Have you ever visited a website and then been prompted to “subscribe” with your email in exchange for helpful information such as a PDF guide or something of value? Followed by a stream of emails and an eventual product or service offer? This internet marketing strategy is known as email marketing and it is a pivotal online strategy that every serious business should implement.
Most business owners believe that their online presence strategy should consist of creating a website and social media profiles. Afterwords, they believe that they are done. Although this is a great start in elevating your online presence, it is only the beginning. This basic strategy is best summarized by this quote, “just because you build it, doesn’t mean they will come.” In this quote, “they” refers to your potential customers.
When strategizing about your businesses online presence, you need to have a way to capture visitors that come to your site; so that you can contact people that are interested in your products or services via email and other re-marketing tactics. The amount of emails you have is also a great success metric.
Why focus on email subscribers?
As business owners, you are constantly bombarded by article headlines prompting the newest and greatest strategies for building your online presence. These may include, social media hacks, content marketing tactics, SEO and more.
While many of these strategies can help with your branding, company image and other important things, they do not directly improve leads, relationships, or your bottom line. Some examples include, growing your social media followers, article shares, increasing unique website visitors, etc.
Growing your email list is important because it gives you a method to directly get in contact with current and potentially interested customers. Whereas, growing the number of “likes” on your Facebook business page does not allow you to build personal relationships with these people that “like” your page.
Additionally, you have no control over Facebook or other 3rd party sites and changes such as algorithm updates, that those sites implement could be disastrous to your strategy for that particular medium.
An email list is different, because it is under your control and although people can “unsubscribe” and leave your list at anytime; you have much more control over the content that you send, the time you send it and the frequency. Furthermore, emailing contacts is a method that allows you to help nurture a closer relationship with people and build trust.
Easy To Implement
Once you have decided to implement an email marketing strategy then you will need to set-up some basic services. Most importantly, you will need to sign-up for an email marketing software to collect and manage your email list.
Some examples of email marketing software include, MailChimp, Drip and GetResponse. There are many different software companies to choose from, each with their own unique features and pricing tiers.
Install Website Email Capture Forms
After configuring and signing up to an email software service, you will need to collect email subscriptions on your website. There any many different WordPress Plugins and 3rd party software that you can use to start collecting emails.
We suggest that you start by using a free form and then as your site becomes more popular and you are able to refine your email marketing strategy then you can upgrade to a 3rd party paid service that is able to integrate advanced features such as A/B split-testing.
Create Several Automated Emails
The next step is to write several automated emails that will go out to new subscribers. Most email software marketing services offer this feature and once configured it works on auto-pilot. These emails should not push any sales but should be a way to start building a relationship with your subscribers and offer them value pertaining to services or products that you offer. After you have sent a number of emails out, then you can start to push your services or products to customers through coupons, discounts, or giveaways.
In conclusion, email marketing is a strategy that no business should go without but it requires a lot of planning, refining and testing. Remember that you need to focus on providing value and building a relationship with customers and email marketing is one of the best digital marketing strategies that allows you to have full control with your contacts.
