Are you sending emails to expand your business?
Do you know that, of all the marketing tools, Email offers the best return on investment? And, it also offers the best conversion rates?
If your emails are well written, and engaging, they can be highly effective in generating sales. In this post, we will learn:
- Why use Email marketing?
- Why is Email marketing so important?
- Examples of Email marketing
- How to start Email marketing
- Email Service Providers
- A comparison table of Email service providers
Why use Email marketing?
You have a website, and you are painstakingly driving traffic to your website by various means.
Let’s say, someone visits your website. Is there a way you can know who he was, or the reason why he visited your website.
Maybe he wanted to buy something and came to your website to research and compare with other vendors. He came, he saw and he went away. And there is no way you can connect with him or follow up with him.
What you need now is a system such that a visitor who comes to your website, leaves his email address or his contact number; so that you can follow up with him.
But why will he give you his email address? He does not want annoying emails or phone calls.
So, to get his email address, you have to offer him a bait, in return of which he will give you his email address. You can offer him a free eBook or a discount coupon, or an entry into some sweepstakes.
Once you have his email address you can send him information on your upcoming products, discount coupons, holiday offers, free eBooks, Infographics, cheat sheets, just to keep in touch with him.
You do all this so that he remembers your name, and should remember it all the more when he is about to order a product or service.
He may not be an immediate customer; but he could be a prospect who would buy maybe 6 months down the line. Or he may have friends who can avail of your service if he can refer you to them.
Why is Email marketing so important?
If you are selling a product or a service, and you do not have email subscribers, you are missing on a lot of opportunities.
How do you expect new customers to reach you and how do you expect your customers to come back with repeat orders?
Email lasts longer than a post on Social Media
I came across a very interesting piece of information which I would like to share with you you.
Have you ever wondered how long your post lasts on Social Media?
Let’s say you post something today, right now; and its lifespan on Twitter shall be just 18 minutes.
Can you believe that? Just 18 minutes. So, if your potential customer uses Twitter within 18 minutes of your posting new content, he will get to view it. Else, he will not.
On Facebook it’s just about 5 hours,
Instagram 21 hours,
LinkedIn 24 hours,
YouTube average is much higher than these, it is around 20 days.
And have you ever wondered how much time an email lasts? 2 years. This is the average time when a user cleans his mailbox, and deletes the unwanted emails.
Taking this discussion further, your target customer can still get to read the messages you posted on Twitter or Facebook, if he has subscribed to the notifications. And notifications are delivered by ……Email.
So, the ultimate tool is Email.
There is no ranking system for Emails.
Next, Emails are not ranked on the basis of quality or content. If you have sent a mail, the user is bound to receive it. We simply sort them by date, time, alphabetically or by Subject. Email marketing is direct and personal.
Eventually, if you do not have any email list of subscribers or you have an email list, but you never send out emails, you are missing out on a lot of prospects.
People check Emails several times in a day.
The Radicati Group of UK provides quantitative and qualitative research on email. In a comprehensive analysis of Emails for 2020-2024, their report says:
“Email remains the most ubiquitous form of communication. Email accounts are required for any form of online presence from signing on to social media sites, to shopping online, to gaining access to online portals, as well as access to all forms of online communication. “
Worldwide email traffic is increasing 4% annually.
Revenue for all segments of the email market is experiencing an annual growth of 16%.
Email marketing examples
1. The primary purpose of of sending emails is to bring in more customers to your website. So, plan your email campaigns in relation to some national holiday or event like the Easter or world cup.
2. Make sure that your subscribers have actually requested to receive your emails. Else, you may not realize, and all your emails will be going down their spam box.
3. Give your customers a feeling of importance with exclusive offers news or events. Personalized emails always give better results so always send targeted emails by creating lists in your email database.
4. Design your emails to suit a particular theme. Keep your emails bright and attractive. This makes them more engaging. While designing your email make sure that it all links are are relevant and clearly visible.
5. Include your social media accounts on the header or footer of your email. These are superb for social interaction in online communities.
6. Check how your email renders on a mobile. Make your emails mobile-friendly to maximize opens.
7. Install a list manager to ensure that all your data is stored in one place, and accessible when it is required. Categorize the images in relevant folders for ease of of navigation. Check the response rating for different subject lines, sender name and delivery date / times.
8. When you bring your visitors to the website, ensure that there is a landing page to capture customer data. Focus on one particular aspect and draw your customers attention to the main story.
Email marketing – how to start?
Now that you know how important email marketing is to your business, let’s start off right away. You need two things to begin
- An email list,
- Email service provider
The email list you intend to use should be your own. I personally do not recommend buying email lists, or scraping email address off the websites. All your efforts will be lost if the email you sent goes to the Spam folder or if it is deleted the moment it is received by the user.
Take time to develop your email list. Let people opt for receiving your emails. Create such magnetic leads that subscribers immediately double opt the verification mail, to receive the freebie you promised them. Not just this, they also consent to your terms & conditions without a second thought.
Next, you need an email service provider to send out mails in bulk. If you have ever tried sending bulk mails from your Outlook or GMail account, you will know that the web hosting server will block these emails from being sent. And, you risk your IP address being blacklisted.
All mail servers use blacklists as their first defense against spammers, when mail arrives at a server, the sender IP address is checked against the blacklists. If you are on the list, your mail is rejected.
So, you need software specialized to send bulk emails. There are tons of such email service providers, and each one has a unique service to offer. As a beginner, you cannot weigh the options each one provides, to settle for the service best suited for your needs. We have done the homework for you and will share our suggestions with you towards the end of this section
Email Service Providers
Here is a list of some top rated email service providers:
ConstantContact defines its Email marketing service as “Grow your brand by reaching people where they go every day: their inbox.” If you subscribe to ConstantContact, you will get to use hundreds of templates, which includes industry specific templates, customizable templates and your own branded templates to design your email.
You can send unlimited emails to a maximum of 500 subscribers for a monthly fee of $20, their starter plan. The free trial period for the service is 30 days.
Sendinblue is a complete email marketing tool-set that offers SMS (text messaging) too. You can maintain unlimited subscribers, and pay only for sending emails. But wait, before you jump to conclusions, let me tell you that they offer a FREE plan, where you can send up to 300 emails per day. So, if you need to send about 9000 emails in a month, this plan is good for you. You can continue with the free plan for ever or until your business needs to upgrade to a higher
MailChimp is a very popular email marketing software that has user friendly plans. Their FREE plan offers to accommodate 2000 subscribers and you can send 10,000 emails per month. You can upgrade anytime to paid plans, as your subscriber list grows.
MailChimp has a drag and drop interface to design emails and you can also choose from the huge collection of templates.
Drip is focused for eCommerce Websites and offers great automation tools for email marketing. Drip offers easy integration with Magento, Shopify, WooCommerce and many other eCommerce platforms.
They offer a 15 day trial for all their plans. The starter plan begins at $19 per month which allows you to send unlimited emails to 500 subscribers. As your subscribers grow, you will need to spend more every month.
aWeber is the oldest Email service provider in the market and offers auto responders, segmentation along with an easy email designer.
They also offer a forever FREE plan limited only to 500 subscribers and 300 emails per day.
ConvertKit is the best email service provider that is most suitable for beginners as well as pro marketers. Their starter plan is FREE and offers unlimited emailing for up to 1000 contacts. That is a huge benefit when you are in the initial stages of setting up email marketing.
ConvertKit has a good collection of Pop up forms and landing page designs. So, if you have been wondering how to make engaging pop ups that you see on professional websites, they can now be yours with just a few clicks on ConvertKit.
| Feature | Constant Contact | Send in Blue | Mail Chimp | Drip | aWeber | Convert Kit |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Contacts | 500 | Unlimited | 2000 | 500 | 500 | 1000 |
| Emails per day | Unlimited | 300 | 333 | Unlimited | 300 | Unlimited |
| Free trial period | 30 days | Forever | Forever | 14 days | Forever | Forever |
| Pricing (US$) / month | 20 | Free | Cell | Free | Free | Free |