Let’s clarify what’s email marketing. It must not be confused or regarded as spam, for both are different things. Spam is unsolicited email; in other words, you did not ask to be included in the mailing list and the sender had simply obtained your email address from online sources or anywhere else.
On the other hand, you had opted in for a newsletter or a subscription list due to an interest in the product or company. Therefore, since you had indicated interest, the company has sent you materials that they think you would be interested in.
Email marketing has indeed gained popularity with almost everyone having reliable email access these days. With the influx of smartphones and tablets, more are accessing their emails on the go.
This makes email marketing a very powerful tool in promoting your products and services. However, just how do you use email marketing to reach out to your potential customers? Here’s how-to in a few simple steps:
1. Get an email marketing software
– Without a software to help you, you will need to collect email addresses yourself, email each of these potential customers and respond with a reply. Just imagine how difficult that would be… well, it is impossible to do these manually on a long term basis.
By getting a software such as from Aweber, these tasks will be automated, leaving you time to do other tasks which are more central to your business and website.
I currently use Aweber for my email marketing and find that they fare well in delivery rate and features available.
Both of these features are important when considering an email marketing software as by the end of the day, we want to ensure that the delivery rate of emails is high and there are also features such as auto-responder, web forms and scheduling options that we can use to ease our tasks!
Alternatively, you can also check out Get Response
2. Build an Emailing List
– Now that we have a great email marketing software in place to reach out to people, we would need to gather the people! Don’t “steal” people’s email address if you see it somewhere; your credibility and reputation only goes down the drain when they received unwelcomed emails.
Instead, use an opt-in form. Put one after each article as people might be interested in what you write to continue receiving updates. You can also put a pop-up form to intercept readers when they arrive at your home page or any particular page.
Also, you can offer freebies to encourage people to sign up. Give something like an e-book or a credit coupon so that they will get a little discount if they buy something from your site. You’d benefit again because now they will (likely to) return to use their coupons!
3. Connect with your subscribers
– The work doesn’t stop after your subscribers have signed up. You need to communicate with them to build a relationship.
The first email that you should send out (with the aid of a software, of course) should be delivered as soon as the person opts in. Send a second email containing something the subscriber would find valuable and finally, send the next one a week after that.
Don’t wait too long to send emails to your readers as they might think it is useless to sign up if they don’t receive anything!
4. Start marketing
– Now it is time to get down to business. Start to promote your products or services with subtle emails. Make sure the emails are concise, easy to read and are not sent too frequent.
You could insert useful tips in the emails too so that your fans will look forward to receiving the emails and will not feel as though you are only interested in selling something to them.
Tips: Use the scheduler in your Aweber software to schedule the frequency of sending out these emails.
Aweber Trial Offer starts at less than $1 – Click here for $1 Trial Offer
There you have it – 4 simple steps to help you sell your products or services via emails. A lot of companies do this nowadays either to promote their products or simply to build a relationship with their customers by offering updates or news.
Either way, you are creating awareness of your brand which will benefit your business at the end of the day.
Image credit: TeamStickerGiant
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