Although social media is a cost-effective and simple way to promote your business, you should never rely on it alone to grow your company. Email marketing has several advantages that social media doesn’t offer. With email marketing, you own your list of subscribers and it’s not affected by changing algorithms, unlike social media. Email marketing also allows you to personalize your content and incorporate your brand’s unique message in ways you can’t always do with social media marketing. Here is how to use email marketing to grow your business.
Provide The Best Value for Subscribers
What good is email marketing when you don’t provide the best value for your subscribers? Make sure you provide value when sending your emails. Offer special tips, seasonal content, and personal stories that are not on your website. Subscriber-only discounts on memberships and new products also provide value to your subscribers. Other ideas are giveaways, free templates, and links to your live workshops and webinars.
Incorporate User-Generated Content
User-generated content is becoming popular in digital marketing and for good reasons. User-generated content is when you use real customers, brand ambassadors, and your employees to promote your company on your behalf. It adds credibility to your brand and it shows proof of your ability to reach and maintain customers. Include customer reviews in your emails to your subscribers. Your customers can send you photos of themselves using your products and you can use these in your newsletters. Polls and surveys are good tools to figure out what your subscribers want from you.
Segmentation Also Helps
When you first learn how to use email marketing to grow your business, you may come across a technique called segmentation. Segmentation is when you group your email list into groups of certain types of people. The purpose is to send content that is relevant to your subscribers. Suppose you sell football memorabilia and jerseys. You can send women-oriented emails to your female subscribers who are football fans. Or if you own a meal kit company for people with medical restrictions, you can send content to diabetics with content that relates to them and send different content to subscribers who have kidney disease.
Don’t Forget to Personalize Your Emails
Personalization is a must in email marketing. Aside from using your subscribers’ names in your greetings, other ways exist to personalize your emails. If you have a few subscribers who are interested in learning more about your marriage counseling services, you may send emails to them discussing the specific services you focus on and how you can help them. Another option is to include product recommendations based on items your subscribers purchased.
Time Your Email Deliveries Right
The timing of your email deliveries also matters if you want to know how to use email marketing to grow your business. The time depends on your industry and other factors. Based on the research from different campaigns, Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Mondays are days with high open rates. The study also showed that Thursdays are the days when the revenue is high. In addition, research shows that it is better to send emails during the workday than on the weekends.
Know Your Target Customer
This is vital to knowing how to use email marketing to grow your business. The best way to do this is to evaluate your current customers’ common traits, purchase history, age, gender, and preferences as well as interests. Another way to do this is to let your customers fill out surveys to figure out who is buying your products and why. Review your website’s data in Google Analytics to learn where your visitors are from, which are your most visited pages, and the number of conversions.
What Are Your Marketing Goals?
It’s beneficial to create a list of marketing goals for your email marketing campaign. Let’s say you own a coffeehouse and specialty coffee e-commerce store. One goal you may have is to increase sales revenue from your e-commerce store by 30% over the next two months. Or maybe you want to increase customer engagement, add more people to your email list, and launch a new product for your current customers. When you know the goals for your campaign, you’ll focus on using strategies that will achieve those goals.
Be Consistent in Sending Emails
Don’t be a fairweather email marketer to your subscribers. You should be consistent in how often you send emails to subscribers. Come up with a schedule for sending emails and use a scheduling tool such as Constant Contact to stay organized and schedule your emails.
Give Lead Magnets to New Subscribers
People love freebies, and they’re also wary of signing up for a company’s email list when they don’t know your company well. The solution is to provide new subscribers with a lead magnet that they’ll get value from. One of the first things you should do is set up an automated welcome email with the lead magnets you promised. Ideas for lead magnets include resource guides, ebooks, checklists, free trials, and exclusive content that isn’t on your website.
Subject Lines Are Important Too
Without a catchy and effective subject line, people won’t open your emails. Practice and experiment with different subject lines for your content to hook your subscribers and get them to click. Don’t be too clever but be clear on the subjects of your emails. Personalize by using the recipient’s name and a personal greeting. Put a thought-provoking question in the subject line. Use action words instead of passive ones for the most effect.
Include Social Sharing Buttons
Your subscribers can get you more subscribers by sharing your emails with others. This is why you should include social sharing buttons in your emails. If your subscribers like your content, they’re likely to share it with others through social media. They become your brand ambassadors when they do this.
Optimize Your Emails for Mobile Devices
Most people consume content on mobile devices, and you can improve your email marketing strategy by optimizing your emails for mobile devices. Use responsive email templates that adjust to various types of screen sizes. Subject lines should be short and concise. Any links or buttons in your emails should be large enough for viewers to see and click on.
Email marketing is one of the best strategies for promoting your business and when you utilize these tips, you’ll improve your strategy and reach more people.
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