How It Works: Email Marketing

According to a study conducted by Exact Target in 2012, about 77% of people prefer marketing emails over social media scrolling and this is just one of the reasons why you should start email marketing!

What is email marketing? It is a way of nurturing leads from customers and turning them into loyal consumers of your products online via sending emails. It is a way to develop sort of a personal relationship between a brand and a customer.

However, just randomly sending your email offers to strangers will not work and it might even get you sent into the spam folder. Email marketing is a careful process wherein you need to follow specific steps in order to gain the loyalty of your email list.

Now, how do we get started?

Creating Freebies

What do you do to get somebody to give something to you? You give them something in exchange of course. Freebies, also often called the lead magnet is the first step in a long relationship with your future loyal email list.

The purpose of sending or giving freebies is to get people to give their email addresses to you, because who would give away their email information for no reason, right? You can give them access to content like an online module or design template in exchange for their email address.

Ideally, freebies should be valuable and useful for your target consumers. Just because they’re free doesn’t mean that they have to be low quality! Remember this freebie is the first impression that will be left to your future customers. So make it big and grand but at the same time, useful and adequate for their needs.

What are some good ideas for freebies? Here are some good examples:

• ebooks
• Templates
• A webinar
• Free trial of a product
• Resources
• Quizzes or questionnaires.

In addition, the opt-in form on your website also shouldn’t be lackluster. It should have a compelling headline, concise description, good design, and simplicity. With these characteristics, you can be more assured that that subscribe button will be hit.

Finding an Email service provider

This where a lot of people get confused. There are lots of email service providers out there, so which ones will you choose? Worry no more, because we’ve got you covered!

Here are our most recommendations:

1. Mailchimp – easy to use and beginner-friendly. Free for up to 2000 subscribers.
2. ConvertKit – It lets you put a label or tag on subscribers and is great for professional bloggers and authors.
3. MailerLite – Like MailChimp, this is also free to use but only for up to 1000 subscribers.
4. Aweber – Hass a great support and help system. Gives you access to a wide

Creating a Sales Funnel

Once you’ve got your email list, this is the part where you can start to nurture or develop your relationships with your customers. This is also quite the sensitive stage as failure to do so correctly, can result in getting many unsubscribes. This is why we would like to simplify it for you with these steps:

1.) Getting to know - in this step, you would like to give as much free content as possible. In this way, you can also tell them a little bit about yourself, but what’s more important at this part is that you establish yourself as a credible source of quality content! You can do this by making sure that your freebies are as top-tier as possible so they’ll know that they are being messaged by someone who can offer them great value.

2.) Establish authenticity - remember all those freebies that you’ve worked so hard on, but gave away for free? Well, they weren’t for nothing! Because by your second and subsequent emails, you can remind of about the high-quality freebies that you gave them and you can share more about yourself. It’s important to establish yourself as an authentic content provider that they will need in the future in this step.

3.) Call to action - this step is where you reap the fruits of your labor. You can now call out to them and ask politely whether they would like to subscribe or work with you. Depending on how satisfied they were with how you did the previous steps, the more likely they will be to sign up and follow you and your service.

Grow your following

This is the final and also one of the most important steps to follow when it comes to email marketing. Remember that getting people to subscribe is not the final step—keeping them and growing their number is.

You should also take note that people are also allowed to unsubscribe or send you to the spam folder anytime. However, don’t get discouraged when this happens. Just think of it as your email list filtering itself from unnecessary members giving you more space for subscribers who truly appreciate your work.

Now, we should avoid getting people unsubscribing, right? How exactly can we do it? The answer is simple, “Consistency is key.”

Yes, you’ve probably heard it before and what we mean exactly by this is that you should be consistent when sending newsletters to your subscribers. If you send them every week, then send them every week not when you just feel like it.

The time of day to send your newsletter should also be carefully chosen depending on the type of subscriber that you have. If most of them are office workers, then they’ll most likely have the free time to check their emails for newsletters during their break or during weekends.

Since your subscribers are taking the time of the day, to take a look at your newsletters, then you better make it valuable. Make it something rewarding so that it’ll be something that they can look forward to.

You can do this by adding pictures, gifs, and even memes to spice up your newsletter and not make it boring.

So now you know how to conduct email marketing. What are you waiting for? Go out there and create your first freebie! We wish you the best and hope that you’ll get as many subscribers hooked in no time.