, you can easily validate your domain using a free tool like Google Domains or Cloud Domain Services. Once you are sure that your domain is valid, you can move on to the next step.
Pick A Neat, Clean, and Professional-Looking Email
Now that you have a valid domain, you need to pick a nice, clean, and professional-looking email to use. You want to make sure that whatever email address you choose is going to be easy to recognize and is appropriate for business correspondence. Naturally, you don’t want to pick a Gmail or Ymail address because those are already taken by other people. If possible, you should avoid using your personal email address either because it is likely that the recipient will mark it as spam. Finding a nice, clean, and professional looking email is not as difficult as it seems and you can use a number of email testing tools to quickly find the best candidate. You just need to follow the instructions and be sure to check the results. From there, you can continue configuring your account.
Avoid Using All Caps
It is a common misconception that using all caps is the best way to write an email. In fact, using all caps is often a sign of shouting or being informal, which cannot be used in business correspondence. When you find an email that uses all caps, it usually means that the writer is trying to be funny or dramatic, which can make it harder for the reader to understand the content. If you find a business writing an email and it uses all caps, it usually means that the writer is very passionate about the subject matter and wants to highlight that fact. While this may be the case, it is still poor form to use all caps in a business email.
Practice Sending Different Types Of Email
Another important factor to consider is the content of the email itself. You want to make sure that you are hitting the right notes and that your emails are interesting and engaging. Luckily, this can be easily fixed by sending different types of emails to different groups of people. For example, you can send a promotional email to your customers to highlight new products or special offers, but you can also send a regular newsletter to other members of your community. Just make sure that you are keeping things relevant to the audience and that you are sending appropriate emails for the subject matter. Differentiation is crucial in today’s world of marketing and you can use tools like MailChimp or HubSpot to segment your email lists and send the right message to the right person at the right time.
Consider Allowing Readers to Reply
You should also consider allowing your readers to reply to your emails. Not only does it show a level of confidence in your product or service, it also provides the reader with additional information. When a reader replies to an email, it shows a level of engagement and interest in what the sender had to say. It should come as no surprise that people are more likely to engage with content that is easily accessible. If you find that a lot of your readers are replying to your emails, it may mean that you are hitting the right note with the right audience. You should certainly be mindful of your own email policy and whether or not you should reveal your identity in your emails, but allowing your readers to engage with you via email is a great opportunity for customer communication.
Track The Effectiveness Of Your Marketing Efforts
Once you start getting the hang of using a free email service, you will find that there is a lot more that you can do. One of the main benefits of having a personal email is being able to keep track of your marketing efforts and know which ones are working and which ones aren’t. Email trackers like CrazyEgg or HubSpot provide users with all the information they need to know about the performance of their email campaigns. With that information at their fingertips, businesses can quickly identify which methods of marketing are effective and which ones need to be altered to fit the times. Email trackers also provide users with detailed reporting so that they can examine the results of their campaigns and determine whether or not they’re achieving their goals. If you’re looking for an easy way to keep track of the effectiveness of your marketing efforts, consider using a tool like CrazyEgg or HubSpot.
Create Simple Sign-Up Forms
It’s simple and it’s free. Those are the two most important things. When someone visits your website and wants to learn more about your product or service, the first thing they want to do is enter their email address to continue. You can use a tool like Google Forms, or YouMail, that automatically populates a contact form with the necessary details, or you can create a simple sign-up form and have your staff or a designated volunteer fill it out. The main purpose of the sign-up form is to garner email addresses so that you can begin sending marketing emails. While it would be nice to get everything planned out and have a nicely formatted, complete email, that takes a lot of the mystery out of getting the word out there. In the end, you will not be able to control how people view you, as the ultimate decision lies with the individual, but you can control whether or not they choose to receive your marketing emails. It is always better to have too many contacts than too few, so continue to accumulate email addresses.
Email marketing is essential to any business, regardless of the size. It allows businesses to remain in contact with their customers, to provide them with valuable information, and to grow their customer base. Using a free email service to send large emails is beneficial for businesses that want to remain agile and innovative in today’s ever-changing world. Properly utilizing a free email service will not get your emails flagged as spam, and it will allow you to send the important messages that you want to send.