Whether you are a seasoned blogger or aspiring to be one, you probably already know that your success depends on your audience. Every blogger works with the same goal in mind – to expand their blog community and increase long-term traffic on their blog or website. This can be achieved by taking measures to attract the maximum number of people to your website. This is where knowing the basics of email marketing comes in extremely handy.
No wonder marketing plays a pivotal role in determining your success. The better your marketing strategy, the more traffic you’ll see on your blog. And the higher the number of your audience, the more successful you’ll be as a blogger. However, it is not always easy to wrap your head around the ever-evolving marketing practices in the digital world. The mere number of different marketing techniques is enough to leave one scratching their head.
What type of marketing strategy should I invest in? Which one will be the most effective? Is it going to be worth the cost? How can I improve my current campaign? If you are also troubled by these questions, you’ll be glad to know that there’s a simple solution to your marketing troubles – email marketing.
There are numerous advantages of email marketing when it comes to increasing your audience base. In fact, it is one of the most effective digital marketing channels out there that you can employ to get your blog noticed. Scroll down to learn the basics of email marketing and how you can implement it in your marketing strategy to grow your blog community.
What is Email Marketing?
You may have heard the term “email marketing” being tossed around during conversations. It can be confusing, especially if digital marketing is not your forte. But, once you get the hang of it, email marketing can turn out to be the best tool in your marketing arsenal.
Put simply, email marketing can be defined as the use of email to get your message to your audience. It is a highly effective marketing strategy that provides you with the most direct way of connecting with your target audiences, finding leads, and even turning them into customers if that’s a part of your business plan. In short, email marketing is the perfect way to turn one-time visitors into long-term fans!
Is Email Marketing Dead?
When talking about email marketing, one of the biggest concerns of bloggers is if it is a sustainable approach. Is email marketing dead? NOPE. Is it still a viable way to gain online traction? YEP.
If you think that email marketing is an old school marketing technique and out of fashion, you may be surprised to know that it is far from dead. Sure, it has been around for a long time but it is still one of the most effective digital marketing techniques. It competes with various techniques like PPC and SEO that are extremely popular in the world of blogging today.
So, you can rest assured that email marketing isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. Therefore, if you are not already using this classic digital marketing technique, it’s time you look into email marketing and use it to take your blog to the next level.
How Email Marketing Can Help Your Blog?
We’ve established that email marketing can take your blog to new heights of success. But how does it do that? How can it help you reach more people? What advantages does it offer over other popular marketing techniques? Let’s find out.
Email is an Effective Communication Channel
Despite the visible growth in the popularity of social media and other communication platforms, email continues to play a central role when it comes to online communication. Research suggests that around 281 billion emails are sent and received every day all around the world. By 2022, this number is expected to grow up to 333 billion!
The statistics show that email is an effective communication channel and you can use it to your advantage by employing it as a marketing strategy. Your target audience is more likely to respond to marketing measures over the menial than most other platforms. This is one reason why you should consider using email to reach out to your audiences and expand your blog community.
Complete Autonomy
One of the biggest advantages of email marketing is that it allows you to enjoy a high level of autonomy. From the kind of content you want to share to deciding when to share it and with whom, you enjoy complete liberty of your marketing campaign. This is usually not the case with other marketing platforms like social media.
For example, when using social media for marketing purposes, you can get deleted or suspended for multiple reasons without prior notice. This can setback your entire campaign and have drastic effects on the overall results of your marketing strategy. Fortunately, this is not the case with email marketing.
While there are certain guidelines that you must keep in mind while employing email marketing, you own your email list and can use it to share out your message or content whenever you want.
Allows For Targeted Marketing
Another advantage of email marketing is that it allows for highly targeted marketing. This ensures that your marketing efforts reach the relevant audience who are most likely to convert to customers or long-term followers.
Some other digital marketing techniques like PPC also allow for targeted marketing, displaying ads to people who are more likely to be interested in your blog. However, their methods are not as refined compiling an email list of highly targetable audiences.
Keep in mind that the better you are able to identify the right audience, the higher the chances of converting the leads into long-lasting fans. Email marketing allows you to do just that without wasting time, money, and efforts on leads that are unlikely to convert.
Personalized Content with Appropriate CTA
Email marketing allows you to get up-close and personal with your audiences. You can personalize the content of the email based on the type of audience. This increases the probability of grabbing the attention of your targeted audience. Understanding why personalized content has a higher appeal for most people than generic content is a no brainer. Most people are naturally attracted to personalized content that holds their interests than nonspecific generic content.
Furthermore, you can smartly incorporate an appropriate Call to Action (CTA) in your email to increase the likelihood of converting leads. Again, based on the type of audience, you can personalize the CTA to see more effective results. Generally, this is not an option when using most other marketing strategies that, despite focusing on the targeted audience, are unlikely to allow for personalized content for different leads.
A Highly Cost-Effective Solution
One reason why every blogger should consider email marketing is that it is one of the most cost-effective options when it comes to promoting your blog online. It is important to understand that this technique is not reserved for big wigs. Since running an email marketing campaign is relatively cheaper than other techniques, it is a viable solution for everyone, especially aspiring bloggers.
Also keep in mind that since email marketing is highly effective, the cost you will spend is likely to be recovered on its own. You can also keep a track of how much the people on your list are contributing to your success to ensure that your email marketing campaign is providing you with the desired results.
Educate Clients and Build Rapport
There are many ways to reach subscribers but email is one of the best to not only reach them but also educate them about your work. Many businesses publish email newsletters to generate new opportunities and get their message out to their audiences. As a blogger, you can also keep your target audience updated about your interests, upcoming projects or anything that may hold their interest and turn them into loyal followers.
Another advantage of email marketing is that it allows you to build rapport with your subscribers. It establishes credibility and trust and ensures that your subscribers are reminded of your engaging blog. Keep in mind that building good relationships is important as a subscriber is much more likely to come back to your blog or website if they feel they have a good association with the blogger. They are also highly likely to engage in conversation and even share your blog or message when they can trust you and feel connected to you. Fortunately, email marketing is the perfect way to do that!
Reach a Wider Audience to Expand the Blog Community
The core purpose of investing in email marketing is to reach a wider audience. This, in turn, allows you to expand your blog community and have a rich, diverse following. Most other types of marketing techniques focus on the target audience based on some determining factors that help group them together.
On the other hand, email marketing allows you to target people from all walks of life even if they have nothing in common except for fondness for your blog. In other words, email marketing is the most cost-effective way of reaching a wider audience.
Email Marketing Guide for Beginners
1. Build an Effective Email List
To avail the advantages of email marketing, the first thing you need to do is build an effective email list. Keep in mind that the earlier you start, the more effective your final list is likely to be. You can start with your current subscribers or followers. You can also opt for any email marketing services to help you build an amazing list. Remember, having a strong email list is essential if you want to see quick and effective results from your email marketing campaign so make sure you take the time to do your research before finalizing your email list.
2. Share Smart Content
Rachel Aldighieri, MD at the DMA summarized the ideal content for email marketing in the following words:
“If email is to continue to grow and thrive as a channel, then marketers need to heed consumer concerns and give them what they want.”
The content that you include in your email should add value to the receiver. It should be engaging enough to want them to learn more about your blog. This is why you must ensure that you know your target audience well enough to come up with the type of content that will get them hooked.
Personalization is the key so make sure the content that you include in the email is personalized to the liking of your target audience. The latest trend is to add images, gifs, and even memes in the email, based on the preferences of your target audience. Remember, as long as you give your audience what they want, you can expect remarkable results.
3. Add Incentives and Call to Action
A Call to Action (CTA) is an essential part of every email. Make sure you create a strong CTA that will compel your target audience to subscribe to your blog or check out your website. Another strategy that you can employ is to add incentives. Offer your audience something in return for information, subscription, etc.
4. Invest in Track
Keeping a track of email marketing strategies is also important as it allows you to make sure you are going in the right direction. Generally, there are three metrics that you can employ to track email marketing.
First is deliverability, which refers to the number of emails that were successfully delivered to the addresses on your list. Next, check for open rate, which refers to the number of emails that were opened and viewed by the targeted audience. Lastly, keep an eye on the click-through-rate, which helps in determining the number of people who clicked on the link provided in the email. Tracking these metrics will give you an idea about the overall effectiveness and the advantages of email marketing.
Best Email Marketing or Optimization Tools
To make sure you build an effective email list, it is advisable to look into various marketing tools or email services providers that can help you make use of the best practices of email marketing. Here are 3 tools you can employ to make the most of your email marketing campaign.
ActiveCampaign – Helps Manage Email Marketing with Automation
With ActiveCampaign, less is more. In other words, the service is focused on sending fewer emails to achieve better results. It offers some of the best tools for enhancing email and newsletter marketing. Let’s take a look at a few of them.
- Exceptional Deliverability: Allows for guaranteed deliverance of the emails. They also doing great things with machine learning with their predictive sending feature, which optimizes the best time to send an email to a contact based on their past email opening behavior.
- Easy Migration: Allows for free migration from any other email marketing software that the users may be using.
- Multi-Channel Marketing: Allows for not only email marketing but also for marketing through SMS, site messages, social media, and more.
- Reporting: Makes it easy to keep track of the effectiveness of email marketing by providing thorough reporting on all areas including page-visits, geo-tracking, click-maps, etc.
ConvertKit – Helps Manage Email Marketing
ConvertKit is an email service provider that is perfect for bloggers, podcasters, etc. It offers multiple features that can help enhance the overall effectiveness and advantages of email marketing. Let’s take a look at some:
- Broadcast and Sequence Options: Allow you to send one-time broadcast emails that are sent to everyone on the list. Apart from that, you also have the sequence option to create a series of emails that will be broadcasted to your subscribers at a predefined time.
- Segmentation within Emails: Allows you to create personalized emails and add different segments to the same emails. For instance, if you are broadcasting an email, you can add an additional segment that will only be included in emails to pre-defined subscribers.
- Auto Resend Options for Unopened Emails: Allows you a hassle-free way to send a second email to subscribers who didn’t open the first one.
- New Sharing Options: Allows you to share visual automation with others.
Sumo – Helps Gain Subscribers
Sumo offers a number of helpful features that work to increase the conversion rate. Based on your budget and requirements, you can opt for a free or premium version. One of the highly beneficial features of Sumo is List Builder, which will allow you to expand your list of email subscribers. It can display different kinds of content in a pop-up window, urging them to become a part of your email list.
There are different Sumo List Builder Pop-Up options that you can employ to make sure the viewers feel compelled to subscribe. These are the two most beneficial options:
- Sumo List Builder Pop-up Designer: Allows you to customize the popup window.
- Sumo List Builder Pop-up Triggers: Allows you to decide when and where to display the pop-up on your site.
- Sumo List Builder Display Rules: Allows you to create display rules to make sure that the pop-up is displayed in the most effective way without interrupting the user.
Keep in mind that while the Sumo pop-up helps you collect email addresses, it doesn’t add them automatically to your email list if you are using the free version. You will have to do that manually. Therefore, if you are looking to save some time and skip the extra effort through integrations with platforms like ActiveCampaign and ConvertKit, make sure you upgrade to the premium version.
Summing it Up
Now knowing these basics of email marketing, you are all ready to dive in and make the most of this important marketing strategy. When implemented correctly, email marketing can help you take your blog to the next level in no time!
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