Email Marketing 

Email marketing is a type of direct marketing where a commercial message is sent via email to potential customers. The aims of these messages can include, but are not limited to:

  • Encouraging a purchase
  • Increasing brand awareness
  • Enhancing customer loyalty.

Through email marketing, a business can stay connected with its customers with relative ease.

Email marketing is a vital element of any marketing strategy. It may seem a little old hat and maybe a tad obvious, but more people than ever use email. Not only that but because of smartphones and modern technology, they check their inbox multiple times a day. According to Magnetic, 44% of people in the US and Canada check their emails one to three times a day. That translates to multiple opportunities for seeing your email campaign.




How To Create An Email List ?

It’s all well and good having the best idea for the best marketing campaign ever, but without a solid email list to send it to, what good is an idea? The thought of slowly building up an email list over time may seem daunting. Couldn’t you just buy one and be done with it?

During your research, you may have come across vendors selling collections of email addresses to third parties. Understandably, getting a ready-made email list would be tempting for someone just starting, but this is a bad idea for many reasons:

  • These emails' owners did not opt into your list; therefore, your emails will be both unsolicited, unwanted, and an annoyance.
  • The list is likely to be of low quality, with incorrect data and email addresses that no longer exist.
  • It will be detrimental to your business reputation and your IP reputation. If your ISP sees your emails being relegated to the spam folder repeatedly, after a while, your emails will be considered just that: spam.

It’s also likely that these lists weren’t gathered through the most honest of methods. Many of them were created through email harvesting. Email harvesting is when bots and poorly-paid workers scour the net to capture a sizable number of email addresses.

How To Capture An Email Addresses ?

Capturing email addresses isn’t rocket science, but you should try to do it in a way that disrupts your customer’s experience as little as possible. You also want to make sure that you are targeting people who want to be targeted.

Lead Magnets

A key element of successful email marketing is a lead magnet. A lead magnet is when you offer something to a user in return for their subscription. It’s probably fair to think about what it is you’re marketing and make it relevant. You don’t have to offer anything beyond a simple form asking someone to sign up, sure. But often, the more compelling your opt-in offer, the more likely a lead is to become a subscriber. There are myriad things you could do: offer a free sample of something, a discount, or only just a newsletter.

Whatever it is, you need a strong CTA here that will convince this person that it’s worth being on your list. Chances are, this potential subscriber is already being inundated with many, many other emails. What will set yours apart? Good copywriting will come into play here.

Why you should go with an email marketing platform

There are so many benefits to using an email marketing platform, the main one being convenience. Take all the cons of using the BCC method, reverse them, and that’s why you should use a professional service. To get a little more specific, with an email marketing platform:

  • Email addresses are kept private
  • You won’t have to manually add or remove email addresses from your list
  • You’ll be able to track a variety of metrics and statistics easily
  • There are often customizable email layouts and templates
  • You can trigger automatic emails.

Sounds good, right? These platforms not only make email marketing convenient, but they also ensure things are professional and above board.

There are a plethora of email marketing platforms on the market. But how do you know which is the right one for you? What this will boil down to is cost and scalability. Luckily, by in large, most email marketing tools are pretty cost-effective. Some reputable providers include:

  • Mail Chimp
  • Constant Contact
  • Aweber
  • ConvertKit