Email marketing is the process of sending highly personalized, targeted, promotional, and/or transactional messages via email. We find targeted subscribers to add to our contact list. We usually find these targeted subscribers from those who visit our website or landing pages or digital product releases.  

Sending emails to current or potential customers is considered email marketing. These emails can include sending advertisements, request business, or solicit sales or donations.  

Importance of Email Marketing

So Why is email such a pivotal component to any digital marketing strategy? Firstly, the return on investment is 40 to 1.  

In other words, for every $1 you spend on email marketing, you have the potential to make $40. That is an excellent rate of return on time and money invested.

Besides, once your autoresponder series is set up, it’s a relatively passive income method.

What is an Autoresponder used for?  

Autoresponders in email marketing are used to streamline and automate campaigns and cut down on the hands-on work every time someone downloads a giveaway or opts-in. For example, rather than emailing each individual who signs up for a top 10 list or newsletter, an autoresponder may send out a welcome email.   Other personalized emails or a series of emails may be sent to anyone in a group opted into that list.

With an Autoresponder, we can automatically respond to anyone specifically interested in a topic and communicate more information or offers regarding that topic or related issues.

Once you start email marketing, this is the way you’ll be communicating with potential customers. With an effective email marketing campaign, you attract high-quality prospects interested in your products and/or services. 

How do you do Email Marketing?  

It involves the entire process of creating, testing, and keeping them effective. Like any other relationship, it takes time and attention to nurture these relationships and build trust. Follow these five initial steps:

Email marketing 5 steps process

1. Choose a Web-based provider and Autoresponder app service.
2. Start gathering email addresses within your autoresponder.
3. Choose a template form called a lead capture form.
4. Plan out your topics & sending the schedule. Set up as few or as many emails in a series. 
5. Set up an email campaign and track your results. You will want to track who is clicking and opening your emails.

Tracking your email opens gives you a good idea of how many people found your Title interesting enough to click and open the email. Email open rate is the percentage of the total number of subscribers who opened an email campaign. The current average available rate for 2020 is 17.80%, or almost 1 in 5 emails get opened. The open rate is higher than it’s been in the past, probably due to physical restrictions. People are doing a lot more communicating online now.

Email marketing is a great way to earn money from home or expand your online business.  However, nobody will want to do business with you unless they feel like they know, like, and trust you.

Every digital marketing strategy should include email marketing. 

To increase your chances of gaining brand new leads, you need to follow a few basic guidelines.  

First, you must choose your audience carefully.  If you pick a niche with no volume, your audience is wasting your time if your audience is too narrow. There won’t be enough people to support your business. Similarly, it would help if you segregated your leads into groups.  If you send the wrong marketing to the wrong audience with an unfair offer, you waste your time and marketing dollars. Keep dog lovers separated from cat lovers and don’t send the same messaging to each group.  

Five sure-fire ways to grow your email list fast

1. Use Multiple Sign up Forms sprinkled throughout your web pages on each article or blog.
2. Use an Exit-Intent Pop-up.  Some marketers believe the only place you should use a pop up is upon a visitor leaving your site. Thank them for visiting and offer something free in exchange for their contact information. Exit-Intent pop-ups increase conversions by 2-5%.
3. Offer Content Upgrades or Bonuses for buyers.  A form is a standard form from your Autoresponder service. See pic below. We ask, were should we send your upgrade or your bonus? They fill out the contact form, and we capture the lead into our system.
4. Add Full or Partially Gated Content in WordPress.  We like Thrive Themes page builder for WordPress. This is easy to set up.  Over 40% of websites in the world run on WordPress.  Depending on the page builder you are using, set a timer on the site. After some duration, when a visitor engages with your content, add an opt-in pop up to continue reading. The visitor needs to opt-in. Note: Anything other than an exit pop-up, you’ll have to test and see what is working in your niche.
5. Create Multiple Lead Magnet Pages.  We love giving stuff away, and visitors love to download free stuff. Marketers use lead magnets to create sales leads. We usually give away information in exchange for potential buyers’ information, name, and email address. We have seen other marketers sell downloadable information or software apps at a deeply discounted price. The reason this works, though you may get fewer leads, the quality of the lead is better. Your getting confirmed buyer leads.  Be sure all your lead magnets are branded to you and your website.  

Ask visitors to fill out a simple contact form with name and email address and receive a free download in the email. When they open the email, they complete the confirmation opt-in, also known as double opt-in.

They can download the technical information or app they are interested in.  This leads to laser targeted leads, double opt-ins completed, and value delivered into potential buyers’ hands, all materials branded to you.  With double opt-in already confirmed, you are free to add that contact to your email autoresponder and begin sending them emails with other targeted offers.

What makes a good lead magnet?

Our tried and true lead magnets consist of the following. Turn a high-performing blog post into a PDF download or E-book.  Give away expert interview transcripts. My favorite is to recap a top 10 list, add some graphics, and offer it as a takeaway. If I come across a grouping of compiled data during my research, that’s a fun give away.

Lastly, because my partner Nagendren and I are so systematic, we do have lots of checklists.  As summary sheets, checklists have lots of experience and value built-in and are always great lead magnets.

Once a lead opts in, they are added to our autoresponder contact list. Leads are automatically added to the list associated with the lead magnet they opted for. In this way, they are already segregated, so we only send them offers relating to the subject matter they opted into.  For example, home repairs top 10 must-have tools opt-in lead will only get offers relating to home repair tools. Autoresponders will help you keep the groups separated.

How do you plan the best Email Marketing Strategy?

Email marketing strategy comprises various steps involved in email marketing to achieve your end goal in marketing campaigns. Below, Nagu and I have described that more in detail:

Pick right the audience

Several factors go into determining your audience: your demographic, your location, who your target audience is likely to be, what kind of products or services they are looking for, their buying habits, etc. We actually use keyword research with Google’s keyword planner (see link here). You can clearly see search volume within niches in broad keywords and narrow queries with longtail keywords. Then planning your email marketing strategy, you need to carefully choose your audience and build your email marketing campaign around that audience.

Follow your leads with relevant content

Second, your email marketing campaign must be consistently followed up with relevant, compelling content that engages and educates your audience. People are bombarded with lots of advertising. Many of those advertisers do not deliver on what they promise.

For example, suppose you advertise dog collars on your email marketing campaign. In that case, you will only have repeat customers interested in dog collars. However, offer dog training tips in your email newsletters. You’ve got to imagine that almost all dog owners want to understand how to train their dogs. Still, not all customers are interested in dog collars. 

The content you offer needs to be broad enough to include millions.  You can gain data and insights from visitors to your website using Google analytics.  Open your Google Analytics account. It’s free to sign up for Google Ads and go to Audience overview. Google Analytics defines an audience as “users that you group together based on any combination of attributes that is meaningful to your business.” You can only provide relevant content after you understand who your audience is. The unique content you create will inspire or motivate them to purchase or at least take action to learn more about your product or service.

Promote offers periodically with values

You build an email marketing list to make money.  Generally, the more consistent you are with the emails you send, the more money you’ll make. However, you can’t spam everyone with irrelevant content. That is where your autoresponders segregated list comes into play. My partner Nagendran and I send 7-12 emails/week depending on what we are promoting. We would never promote 7 offers in a week. Instead, we’ll promote an offer for 3 days and do that by sending several emails relating to that product over 3 days.  

Example email marketing template for follow up series:

• Day 1: Welcome email along with download link of lead magnet
• Day 2: Offer one more lead magnet which is related to the previous one
• Day 3: Send 2 Feedback email about your last two lead magnets. (Few of your list will respond. That is a good sign, and it indicates you’re doing it rightly)
• Day 4: Send info email about a specific topic related to your lead magnet
• Day 5: Send two feedback email about your info email
• Day 6: Send a promotional email that is related to your lead magnet.
• Day 7: Continue the flow as you did from day 2 to day 6 with different lead magnets and offers.

So you can see, over 6 days, you might accumulate 6 emails targeting a specific promotion. Sometimes we are promoting other people’s products and sometimes our own products. Either way, all of our offers are congruent to our audience.

Day 8 – One email or better, No email at all.

We have actually started recording brief videos introducing the next 

promo, saying watch out for our email tomorrow in your inbox introducing this new product or training.

We then repeat the process all over again,

Day 2: Offer one more lead magnet, etc

You don’t want to disconnect from your list for more than 48 hours.  If you’re going on vacation, pre-record, or preschedule emails in your absence. We typically will go back and promote an evergreen product that is low touch during any holidays or vacation periods.

Always Keep distance from Spamming

It would help if you learned to avoid spamming. Spamming can get you in trouble, frequently leading to fines or removal from a server. Many people assume a bright line in the sand says if you are not breaking any laws by sending subscribers’ emails. Still, the truth is, you could be putting your subscribers in jeopardy by sending unsolicited spam, which is also illegal.

Get experience on email marketing services

Before you start your campaign, educate yourself on email marketing services, such as Aweber, Mail Chimp, and Getresponse. These are software service providers explicitly designed to Automate Your Email Marketing with Autoresponders.  See them as automation for email campaigns.   If you are unfamiliar with these programs, you’ll want to consult someone you trust to recommend an Autoresponder that they have experience with.  Of course, you may reach us for any help on this. 

About best email marketing software

Here are highlights of the three best email marketing software on the market: Aweber, Mail Chimp, and Get Response. Most come with a free trial.  

Aweber

Aweber has super easy to use online opt-in forms with high open rates.  This has always been my favorite. For lists of 500 or fewer leads, the service is free.

Mail Chimp

Mailchimp is similar to Aweber, MailChimp for free as long as your list is under 500 users. 

GetResponse

GetResponse is geared towards list sizes of mid-tens of thousands or fewer. They offer various features, such as built-in sales funnels.

Once you have selected and begun your email marketing strategy, you must be consistent in your messaging. There is no one formula for success. Instead, we’ll give you some guidelines to follow. Internet Marketers are always testing different approaches to email marketing.    

It’s important to remember that your internet users use email to communicate with friends, family, coworkers, prospects, and past clients. You must understand these needs not only in your own company but also in your industry as a whole.   

Personalized Email Marketing with Segmentation use to create a successful marketing strategy.  Segmentation is personalization at scale. Instead of sending uniquely personalized emails to every customer, you’re sending relevant emails to targeted customer groups. Everyone in this targeted group has something in common.    

Be consistent in your tone and messaging.  Be systematic in your communications. It would be best to imagine the conversation you are having with a group as correspondence with a single person with all of the group’s attributes. Build up in your mind an avatar of characteristics.  

By creating a consistent marketing strategy, you are more likely to achieve more consistent results. 

Top 8 Email Marketing Guidelines

1. Perfect Your Timing: There are certain times of day when open rates are highest. Time your emails to land when available rates are highest.
2. Make Your Subject Line Stand Out: Take out anything spammy. Subject lines that are aggressively salesy are often the most likely to be marked as spam. Spam means they won’t see the inbox. They’ll go right to the junk folder and become trash. Instead, ask open-ended questions. Share something valuable or make an announcement. Be unique or funny. If making an offer, include a deadline.
3. Write to Just One Person: As I mentioned above, You must create an avatar or a caricature of the typical person with the group you are communicating with. Let’s say you are talking to cat lovers. Do some research on cat lovers. What are their needs, pain points, joys, and dreams?
4. Write Like a Friend: Use a friendly tone, share a secret. Give some advice. Anticipate and respond to questions and forum comments.
5. Write Amazing Content, Every Time: This ties in with being thoughtful. My father used to tell me to engage my brain before putting my mouth into motion. Sound familiar? We all have unique gifts, abilities, and insights. Don’t be afraid to share them. If you see yourself as the leader of a tribe, you’ll understand and behave like you’ve got a responsibility to bring your best.
6. Inject Some Humor:  When you relax and are genuinely authentic, everyone else around you relaxes. Not everyone is a comedian, but most of us have a sense of humor. Relax enough to share that sense of humor. Folks will warm to your material and get to know you more. That affinity brings loyalty. Loyalty brings engagement.
7. Optimize for Mobile:  I cannot overemphasize this enough, more than 64% of search is done on mobile. Optimize both for speed and format for mobile devices.
8. Remove Inactive Subscribers: This may sound harsh, but you want a smaller list of engaged people. Your status as an email marketer will improve, and there will be less of a chance of ending up in the spam folder. Track clicks and opens if someone has not engaged for several months with your material. Maybe send them a special email with the Title, “Hey, it’s been a while, are you okay?”  If they still do not open your email. Remove them from your list.

If you can follow these eight email marketing guidelines, you’ll improve your email open rates and avoid the spam filters.

Conclusion

I’ve tried to give you some concrete ideas about email marketing. These are actions you can take right away to create a more effective strategy for yourself and your company as you embark on your email marketing journey. It can be easy to get overwhelmed when it comes to creating a marketing strategy. These guidelines will help to kickstart some correct actions you can take today.  

Let’s recap the value of email marketing and an autoresponders role within your overall marketing plan.  

• Choose a Goal for Your Autoresponder
• Build your lead list fast.
• The more emails you send, the more money you’ll make.
• Segmentation is built into the system.
• The autoresponder helps you with the continuity of messaging. You get to map out your entire email sequence in advance. If you are monitoring, testing, and improving, then soon, you’ll be wiring an autoresponder series that converts.  
• Be confident as you know and understand your groups’ needs, that your message will become more precise. Like anything, you’ll improve over time. 

Nagendran and I have been taking time every day to learn something new. We are efficiency nuts and have a schedule for promotional campaigns, family, community, rest and reflection, spirituality, exercise, and learning.  If it’s not scheduled in, you can easily overlook it.  What is the sense of having a fantastic business if you’re not healthy, both in heart and mind? Seek to strike a balance.  

The power of sustained focus is often underrated.  We often overestimate what can be done near term and underestimate what can be done with long bouts of sustained effort. If you want to reach the top and stay there, you’ve got to strike a balance. Commit to learning something new every day, then take action.