Blogging for increased business is a provable practice. Combined with email marketing, a small business can make blogging work even better. You may not have considered email marketing because it’s often thought of as spam, or coupons, rather than true marketing by some. But the fact is, Email marketing is for all types of businesses, not just big corporations and spammers.
It works for all types of small business and is a great way to compliment your blogging efforts. 50% of subscribers to email lists, according to Nielsen, trust the information they receive from their subscription. This means that email marketing is a viable and worthwhile endeavor for most small businesses. It gets results!
What Is Email Marketing?
Typically, email marketing encompasses readers subscribing, by providing their email address, and “double opting in” to receive regular emails, content and newsletters from you. You’ll need a service such as MailChimp, Aweber or other email marketing apps to perform email marketing most efficiently. You’ll be able to send a variety of content with links and images with such a service to your subscribers. You’ll have to pay a monthly fee based on the volume of email sent as well as how many subscribers you have.
Offering some sort of incentive to get people to sign up for your email marketing campaigns, such as a free eReport, or cents off coupon is helpful, allowing you to get happy and enthusiastic subscribers. However, some people who sign up for freebies are just doing it to get the free item, so offering a topnotch newsletter full of interesting and relevant content can suffice too. You know your market better than anyone so do what you feel will work for them.
What Can Email Marketing Do For Your Business?
Keep Readers & Customers Updated — It’s simple to keep your readers and customers updated via a regular weekly newsletter sent via email. Include the most popular or important blog posts from the previous week, include a few extras, and they’ll be happy to receive your email.
Promote New Products or Events — Send out an email to subscribers each time you have a new product, event or promotion. If you’ve done a good job keeping in touch with your subscribers, they will respond well.
Reach a New Audience — If you make your email marketing interesting and allow your subscribers to share your mailings with others, you’ll reach people who don’t use social media to find out about your blog.
Stay In Customers & Readers Minds — Email marketing allows you to stay in your customers and readers minds in between times that they visit your blog or storefront.
Five Tips for Email Marketing Success:
Success at email marketing campaigns is easy if you know the basics. These tips below can help you with it –
- Use Good Subject Lines & Headlines — It’s important that you really think about your subject lines and headlines for your emails. If you don’t ensure that your subject lines and headlines are creative, yet accurate, people won’t open your email.
- Always Choose Relevant Topics For Your Audience — Ensure that what is inside the email is relevant to the subject line, as well as speaks to your target audience. Knowing who your audience is will go far in making email marketing a success.
- Pick Fabulous Images And Graphics — If you send HTML email, ensure that you use clear, high quality appropriate graphics and images. If you send old fashioned clip art, and fuzzy pictures, you’ll turn off your audience.
- Send Newsletters Regularly — In order to not be classified as spam, it’s important that you send your email marketing campaigns at least once a week, or at the very least, how often you told them you’d send them something at the time they signed up for your email list.
- Follow The Law — Read and understand the laws regarding spam. A terrific blog with links to the various laws around the country is here. Look up your country and get to know the laws so you don’t accidentally break them.
Try adding email marketing to your blogging efforts and you’ll soon see an increase in business, no matter what type of business you have.
Know your Guest Author
Christophe is the co-founder of GetApp, the #1 Cloud Business Apps Marketplace. He writes about cloud computing trends and provides tips on how businesses can benefit from cloud-based apps to improve their profit. Find Christophe on Google+