If you are reading this post it is because you want me to explain how to do email marketing. You want to see how you can get customers and income thanks to your mailing list.
In this part of the post I explain just that. All the practical information you need so that from today you start to work your email marketing.
To put you, I have divided the rest of the article into 4 major sections:
- Create your strategy from scratch.
- Overcome the SPAM barrier
- Get your emails opened (the hardest).
- Increase your subscriber list.
And now, yes, we’re going to gut what email marketing really is.
# 1 The strategy: the 5Ws of email marketing
To define your strategy you need to be clear about certain issues:
- Who?
- Why?
- What?
- When?
- How?
Just answering these 5 questions you will have all the information you need to raise your roadmap.
1. Who ?: define your ideal reader
This is always the first step in any marketing strategy. And is that just as we need to know who we are going to when we write a post , when writing an email we also need to know who is our ideal client.
The reason is simple: if you do not know for whom you write your campaigns, you will never be able to offer the right content, write the best sales emails or establish a relationship of trust.
You have to get, yes or yes, these data:
- Demographic data
- What are your ambitions and objectives?
- How is your day to day?
- What are your main problems? What else “hurts”?
Your list of subscribers should be segmented according to the different interests of your audience . This point is important that you take into account when customizing the email.
2. Why ?: define your goals
When planning your strategy you have to specify 2 types of objectives:
- Generals of the campaign.
- Specific to each email.
For example, imagine that you want to create a campaign to sell your new ebook.
For that you create a post in which you approach the subject on which the infoproduct will turn. And in that post you put a form that triggers an autoresponder.
Although your ultimate goal is to sell, each mail in the sequence will have an individual goal. I give you an example of sequence:
- Email 1: present you and your project. Objective: to generate trust.
- Email 2: link to different posts of your blog in which you also talk about that topic. Objective: to add value, increase your authority and create a need for the product.
- Email 3: deeper content in relation to your ebook. If you have them, the data and statistics work very well. Objective: gain authority and create need for the product.
- Email 4: success story and introduction to the product. Objective: prepare the user for the sale.
- Email 5: sales email. Objective: sell.
Knowing the objectives in your email marketing strategy is like having a compass that guides you to keep working.
3. What ?: type of content
Depending on the objective of your campaign and the specific one of the email you are going to send, you will create one type of content or another. I give you examples of contents.
- Goal “to add value”: they are more exclusive contents than those that you write in your open blog. For example: list of special tools, tips, tricks, etc.
- Goal “generate traffic”: here we would have the typical newsletter in which we explain the news of the blog. You also have the variant that you saw in the sequence of emails before referring to specific posts that are interesting for the reader.
- Objective “authority”: you can send guest posts that you have written on influencers’ blogs or contribute success stories that you have achieved.
- Objective “build trust”: it is good that you introduce yourself and tell your story to the readers. From time to time it is also good that you insert an email in which you tell an anecdote. It’s about seeing the person behind you.
But first of all you must take into account one thing when deciding what you are going to tell: it has to be relevant and useful content.
Always think about how you can help the person who receives your emails. Your priority # 1 should always be what the reader wants and needs. It is common to find blogs whose content is very good, but as soon as you subscribe you lose all the charm.
They do not stop sending one offer after another and the most interesting thing they can offer you is their newsletter. And to let me know if someone has published a new post I have tools like Feedly.
If all they have to offer is that I unsubscribe.
Your subscribers are the most important people in your business after your customers. You must treat them as authentic vips.
4. When ?: the frequency of sending
The frequency of sending does not have to be the same in all campaigns.
While the newsletter can be sent once a week, there are other types of emails that can have another rhythm. Look at my free Problogging course.