Creating a mailing list and building a newsletter system is one of the basic and growing components of a digital marketing strategy.
Mailing List is a list of email addresses belonging to your existing customers or potential customers who have registered, on their own initiative, and are interested in receiving content and updates from your business.
A newsletter is an email that reaches your mailing list regularly, and includes content that interests your customers and is relevant to your business. It is the best tool for conveying messages, updates, news and up-to-date content that can most likely lead to a higher conversion rate.
Email marketing is a direct approach to your customer via email. Such email will carry marketing quotes, products reviewing, services, advertising, a periodic newsletter or useful information to the customer. Direct and personal contact will strengthen the relationship between the customers and your business, increases loyalty & sense of belonging, and of lead to greater profits.
Email marketing is popular because it is much cheaper than other forms of advertisements, and has incredible success rates.
Why should you use email marketing
The purpose of the mailing list and sending emails is to keep in touch with your customers, brand awareness for your business and setting your business as an authority. Whether your goal is to increase website traffic or increase sales, building a mailing list and sending out newsletters is a significant part of the business marketing strategy.
Ownership – Most businesses invest in building a community in social media, but the control of these followers’ connections doesn’t belong to the business, it belongs to the social media platform and can change with any algorithm change. A mailing list is owned by the business and can be used as a marketing tool independently.
Authority – The newsletter can be used to update current and potential customers on everything new in the business but also to deliver new information about the industry. This will help establish your business as a professional, expert and authority.
Personal Connection- Personal connection helps build trust and is the foundation of every marketing. Email is way more personal than any social media post. The action of registering to an email list is way stronger than page like or follow.
Focused Audience – The people that will sign to your mailing list are your focused targeted audience. They already passed some steps in your business marketing funnel and are warmer potential clients.
Better exposure – We scroll through many posts on different social media platforms each day, but we read only a hand full of emails. Emails are perceived as more important and serious than any post, therefore the chances that people will read the message you are distributing in the newsletter are higher.
Higher Conversion Rate – The conversion rates for purchase through email marketing are much higher than conversion rates for sale through social media. The audience is warmer, more down the marketing funnel and more ready to act. Therefore, if you provide real value in your newsletters you have better chances to convert a potential client to a paying client and a current client to a loyal client.
SEO – Every time someone will click from an email newsletter link and will get to your website, Google will know about it. Traffic from emails to the website will cause Google algorithm to understand that your readers like your content and that will help with your SEO.
Newsletter Types
Welcome email – After someone signs up to your mailing list, send them to thank you a message. This email should include a short explanation of what to expect, and maybe a freebie. Welcome emails have high opening rates so don’t waste them with just “thank you for signing up”, use them to deliver all the relevant information. A welcome email can be a series of 3-4 emails.
Promotional Newsletters – This type of newsletter is a must. If your business has any promotion or coupon, send it to your customers straight to their email inbox, where it will stay, allowing them to return to it at a convenient time.
Summary of webinars, workshops and tutorials – On the way to becoming an authority in your field you will give your clients lots of knowledge. This type of newsletter is a great way to summarize the highlights of any webinar/workshop/event you had. You can even add a link to a landing page with more info about a related product/service.
News and Updates – One of the greatest ways to maintain a long-term relationship with your recipient is to inform them about the important things that are happening in your company.
Bi-weekly Newsletters – No matter the information you have on your biweekly newsletter, be consistent and send it on a regular basis. That way your clients remember you are there.
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Advantages of email marketing
An email list is a business asset – A bigger quality list will bring better profit potential.
Hige Opening Rates – Although you have about 2 seconds of potential client attention before your email goes to the trash, the opening rates of the email list are about 20%-40% and click rates are about 10%.
Low cost with excellent ROI (Return on investment) – Managing a mailing list and sending newsletters does not require a lot of financial resources. There are quite a few companies that allow you to send free newsletters at a certain limit and as the list and increases, the amount to be paid is not so expensive. A negligible cost in relation to the profits that can be generated from the email list.
Riching Targeted Audience – An email list consists audience that registered on its own initiative. That means that the audience knows about your product/service and is interested in it. If you’ll provide them value, they can convert easily.
How to increase your mailing list
Email list consists of your customers, people who already used your products or services. Your business email list should increase constantly and you should be active in doing so.
Add registration link to every email you send
Add registration form on your website footer
Add registration link to Social Media bio
Give a freebie
Use Facebook paid campaign
Invest in Quality blogs and content – G.
Write a blog as a guest in other blogs
Increase Email List
Email Marketing Process
Set Newsletters Goals
The first step in any email campaign is setting goals.
Some common goals can be: raising awareness of your brand, driving traffic to your website, informing on a product/service, keeping a relationship with clients, selling a product etc.
The goal will determine the newsletter type, content, message, scheduling etc.
Define Audience
Defining the audience is a necessary step before we can start growing your list.
We will define your client, needs, preference and only after that, we can fit the newsletter to your audience needs.
This definition will help us in later steps with content, design and newsletter frequently.
Collect emails for a list
Whether you already have a list of clients and potential clients, it is always a good idea to grow this list.
We will look at the technical part of adding the form to collect the emails and discuss the option for growing the list both organically and via paid campaigns.
Segment Audience
It is very important to identify and segment the subgroups in the email list.
We will look at the first step goals and identify the target audience to build and deliver a more tailored message for each group.
Segmenting emails can be based on demography or client behaviour.
This will also help with delivering more personal messages and keeping your relationship with clients and potential clients close.
Email Platform Decision
To manage all this we will need to sign up for a mailing system or platform.
Each of those mailing platforms will help us manage the mailing list and allow us to send newsletters conveniently.
There are quite a few emailing platforms we can use (Mailchimp, AWeber, Constant Contact to name a few). Each platform has different features and pricing depending on how big we expect your mailing list to be and how many newsletters we plan to send in a month, and we’ll decide on the one that fits your business the most.
The platform we decide on is where we’ll build the registration form, get the code to put on your website and design the newsletter.
Newsletter Content and Design
We will probably all at the other steps of goals, targeted audience, segmentation of the list and only then decide on the design and content.
We will make the design fit your brand and business atmosphere. We will try to build a template that will be used again and again. This will help the user expectations as well as our ability to send biweekly newsletters.
Although the content will change with every newsletter, we will still plan ahead.
This is the step that we will also discuss holidays wishing approach and newsletter schedule.
Newsletter Testing
Every newsletter will be tested before it is sent to the email list. seeing it in your inbox will help you change things and do the fine-tuning needed to convey your message.
This is also when we decide on the title and test if it is standing out in the mailing inbox. The opening rate and email campaign success have a lot to do with the newsletter title and preview sentence.
Send
After all this hard work, we send the newsletter to your email list. Success!
With every newsletter we sent, we have this exciting feeling the moment we send it and start seeing the opening rate and clicking rate go up.
We always anticipate an amount of unsubscribing emails. We encourage you not to take it personally. When people unsubscribe, they help us target your audience better. A better, focused, target audience will bring better results.
Analysis and Assessment
Like with any campaign, we keep analyzing and assessing the email campaigns too.
We will check:
- Open rate – the percentage of people who opened the email from the people who received it. We will compare it to your industry anticipated opening rate.
- CTR (Click-through-rate) – the percentage of people who clicked a link in the email from the total people who opened the email. Of course, this will vary from newsletter to newsletter and will have to be examined with the goal we set in the first step.
- Unsubscribes – the number of people that unsubscribed from the email list. This rate will be an indication of how targeted the list is.
With this information, we will polish the list, the newsletter content and test if it meets the goals we have set up. If needs, we will change the registration form, design, content, messages, links and schedules.
Email campaigns and newsletters need constant care.
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Contact us. Together we can keep your relationship with current clients and find new customers to improve your business revenue.
Tips for converting newsletter
Collecting the email list is only the start.
To make the list converting you need to make a converting newsletter.
Make it personal – don’t use high language that suits contracts. don’t right like for a professional lecture, write to your client as if you are talking.
Make it short – and to the point.
Be consistent – send biweekly or monthly. it will also help you to keep it short.
Planing – don’t wait for the last minutes to make the newsletter. Plan ahead.
Holidays – use the holidays and special days and remember that no one wants to read a lot during the holiday so keep it super short.
Important first – give the newsletter message at the start. People don’t have time and patient to read long emails.
Interesting title – your clients have many emails in their inbox, make your title interesting so they will choose to read yours
Short title – no more than 55-60 characters. Simply because more will not be seen.
Fewer links – be focused on your CTA (call-to-action).
Broken links – check and re-check your link before sending it.
Timing – schedule the newsletter to times when your readers are more likely to open it.
Branding – use branding and even the same way of writing a title to be recognizable.
Visual – use pictures to make it easy to read and pass a message. Make sure to link the picture to a link you decide.
Build expectations – use a series of emails to build expectations for a product/service/freebie etc.
Edit and proofreading – read, read again, re-read, and read again.
Test – send a test email to yourself before sending it to the list.
Spam
Despite all the above, email marketing requires skill and experience as it is not limited to clicking on ‘Send’.
The legal aspect of email marketing, following recent legislation, which forbids sending “spam” or commercial “spam” should be considered.
According to the new laws, every advertiser must get prior approval from every customer to send email marketing messages.
Every marketing message sent without prior approval is spam.
Use only legal email sending providers who let your subscribers opt-out easily.
Let us help you focus on your business. No automation. No lock-in contacts.
Our agency specialized in building and optimizing Email campaigns since 2012. We will help you from the first step of building the form, setting the goals, through deciding on email providers and building a converting newsletter that will deliver your message tailored to your business requirements and needs.
We offer the whole package: strategy planning, consultation, development and execution. Contact us today.
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Email Marketing FAQs
You do know you can force them. Right?
You are reaching people’s inbox and you have about 2 seconds to catch their attention and make them open your email or delete it.
Defining your audience and its needs will help make the content and titles tailored to them. This will help you send relevant messages and increase of opening rate.
Focus on the value your business can bring your clients. Relevant offers and content will drive people to read your emails.
Unfortunately, the answer is yes but it is STRONGLY NOT RECOMMENDED.
Purchasing an email list means that you are emailing people who did not choose to hear from you (and will probably get it to their spam folder). This goes against all the process we showed above.
Emailing people who don’t know your brand and didn’t opt-in your list is a bad idea. We wouldn’t like it to happen to us so why do it?
There is no one answer for this question and it will vary in industry and times of the year.
Unfortunately, this can only be defined by going through all the email campaign process.
To really know the answer we will try different times and days and carefully analyze the results (opening rate, CTR and unsubscribe rate).
The opening rate percentage will vary from industry to industry and from audience to audience. About 20%-40% is what we will aim to.
Please note that the opening rate is not the only indicator of a successful email campaign.
This will have to be examined with your marketing funnel.
If your emails are tailored to your audience and carry value it will help your audience invest in your product/service.
But it will up to your business to convert. If your business offers a good solution to a problem and we reached the targeted audience with an email, the chances to convert are high.
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