When it comes to marketing your business, your 'go-to's' these days would be in most cases social media, advertising and content marketing. You would almost forget to include email marketing in your marketing mix. In this article, we'll explain what email marketing is, what tools you can use, and the latest trends in email marketing.
If you have a mailbox, you already know consciously or unconsciously what the meaning of email marketing is. Among the dozens of emails you receive every day, there are often newsletters from online stores where you have sometimes bought something or companies and organizations to which you have given your email address. Newsletters have been around for as long as the internet and are still a great way to reach customers. Moreover, by using new techniques, this can be done more personally and efficiently than ever before.
In the following paragraphs we will tell you everything to make a good start with e-marketing. And we also tell you about a way in which you can take advantage of the power of e-mail, without setting up a newsletter yourself.
Collect email addresses
The first two steps you need to take to start email marketing are: collecting email addresses and setting up a strategy. Collecting email addresses where your customers can be reached is simply best done where your customers are located. Do you have a shop? Then you can, for example, ask every customer at the checkout for his or her e-mail address. Are you at an event with your company? Then that is a great place to introduce the customer to your mailing list. You can easily register them using a tablet. An important way to get addresses is of course also your own website. You can put a form on this, where visitors can enter their email address. People never just sign up for a newsletter.There must be a motivation for the registration. For example, this can be the promise that the newsletter regularly contains exclusive offers. People are also sensitive to a discount on the next purchase when they register. Or perhaps your customers will be happy with a gift in the letterbox or mailbox immediately after they have registered.
START BUILDING YOUR EMAIL LIST HERE NOW
Make sure you are GDPR proof
Now that you have email addresses, it is good to know what exactly you will do with them. In fact, you should know that before you collect the addresses with regard to the GDPR legislation. You must have explicit permission from the customer to send the newsletter. In addition, you must demonstrably store the personal data securely and each email must contain an unsubscribe link. So keep this in mind if you ask for registrations.
Determine your strategy
When you read and read some newsletters, it seems childishly easy to get rich quickly with email marketing. Still, it's good to think about what you want to achieve with email marketing. Is that brilliant newsletter that will put a smile on your face from your competitor? Then learn from it. In a competition analysis you actively look at how your competitors use e-mail, where they seize opportunities and where they miss opportunities. After this research you know where you can seize opportunities and you specify your goals:
- Frequency: how often do you want to communicate?
- Target group: who do you want to reach by e-mail?
- Content: with which content do you make the most impact?
- Purpose: which services or products do you want to promote by e-mail?
- Short term: how many people read and click on the newsletter?
- Long term: how much revenue growth do you achieve through email marketing?
Find out here how to build your Email List On AUTOPILOT!
Popular email marketing tools
There are various tools to send your newsletter. First of all, you could use your default email client, such as Hotmail, Outlook and Gmail. Do you have a small number of recipients? Then this is a great option. Do you have more than a handful of recipients? Then it is better to switch to another system that makes it easier to mail multiple people and that you do not run the risk of your domain being classified as spam. There are various programs that you can install on your computer. You can buy the software in a package or it can be integrated in your CRM system. Online email marketing services are by far the most popular. Some examples of online email marketing tools include
GetResponse and MailChimp.
What does your email cost?
The costs of email marketing are mainly in the personnel costs. Creating a newsletter is not something you do in between. That is why it is important that you free up time or staff to compile your newsletter. If you don't have staff who have the time or skills to do this, you can also choose to hire a copywriter and photographer.
The price of using the aforementioned software depends on which services and functions you use. And often how many people are on your mailing list.
Advertise in a newsletter
As you have read above, there is a lot of preparation and work involved in using email marketing for your own company. However, you can also take advantage of existing newsletters that already reach many people. By choosing the right media brand, you can advertise very specifically in a newsletter that is sent to people of your target group.
Trends and tips
Do you decide to set up a newsletter yourself? Thanks to increasingly smart technology, you can automate and target part of your email marketing. For example, a modern mail file no longer consists of one long list of mail addresses, but of different groups of customers. For example, you can choose to send female customers a different newsletter than male customers. Behavior of a newsletter recipient on your website can give you an idea of his or her interests. Focus on your qualitative subscribers and not so much on as many email addresses as possible. Ultimately, this often involves converting a newsletter recipient into a purchase. One last tip: research shows that confirmation emails of purchases made are particularly well read.Where a normal newsletter is opened by about a third to half of the recipients, ninety percent of the recipients of a confirmation email click on the email. Think about what you can do with that attention for upselling!
