Email marketing is a form of direct marketing that uses electronic mail to reach an audience. It is usually used along with other types of online or internet marketing such as social media marketing, websites, and blogs. It is similar to direct mail marketing except it is completely online.
Email is starting to completely replace mail because of how convenient it is to use. You don’t have to wait for the post office to deliver your mail to get a response or pay for stamps. With a click of a button, your email instantly arrives into your targeted audiences’ email box. Plus people usually only check their mailbox once a day, but they check their emails throughout the day. This leads to more potential clicks on your emails. Plus unlike mail, you can track when someone has opened your email, the click through rate, conversion rate, and much more! This makes email marketing a great tool for businesses to analyze what types of emails work best and how to fine tune their marketing campaigns.
Email Lists
So how do you get your potential customers and current customers email addresses? Ask them for it! Once they’ve signed up you can send them important information like upcoming events and deals to keep them coming back to your store. Also people are more willing to give you their email address if they think they are going to get an exclusive deals from it like discounts and rewards. So be sure to reward them for signing up!
Here are some ways to start growing your email list:
- Have a sign up sheet at check out
- Create a birthday or rewards club and give a discount when they sign up and on special occasions
- Add email registration forms to your website
- End every blog post with a call to action to sign up for your email list to receive your newsletter or exclusive deals
- Promote your newsletter or rewards club on your social media pages to get your fans to sign up and share it with their friends.
However it is very important to get consent before emailing anyone, which is why registration forms are so vital to your business. Unlike traditional marketing like flyers and brochures in the mail, unsolicited emails are usually marked as spam by email providers and users. Your email address could be flagged as spam as well, which could make it hard to communicate with anyone. More importantly though, it is illegal to send spam. You must follow the rules of the CAN-SPAM Act to avoid a potential penalties. Luckily the rules are pretty straight forward.
Here are some of the most important CAN-SPAM rules to follow:
- Don’t use deceptive or misleading headlines to get people to click on your email
- You must include your business address in the email
- You must give people a way to unsubscribe from your email list
Email Marketing Services
Now that’s you’ve got an email list what do you do with it? Where do you store it and how do you email multiple people at once without sending a group email?
Services like MailChimp, GetResponse and Constant Contact will not only store your email lists for you, they will also help you create and send them. You can use their email templates to easily design your emails, segment your lists into different groups, and add new lists.
When you send an email with an email marketing service, you will also be able to track to see who opened your emails, test different emails designs (A/B testing), check the conversion rates, and much more. Most of them offer a free or low cost plan to get you started and you can upgrade as your email lists grows.
So Why is Email Marketing Important?
Unlike social media marketing, once someone gives you their email you have their consent to email them (unless they unsubscribe). On your social media accounts, you have no control over your content actually reaching your fans and you don’t own your social media account. With an email list, you get to control who receives your emails and when. You can also target and segment your emails to only go to certain people. So you could send an email only to people who have birthday that month or potential customers to tell them more about your business. You couldn’t do that with social media marketing!
As long as they don’t unsubscribe you can continue to convert potential customers into loyal fans and keep fans coming back to your business with weekly or monthly emails. Just be sure to always treat your email subscribers as you would want to be treated. Don’t send too many emails or only send newsletters. Mix it up with discounts, surveys, and customer appreciation emails.
Need help with setting up your email lists or running your email marketing campaigns? We can help! At Elevare, we understand the needs of the consumer and how to best communicate any business’s message in a clear, interesting, and interactive way. Contact us now for a free consultation and to learn more about how you can grow your business. Schedule your consultation below.