How to Use Email Marketing to Grow Your Business — Start-up guide for beginners

What is email marketing?

Email Marketing is basically sending out mass amounts of emails to your customers (or potential customers) through different methods that are effective at reaching them. This can include direct mail campaigns, social media promotions, text messages, etc. Basically, if people want to hear about what your business does, they have a few options, but the best one would be email marketing. One reason email marketing has become such a powerful tool is that it is able to reach people on their own terms. People can listen to your message whenever they feel like it, whether it’s before bedtime while watching TV, or even when they’re in line at the grocery store! That means you can target certain groups of people depending on where they are in their lives.

Why Use Email Marketing?

Email marketing works great because consumers often check their emails right after waking up in the morning and before going to sleep at night. In fact, according to Blue Corona Research, over half of adults check their email first thing in the morning. This means that people are already expecting to receive some type of communication from businesses. When you send out emails about your business, those messages are much less likely to go into the “spam” folder than messages sent via other forms of advertising, such as direct mailers or billboards. If someone receives your message accidentally, they may just assume that it was spam and delete it without even reading it. Because of this, email marketing gives you a better chance of reaching your audience and getting your brand in front of its intended audience.

How does email marketing work?

Email Marketing uses a list of recipients who have requested to receive updates from you. You can simply say something like “Hey, I just wanted to send out a quick note to let you know about our upcoming event!” This message would usually land in your recipient’s inbox.

Recipients respond to this kind of communication based on their own preferences. If they are interested in what you have to offer, they may choose to click on the link that you sent them.

Once they click, their browser downloads a copy of the file you provided. A confirmation window pops up telling them the download was successful.

At this point, the recipient has two options. They can either open the document immediately (in its current state) or save it to their computer.

The recipient can then open the saved version at any time they want to read through it. They can even print out the information if they wish!

You can get help with the Active Campaign and Get Response platforms. They are very powerful ESP for email marketing.

The benefits of email marketing

There are many benefits of using email marketing. First, it’s cost-effective. Once you’ve set up a good system to manage your email list, you don’t need to pay anything else to market to your current customer base. And let’s face it — we’re talking about the same people who are already interested in what your business offers. So you know they’ll be receptive to any future communications you send.

Email Marketing is Cost-Effective

Email marketing is an effective cost-effective method of advertising your business or services. In addition to being inexpensive, email advertisements reach their target audience immediately and have a high open-rate. This means that any message sent has a much higher chance of being read, compared to other forms of advertisement, like print media or television.

Email Marketing Increases Customer Loyalty

You can use email marketing to build customer loyalty and keep them coming back. You can send out special offers and discounts to people who have been loyal customers. This is a great way to increase profits from repeat customers.

Email Marketing Builds Trust With Customers

When customers see that you care about your business, they are more likely to trust you and buy from you again. If a customer knows you respect them, then they know you won’t try to rip them off.

The challenges of email marketing

Email Marketing is an amazing tool that allows companies to communicate directly with their customers, but it can also be a huge challenge if not done correctly. Some common mistakes include sending emails too often, not having any kind of plan, using the wrong subject lines, never testing, etc. Each mistake leads to bad results and could even lead to your company being blacklisted. So how can we avoid these pitfalls? Here are some easy tips!

Be Consistent With Your Emails

It may seem obvious, but consistency is the name of the game here. A good rule of thumb is once per week; this gives people time to get used to seeing your email and opens them up for more frequent emails. If they don’t respond to your first email, send them a second one after a few days (and make sure to always have a clear unsubscribe link!). This way both parties know what’s coming each week and they’re less likely to block you out.

Give People Time to Respond

You wouldn’t want someone calling you at work asking about something right before you head into a meeting, would you? That’s exactly what happens in email communication. You need to give people an adequate amount of time to respond to your messages. Try giving 10–15 minutes before starting to worry.

How to create an email marketing strategy

Email marketing is one of the most effective ways to reach your target audience. There are a few key things you need to consider when creating your email marketing strategy:

1. Understand your audience

Knowing who your target market is will help you design your campaign’s content. If you’re trying to sell a product or service that’s targeted at business owners, then you’ll want to include information about how to run their businesses better. On the other hand, if you’re reaching out to parents looking for ways to keep kids entertained at home, you probably won’t have much luck getting them to open emails sent from your company unless they are specifically interested in what your company has to offer.

2. Choose an Email Service Provider (ESP)

This will determine whether or not you can set up auto-responders based on certain actions taken by customers. ESPs like Active Campaign, Get response, and Moosend allow you to customize your campaigns based on the data you collect through customer interactions. They make it easy to send emails to your subscribers, manage lists, and track responses, but they won’t do all the work for you. There’s no magic formula for choosing the right ESP; it comes down to personal preference and budget.

3. Determine What You Want Your Campaign To Achieve

An effective email marketing campaign requires planning. When you know exactly what you want the outcome of your campaign to be, you can build your message around those goals. Are you trying to drive traffic to a specific page? Do you need to increase sales? Do you just want to inform users about upcoming events and specials? Each of these questions leads to different answers, and each answer impacts the structure of your messages.

4. Create compelling content

Once you know who you are targeting, you need to start creating some compelling content. Think about what kind of messages will resonate with your target audience, and make sure your content is well-written and engaging.

Tips for creating effective email campaigns

Make sure that your message contains some form of call-to-action. If you don’t have any sort of action after you send out your newsletter ask your subscribers what they would like to do? Are they interested in reading your blog post? Do they want to learn how to make their own personal care products? They should be able to tell you! Include these actions in your message and let them know what they can expect from your emails.

Include a preview image. This is something that people will notice right away if they open your email. If you’re using a template that has a logo in the header, at least include a photo of that. Otherwise, try including a picture of a product, maybe something you’ve created yourself, or just an example of a great-looking cannabis strain. People are naturally drawn to this type of content since it gives you the opportunity to show off your work, but it also helps to build trust.

Be clear about who you are. Your website might list you as “Cannabis Growers Society” or some other broad term that could apply to multiple companies. Tell readers who you are and what you’re trying to accomplish. People will always be much more likely to engage with a company where you give them information about who you are and what your goals are.

Give your readers value. There is nothing worse than getting an email that is full of advertisements for all kinds of things ranging from travel packages to weight loss supplements. It is hard enough to get through email without having to wade through unwanted messages while you’re working on your correspondence. Try to use your email marketing to provide value to your audience. You may even consider offering discounts or freebies for your best customers.

Promote yourself. Don’t forget to promote yourself in your email campaign. Some businesses have built a good reputation solely online and have not yet been able to take advantage of social media marketing. Having a presence on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest can help increase brand awareness and lead to new business opportunities.

Keep it simple. One of the biggest mistakes that companies make when planning an email marketing strategy is adding too many features. Focus on keeping everything short and sweet. Don’t go crazy with graphics. Simplicity is better.

You can find an effective way with the Active Campaign, Get Response, and Moosend platforms. You can create a very effective campaign with this powerful ESP platform.

Again at a glance please focus on these things:

1. Make sure your email list is up to date and clean.

2. Keep your email subject lines short, clear, and to the point.

3. Personalize your email content where possible.

4. Make use of images and visuals to make your emails more engaging.

5. Use A/B testing to improve your email open and click-through rates.

6. Pay attention to your email deliverability rates.

7. Make sure you have a strong call to action in your emails.

The best practices for email marketing

The best practices for email marketing include building a large email list, segmenting your list into different groups, sending targeted emails to those groups, and using a variety of email marketing tools to track the performance of your campaigns.

If you are using a CRM software platform like Infusionsoft, send them a message asking if they have any tips/tricks/tragedies regarding email marketing. This is especially true if they were able to get their business off the ground via email marketing. You can find out how well your emails convert into sales!

Include:

- How many people open your emails?

- What percentage of those open up your emails?

- Do they click through to buy? If not, what was the reason?

- What is your overall click-through rate (CTR)?

- What do you think about the number of opens vs clicks?

- Include these metrics for each campaign you did for this time period.

You can use this data to determine whether the email templates you create are effective, what subject lines work best, etc.

An easy way you have to automate your email marketing. Some email marketing tool providers you can use. Like, Active Campaign, Get response, Moosend

The future of email marketing

The future of email marketing is to move away from mass emailing to a more personalized approach. Email marketers will need to focus on creating more targeted and segmented lists, and on developing relationships with their subscribers. They will also need to continue to innovate in order to stay ahead of the curve.

Again, Some email marketing tips only for you at a glance:

1. Email Marketing is an amazing marketing tool that is not only cheap but also highly effective. In fact, most companies use this type of marketing every day. Some people may say they hate using emails, but the truth is, if done right, emails can be extremely effective at building relationships with your followers, driving traffic to your website, and even increasing sales. Here are some tips to help you get started!

2. Use Short Subject Lines — When it comes to writing subject lines, keep them short and concise. If you have a long subject line, your recipient will automatically hit delete because they don’t know what they are getting into. Try keeping it clean and simple like “Your order has been shipped,” instead of something vague like “Order 123456789.”

3. Don’t Send Too Many Emails — The worst thing you can do is send too many emails. Most people receive about 200–300 emails per day. By sending just 2–5 emails per week, you’ll find that you can increase open rates and click-throughs.

4. Make Sure Your Message Sends Well — When sending out emails, make sure that they look great. This doesn’t mean that you need to spend money on fancy templates; you simply want to make sure that your message looks professional and neat.

5. Include Calls To Action (CTAs) — CTAs are anything that asks your readers to take action after reading your email. Some common examples include links, buttons, signups, etc. These are some ways to encourage your readers to subscribe, buy products, or visit other pages on your site. Keep these CTAs consistent throughout all of your emails.

6. Have A Call To Action On Every Page — You should always include a CTA somewhere on your webpage. Whether it’s on the homepage, product page, blog post, or anywhere else really, having a call to action makes sense.

So that’s my email marketing overview, hope you enjoyed this look at how I use my strategy. Please comment below if you have any questions about email marketing. Thank you for reading the blog. See you again soon inshallah!