Once there was a blogger that thought he could become successful without email marketing. Every morning he woke up and started his day targeting social media followers with his content…all his content. The story ends with this blogger giving up because he didn't include email marketing in his strategy.
I want to share with you some tips on why you shouldn't leave out your email campaign and why it's important for social as well as everything else on your blog.
Why Is Email Marketing So Important?
Email marketing is important simply because it’s a way that you can create a community around your target niche. That's the “correct” way to say it.
The real reason why marketing through email is so important is because every successful marketer knows that it’s a license to print money.
The rules of business and marketing have changed, and those changes have killed many businesses. But the changes have also created enormous opportunity for thousands of others. If you understand the new playing field, grabbing your prospects attention and building a relationship with him or her has actually gotten a lot simpler in many ways.
That's why email marketing is so important. It's a place where you can be intimate with the people that have opted into your email list. They have told you that it was ok, they expect to receive things that you know will help them.
Whether that information comes in a free package that will build trust and enthusiasm for staying on your email list, or whether that info comes in the form of a $49 deal, they will still love you for it because they expect you to do whatever you can to help them succeed.
When to Do Your Email Marketing
I understand that you’re probably wanting to go out right away and start building your list with people that want to purchase your wares, however, while I applaud your enthusiasm, you’ve still got to understand what you’re doing in order to learn the “when” to market your email to people.
I love this quote from the GetResponse Team that states:
“The key to sell more is to build lasting relationships with your customers”.
They understand that before you can really be effective at email marketing, you have to build that solid bond between your brand and your customer’s idea about your brand. Heck, even their landing page creator prompts a more personal and friendly approach that shows us that we, as the email marketer, are not the most important people in this endeavor…the subscribers are. So learn how to build a relationship with them.
How do I do this with a complete stranger?
One of the best ways that you can start to build a relationship with your email list is to ask them questions. A good start is after they sign up to your list, you can re-direct them to a page that thanks them for signing up. In this page, you can have a created Google Drive template of some polling questions they can answer that will better help you – help them in the future.
If your niche is “social media marketing” have some questions ready that will ask them what social network they plan on targeting, or what problems they have with a certain thing related to social.
Tell them you’re going to help them answer these questions and they’ll give you the tools you need to build a relationship with them.
In time, after you have continually helped them with their problems or questions, trust will form and that is where you want to be with your list.
You get where I'm coming from?
It’s easy to manage for someone that knows absolutely nothing about email marketing and list building if you stay consistent with trying to help the people who have subscribed to your list.
This Is Not a Right to Spam
One thing that I must speak on now is that when I talk to most beginner list builders, they see dollar signs because they know that once you have captured that email you are able to send as many emails as you want to the people in your list. However you have to focus on the journey, not just that one click that you will eventually get
Just because you can, doesn't mean you should. Don't spam your email list everyday with offers and sales pages. That won't have any effect on them positively and you will end up losing subscribers.
What would you do if you saw someone screaming in the middle of a restaurant, BUY MY STUFF! BUY MY STUFF TODAY!!
You would ignore them wouldn't you? I know I would, and so would everyone else.
What to Send to Your Subscribers
If you're not emailing your subscribers more than one time a week, you're not creating an active subscriber list. You have to understand that thin line between one too many and not enough. It's different for everyone but my list responds to 2-3 emails per week.
The first email goes out on Monday, this is connected to my blog so it publishes an email to my list telling them that I have a new blog post out. Not really a sales email.
The second one has no links whatsoever. This is simply a strategy to keep them engaged with me by telling them a little about me and what I did each week.
Last week I stubbed my pinky toe on the bar stool, so I told them about it. It was a hilarious story and I left no detail hidden from them…including the part where I kicked the bar stool while I was naked!
The responses were amazing!
Replies flooded my inbox telling me well wishes and giving me home made remedies for stubbed toes. I spend a total of 5 hours replying back to all of those emails.
Become personal in email marketing
That's the secret ingredient in email marketing. Share your lessons and what you’ve learned to your subscribers. Don't just send sales copy and link spam all the time. Open up and tell them something personal each week. Make it an extra email. If you already have the blog broadcast set up, then you need to include this personalized email too.
This is a guaranteed fix on the activity and response in your email list.
People open up to you when you show them your flaws, it makes you human. They can understand it when you stub your pinky toe on the bar stool, because they've done it themselves.
Guess what? You've just made yourself relate-able to them, and now they want to share their story with you.
The Final Thought
Email marketing is a great way to make some extra money with your blog. Your subscriber list is not a prison where you put people so that you can punish them every day with spam and sales copy. It's a place of happiness and helpfulness where people can come and relax because they know they're in good hands with you. They know and understand that you have their best intentions at heart, and that, is trust.
Recommended Reading:
- Aweber: Aweber Tutorial for Beginners – Email Marketing Made Easy
by Johnny Wang
- How to Use MailChimp for Beginners: The Indie Author's Guide to Email Marketing
by Adam Netherlund
- Growing Your Business with Email Marketing by AWeber (free ebook)
Yes, I agree with you. E-mail Marketing becomes much more interesting for potential clients if you share your story and your personal experiences.
Cool deal, thanks for stopping by
Great post. I have been blogging for 3 years now and have a number of subscribers but I have never really managed to utilize this part of blogging. This post about email marketing will really help me. Thanks a lot.
Glad I could help
Great post, thank you! I really appreciate that you go into more detail on how you do your email marketing. For me this has been hardest part to get started with but I’m starting to understand but if you do not create a list and start using that to build a relationship with your readers you are missing out!
Glad I could help out
Email marketing is tough, building a list, money is in the list right, the problem is email marketing takes time, nurture relationships and after that promotions of offers and affiliate products.
That’s it. You’ve got to keep that relationship going by keeping it personal all the time
The secret is being you. In email/social media/podcasting, everything. But email is probably one of the greatest ways to show that. Giving your reader the idea that all you want is their money is no way to get their money. Instead bring value, and show them that they come first. You’ll never go hungry this way.
Correct. Always have their best interests at heart and make that your top priority.
This being a great post. This needs a appreciation, as you provided a detailed description about how the email marketing is done. This part being the most difficult part for me.This takes time but after it flourishes it flourishes amazingly.
Thank you very much for sharing such a great post with us.
No problem, email marketing is a talent that not everyone has, but if you can harness it, it’s very powerful.
Hey Wade,
This post is looking so nice and helpful for email marketing. Now after the reading this article i can say you are a best teacher for email marketing because i saw a pdf file of Neil Patel’s Marketing strategies but you are giving fight for him.
Thanks 🙂
Hi Wade,
Email marketing is very important for online marketing success. Any blogger or Internet marketer that has never tapped into the power of email marketing is undoubtedly missing out on a lot of things.
Beginners should embrace email marketing because of its power to convert the targeted niche. Its a great way to build relationship which is fundamental to online success!
Your piece is so very helpful!
This post was “kingged” or upvoted in kingged where it was shared for bloggers,social marketers,and online marketers.
Thanks a lot for stopping by and promoting this on other sites!
Great post, e-mail marketing, if done right is certainly an essential marketing technique that is a sure way of getting new prospective clients or followers.
Hi Wade.
Great guest post, and an awesome guide for beginners. 🙂
I just published a post on list building this morning where I briefly covered the million dollar question – what to do with your list once you’ve built it.
Something we all struggle with to begin with, I’m sure you’ll agree?
I really like you idea of sending 3 different types of emails each week. I currently only send one – usually when I’ve published a new post. Definitely going to try up that to two and see how my list respond. 🙂
Which email marketing service are you using?
I’ll tweet your post a little later today.
Kerry
Hey Kerry, yeah I think you should send at least one more email to your list each week. You’ve got to establish trust with them. One way to do that is with the personal email I do. It’s very cleansing to people. They love it!
I’m not sure that e-mail marketing works for every business model, but in all cases, you have to get the prospect’s permission before you do so. Finding the way to get someone to say yes, and then stick with you over the long haul are the tricky skills to learn.
It’s not tricky at all. All you have to do is offer them something they value in exchange for subscribing to your email list. Just think of the reasons why you yourself have signed up to email lists in the past.
And YES it works for just about any business model because as I’ve said in a previous blog post of mine,
“…these are ppl who you can engage for months and months instead of just getting a onetime sale then never seeing them again and having to spend more marketing dollars just to reach one more.”
Email marketing works for every business online. If you don’t have a list, then you don’t have a list of prospected clients. These are people that you can go to on a whim (sometimes) and make money with.
You should rethink your ideals on email marketing because its a great way to build repertoire
Excellent post which contains very useful tips regarding Email marketing. The most important thing for me is that you provide a detail in your article. Through this everyone can better understand that what actually Email marketing is.
Thanks for sharing such an excellent post.
No problem, glad you liked it 🙂
The tips which you have shared in this post are just awesome. These tips are really helpful to me and I think it should must helpful to others. I really like the style of writing this article. Your articles are always helps me a lot. Thanks for sharing this wonderful article with us. 😀
That’s no problem Lisa, glad I could help out.
Excellent post. I’ve recently launched my website and I’m looking to increase user engagement. Email Marketing is definitely something that can help raise brand awareness.
Hi Wade, I really like the strategy you describe – especially your mid week email where you share something personal. I think that is an important part of engaging with your list. They need to see you as a real person!
Agreed! Doing a personal email brings engagement and that’s what you’re trying to achieve with your list. They will get used to engaging with you on a regular basis and when the time comes to ask for the sale, guess what? They’ll engage on it!
Hey Wade,
Very nice and informative article.
No doubt! email marketing has lot of importance nowadays. It impacts is very great to drive lot of blog traffic and increase in sell as well.
I’ve recently started my website and I gonna follow this tips on my site too.
Thanks for sharing.
Keep it up 🙂
Awesome! It also helps to give things away for free. Starting this Monday I’m doing 7 Days to Stronger Relationships course on my email list and it has really boosted my sign ups.
As more and more B2B prospects adopt mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets, best practices for email design are evolving rapidly. That means you should design your messages using basic HTML elements that will adapt easily to widely diverse email clients, which may or may not display the images in your design.
So I have been trying to make money online (niche blogs, CPA etc) for about a year but only started to actively work on an email list last week.
I completely agree that having a strategy to build the list AND manage the list are crucial. I see a lot of people that actively advocate “email sales all the time because subscribers come and go”. It is nice to see that I am not the only one who believes that it is possible to develop a long term relationship with your list.
I like the idea about a sharing personal stories and surverys. I will incorporate both.
Thanks!
Good stuff. I think you will see some great results with it.
Great tips, Wade. Email marketing is something that every online marketer and blogger should use. It’s one of the greatest ways to build relationships with your readers, get to know them well and promote your product to them that also helps them on the other hand. Thanks for sharing these great tips, I’m pretty sure they will be helpful for everyone who’ve just started with email marketing 🙂
PrIyAnGsHu BG
Glad I could help out!
Hmmm…So far I was only sending them automated RSS feeds of my blog. Guess I have work cut out for me. I am going to start writing informational emails now.
Yeah I hear ya. I was doing that too until I really started researching the way successful email marketers do things. Every successful one sends more than just their RSS feed.
I love blogging and still trying to make good content on my blog. For now, I still have not thought to use email marketing. But email marketing is very necessary as well. Maybe one day I will use it.
Thank you for a great tips and very helpful.
The best thing anyone would tell you, even if you’ve just started, is to start your email list now. I’ve been in blogging for 3 years now and I didn’t start my email list until year 2. Think of all the people I could’ve had in my subscriber list!
Great post Wade! What would you say is the right medium? You naturally want to remain constantly on the radar but do you send out emails every week, two weeks or a month? What would you say is the right level to stick at or does it really just depend?
One question.! Do I really need to do email marketing ? I mean who checks his/her email accounts now days? According to my opinion, I guess social sharing ways are the best ways to increase conversion rate rapidly and to gain as much visitors possible. Isn’t it?
Do reply
Thanks
Well laid guidelines, never considered email marketing not until now, because I didn’t really get the concept back.then. TANX for the helpful tips
Thanks a lot for a such a Nice info Wade. I just started a Blog and am missing Email Marketing. My main focus is on Social Media Marketing. But after going through your post, I came to know that Email Marketing is as important as Social Media Marketing. Definitely I will focus on Email Marketing as well.
Eagerly waiting for your next article !!!
Ileane,
This is an excellent post on this topic of email marketing. We must build an email list to build a business online, just as offline businesses build their database over time. You bring up so many relevant points here.
Connie
Great post, Wade, with some great tips! Thank you for recommending my book, too. It’s greatly appreciated.
I don’t know if I’d agree with the amount of emails you’re recommending but I suppose it does depend on what niche or market you’re targeting.
Hello Wade,
Truly an informative post, you have written.
Marketing is the crucial part of Blogging. It always helps you to promote your articles in front the whole world. And if you are thinking in terms of E-Mail Marketing, it you don’t need to sweat over it.
If you built your email list of your readers, then you can easily promote your products be sending their an e-mail. As a result, your revenue will also increase.
Thanks for giving tips regarding e-mail marketing. It will surely an effective tips for the newbies.
Regards,
Swapnadip
Thank you very much for this information. I’m a new blogger who was hesitant on how to use email marketing. This was really helpful, Thank you!
I have to admit for the first few of my blogging journey, I was just ignoring the power of email marketing. In the last six months only I started taking email list building seriously. No doubt email marketing can be a great revenue source as well as a way to drive targeted traffic to our websites if we have huge and responsive email list.
I never knew E mail marketing is so important. I am new to blogging and underestimated the power of email marketing. Thanks for this article. It totally helped me to broaden my horizons.
e-mail marketing could be powerfull, but it depends on your content and your target audience. It works better for some audiences.
Very informative article, yet again J I’d just want to add that proof reading is extremely important for any email. Also, it would be advisable to link your email with the various social platforms you are present on. Last but not the least share both your transactional & direct emails.
Very nice, useful article, thank you… I like it… Will recommend reading to some of my friends…
Great breakdown on operating a successful email campaign. Personally, email campaigns are most effective when I can finally get to chat with the customer one on one via email. I try to avoid the auto-response if possible because I hate to receive automated responses myself.