Editor’s Note: This is a guest post from Lindsay. Please read more about Lindsay in the footer.
E-mail Marketing
No matter where you look, every blog is in desperate need of one thing: readership. Readers are the difference between a successful blog and a blog that falls flat on its face. One of the best ways to increase readership is through email marketing.
Now, you might ask the silly question, “But isn’t email marketing being replaced by social media and other forms of ‘advanced’ communication?” Well, there’s no easy to put this, so absolutely not. In fact, over 140 billion emails have been sent everyday in 2012 alone. This indicates that email is not only alive and well, but it is still a major means of communication.
The bottom line is that you started a blog because you had something meaningful to say, and you had confidence you could say it well. All you’re really doing with email marketing is translating that message into an email that drives up your readership. Sounds easy, right? Well, it is kind of easy in the sense that the concept is easy to grasp.
On the other hand, executing an email campaign effectively takes some practice, as well as some trial and error. Let’s take a look at some tips that email-marketing pioneers have and are still learning on the road to better email marketing.
Reverse engineer your campaign
In other words, start with the end in mind and work backwards. Why are you sending these emails? In the case of blog promotion, you may simply want to gain a larger readership, or you may want to promote a book or service that you offer with your blog. Whatever the case is, write it down and start planning things with your end goal in mind.
If you build it, they will come
Well, not really, but here’s the point: you need to know exactly what makes a perfect email newsletter subscriber. They share interests that your blog promotes. They are likely interested in your blog’s topics. They might even live in your local region. When you’re starting from scratch you may have to go back to some word-of-mouth basics. In other words, since you don’t have a book or physical product launch, you may simply need to ask people to check out your blog, and if they like what they see, encourage them to sign up for your newsletter. Sometimes you just have to ask. From there you’ll need to worry about delivering a stellar product (product=blog posts & newsletters).
Integrate, don’t separate, social media & email
Most companies understand that social media is a valuable tool for reaching out to customers and engaging them on their own turf. The problem is that they wrongly view social media and email marketing as separate and incompatible solutions. This couldn’t be further than the honest-to-God truth. Designing email newsletters with social media icons and “social” language throughout the newsletter shows customers that you care about trends, and you really want to reach out to them.
Send amazing emails frequently
Obviously this is easier said than done, but once you have that perfect email list together it’s time to start sending out some newsletters. Odds are, you’re not going to get this right every time, but the key to a great email campaign is in reducing the annoyance threshold of your audience.
Keep the emails relevant to your audience, concise and to the point. You may even want to consider firing off your first introductory email reminding people of who are, what you’re about – with the option of unsubscribing from your newsletter right out of the gate. It’s all down hill from there. Simply craft top shelf, relevant newsletter content with embedded social media links on a regular basis, and watch as your open rates quickly turn into click through rates.
