Newsletters are another great example. You can put a form on your website and ask people to sign up for your newsletter. If you are a blogger, you can use it to drive traffic to your blog. You can also use it to promote your products and services.
You can also send emails about special events. When a festival comes up, you can send an email blast to wish all your prospects. The best part is that you can even personalize your emails. So, you can even wish your prospects on their birthdays and anniversaries. To create a buzz for their special day, you can also attach a coupon code for them. This way you can add a great personal touch and also build good relationships.
What is required to start doing emails marketing ?
There are basically two things you need. An email marketing tool and an email list. Let’s understand both of them one by one.
why do you need an email marketing tool? What's wrong with Gmail or any other email service provider? One of the major reasons for this is that with Gmail you can send a maximum of 500 emails in a single day. There are a lot of tools available which you can use. Some of them are MailChimp. A weber, Active Campaign, Send in Blue, Drip, and Zoho. I personally use Active Campaign. Almost every tool gives you a free trial. So, you can try each of them and see which one you like. In case you want to use Active Campaign.
Email list. What is it?
It is a collection or database of emails to which you send out emails during your marketing campaign. There are various ways to build an email list. You can ask people to sign up for your newsletter. Or you can create a lead magnet like an ebook or a video course. You will provide it for free in exchange for their emails. You can also ask people to join your webinar where you can provide immense value to them.
Now there’s one thing you need to understand. Some people just buy an email database and then just start sending emails to them.
Don’t do it. Why? First of all, most of the emails are useless to you. You are just sending cold emails to them. So there are high chances that your email may land in spam or promotion box. Also, you don’t need people in your email list who are not interested in your category or niche.
Let’s say I’m selling a diet plan which helps underweight people to gain some mass. So, obviously, I don’t need people on my list who want to lose weight. Even if I get them on my list, my diet plan will be totally useless for them. It may even make their condition worse. Building an email list is a huge topic.
Basics Terms on Email Marketing
Now before stepping into the world of email marketing, you need to understand a few basic terms.
- The first one is the Delivery Rate.
- It is the percentage of emails that are delivered to the total number of emails sent. If you sent 1000 emails and 950 of them were received by the users, then you have a 95% delivery rate.
It is the percentage of users who didn’t receive your email. Out of 1000 people, if 50 people didn’t receive your email, then you have a 5% bounce rate. An email can bounce because of various reasons.
What is a Soft bounce?
If it bounces because of permanent reasons like a fake or invalid email address, then it is called a hard bounce. If it bounces because of some temporary reasons, then it is called a Soft bounce. Situations like a full inbox or server down can cause soft bounce. Then comes the Open rate. It is the percentage of people who open your email. If out of 1000 people, 400 people open your email, then you have a 40% open rate.
Click-through rate.
It is the percentage of people who click at least one link in your email. If 150 out of 1000 people click on the link in your email, then you have a 15% click-through rate. These are the few basic terms which you should know before running an email marketing campaign.
Why Email Marketing is important ?
Now let’s see why you should use email marketing as a strategy to grow your business.
The first reason is the high return on investment. It is said that on average for every dollar you spend in email marketing, you can roughly generate $40.
As I said earlier, the best part is that you can customize and personalize your emails.
Other than that, you can also automate almost everything.
And this can save a hell of a lot of time for you. Also, with the growing rate of mobile usage, people tend to check their emails several times a day.
In email marketing, you can track and measure everything very precisely. There are a lot of metrics that help you to understand your growth.
For example;
You can try and test different times and days of the week and see which one works the best for you.
So, that was today’s episode on what is Email Marketing and its basics. If you got to know something new, or if you have any doubt, do let me know in the comments section.
