Email marketing to grow your audience fast!
Is email marketing part of your digital strategy?
If not, maybe you should take a closer look.
Did you know it is a way to grow your blog audience faster?
Would you be surprised to learn that it is a method that gains 50 to 80% engagement rates?
Did you know that email marketing is steadily increasing?
I know, I know. You probably just rolled your eyes, but before you jump to conclusions let’s look at some of the statistics.
If you are not using email marketing as part of your promotional efforts you could be missing out on a golden opportunity.
Email engagement and open rates have remained consistently high over the years.
Many marketers still regard it as a valuable communication tool.
Don’t just take my word for it.
Let’s look at what some of the experts have to say about the value of email marketing.
Emails with personalized subject lines generate 50% higher open rates.
Yes Lifecycle Marketing
The average open rate for a welcome email is 82%
Getresponse
Email marketing is delivering huge returns for marketers
Neil Patel
Email may appear to be the slower, outdated version of communication when compared to social media and messaging applications.
However, the data tells a much different story.
Marketers are reporting high numbers for email engagement and are investing money to increase their campaign efforts.
It is money well spent.
For every $1 invested in email campaigns there is an expected return of approximately $38
Active email accounts are expected to be well into the billions this year, so marketing in this way is no small proposition.
If you are managing a blog, email is an excellent way to reach and communicate with your audience on a personal level.
When should you send your marketing emails?
If you are worried about emailing too often and cluttering up your user’s inboxes, sending your messages once a week is a good target.
A recent study showed that audiences would like to receive promotional emails on a weekly basis.
Your audience wants to hear from you, and they don’t think that once a week is excessive.
Research shows that the best day of the week to send your marketing email correspondence is a Tuesday.
It’s not clear why this is the best day exactly but the data collected from multiple studies back up the claim.
Email marketing continues to gain ground and is a viable method for growing your blog audience.
It’s still in fashion too, with 73% of millennials using email marketing as their method of business communication.
Why should you use email marketing?
Email is underestimated as the powerful marketing tool that it is.
Your communications to users can be personalized or segmented to reach different sections of your audience (e.g. male or female, older or younger users)
Email Marketing doesn’t have to be fancy or complicated.
There are multiple services like Mailchimp or Mailer lite that can help you create and manage professional-looking email marketing campaigns.
Email, by its nature, is immune from audience adjusting updates like Google algorithms or Instagram cleanups.
As a blogger, this is useful as it means that you can always reach your intended audience with your email marketing messages.
If you are a blogger that integrates selling products with your blog, email marketing can be an invaluable tool.
Sending 3 abandoned cart emails results in 69% more orders than a single email.
Oberlo
Email marketing can be used to highlight special offers or alert your audience to special deals and discounts.
If you are reasonable tech-savvy you can add videos to your emails.
Although making a video can take a bit of time it is worth it when it comes to email marketing.
Videos added to your promotional emails can improve click-through rates by up to 300%
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How do I build my email marketing list?
Email marketing is not only viable, but it is also extremely effective when it comes to engaging your audience.
So how do you GET that audience to start with?
Building your email list can be done in a number of different ways. but one of the easiest is by using a simple sign up form.
Create a sign up form and use it in the following locations:
- On your website banner as a CTA (check out my home page)
- Use 2 or 3 times on your home page to break up content
- Add it to your website footer
- Include it on your About page
- Display it at the end of each blog article
- Feature it as a pop-up
You should note that even though all of these opt-in placements are viable, popups have been proven to be the most effective email collection method.
Apart from using your website for your email list growth, there are other places you can easily gain email sign-ups from.
- Include sign ups through your Facebook account
- Add a sign-up link to your Instagram page
- Use a popup to show your signup form on Pinterest
- Try a giveaway (people love freebies) to encourage email sign up.
Engagement and click-through rates
As a blogger, growing your email list is almost, if not more important, than your email traffic.
Seasoned bloggers know that their email list equates to value.
Good email marketing leads to a consistent and direct relationship with your audience.
You can generate a user experience via email that reaches out and connects with your audience on a highly personalized level.
This can, in turn, create more engagement and sharing of your content or products.
You are 6x more likely to get a click-through from an email campaign than you are from a tweet.
Email Audience
Engagement and conversion rates from email marketing are proven to be substantially higher than social media rates.
Email marketing will generate more views, shares, and click-throughs than other marketing methods.
You can build your brand and create email campaigns that align with your brand’s colors and logos to generate recognition.
Email marketing and list building are customizable, and scalable, and you can easily measure the effectiveness of your campaigns.
The majority of email marketing applications will include analytics that tracks open rates and click-through rates so you can monitor what works best.
You will also be able to segment emails and experiment with A/B testing to assess your audience response rates.
A/B testing is a way to find out if one thing or another works.
This will allow you to drill down to specifics and tailor your email communications accordingly.
Segmenting is a way to divide your audience into categories and make sure that your email marketing correspondence speaks directly to them.
You can segment by age, gender, interests, and hobbies.
Anything that allows you to diversify your email list and send targeted messages that resonate with your followers.
Final words
Marketers regard email as one of the most effective methods to communicate with their audience.
With the high ROI rates, it is easy to see why.
Dollar for dollar email is still one of the highest value marketing methods out there.
If you haven’t done it already, start growing your email list today and enjoy the benefits.