Email marketing is the most direct and effective way of communicating with your leads or subscribers. It allows you to provide value to your leads, and then turn them into customers.
It is the best way to stay in touch with your audience or subscribers on a regular basis.
In this email marketing guide for beginners, we’ll walk you through the entire process of starting your email marketing business from craft.
No matter if you are a beginner starting out or if you are looking to improve your email marketing result, this email marketing guide is for you.
Because we will cover everything starting from the lead generation stage, nurturing your leads to the stage to generating sales on autopilot.
Here is in detail what I will be covering in this guide:
But before we get into the nitty-gritty of starting your email marketing business, let’s first find out what email marketing is.
What is email marketing?
Email marketing as its name suggests is an advertising method whereby a marketer or business owner makes use of email marketing software to market products or services to people who subscribed to his email list.
It is about promoting products or services to people who consented or gave you permission to communicate with them via their personal email addresses.
And since the subscribers had an interest in your business or what you are offering and then gave you permission to communicate with them, this method is the most effective marketing approach and can result in higher ROI than other marketing methods.
In fact, if a prospect gave you his email address it is because he/she has an interest in your offer – and maybe would like to learn more from you and your offer before he makes his purchase decision.
So no matter your business model, or your niche, you should make this marketing method a part of your marketing or online adverting strategy.
Why do you need email marketing?
When someone joins or subscribes to your email list, that person intends to be interested in your content, service, or product you promote.
And guess what! Everyone has at least one email address linked to his mobile device.
And just like you, they open every day. That means they are easily reachable through their email accounts.
Here are the reasons to add email marketing to your online advertising method:
1. Low startup Cost
If you are a business owner or entrepreneur looking for a low-cost and easy form of marketing to start or grow your online business, email marketing is the one method to consider. Because this advertising method allows you to target your audience with fewer resources than those needed for other forms of advertising.
No matter if you have a small business or a big one, what you need to get started is just:
- an opt-in page (landing page) you will be using to generate hot leads for your business,
- an email marketing tool that will serve to create your email list and send emails.
And that is all.
What remains is to send traffic to your email marketing funnel.
The good news is that there are marketing tools out there that provide all the tools you need to run your business under one roof and at an affordable cost.
Some even offer a free plan that allows you to start your email marketing business without any start-up cost.
From here, you can see that sending emails to prospective customers is one of the cheapest types of marketing available for you as a small business owner or entrepreneur.
2. Email list is an asset
Another reason to start with email marketing or start building an email list for your business is that you own the list you build. It is an asset and you own it as long as your subscribers remain subscribed.
It is clear you can not trade or sell it as you can with a website or blog, but it is one of the valuable assets out there that can be making you a passive income.
3. Email marketing can be personalized
The only way you can send a personalized marketing or promotional message or campaign to your audience can be only be done via email marketing.
Unlike other marketing mediums like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc where you can’t personalize your message or content to each of them, with email marketing you can achieve it. Understand my point right.
Sure, you can tailor different messages to different groups of customers using any platform. But what you cannot do is to use their name or first name in your copy.
4. Email marketing is measurable
The way you can improve your marketing efficiency is by having the capability to track and measure your marketing campaigns as it helps you to understand what is working and what isn’t. This is absolutely what email marketing offers.
In fact, everything that you do with email marketing is measurable – taking out the guesswork in your marketing strategy.
Depending on which email marketing tool you use, you’ll be able to track things like:
- How many leads or subscribers do you have?
- how many users viewed a certain email,
- who opens your email,
- who clicked on a link in the email
- who buys the products, etc.
You’ll also be able to A/B test your email’s subject lines and content and measure the audience’s response to certain types of content.
5. Email marketing is one of the highest-converting marketing channels
As I said previously when people join your mailing list they are giving you permission to send them emails including commercial or transactional emails. And since you have personal and direct access to each of them, the odds of converting them to customers or buyers is higher.
Because you already had the chance to talk to them, and they know who you are. And if they accepted to join your list it is because they are interested in your business and its offers.
How to get started with email marketing in 2024 In 5 Simple Steps?
Now that you know the benefit of email marketing for your online business, let me show you how to get started with email marketing the right way.
This infographic below is the summary of my email marketing guide for beginners. Feel free to share it with your friends or use it on your blog. Just quote our site or link back to this post.
Step #1. Define Your Audience
The first thing to do when starting with email marketing is to determine your audience. In other words, who do you want to target or do business with?
This is very important because if you try to target everyone your odds of turning your leads into customers is zero.
Note that if you are selling to everyone, you are selling to no one.
Also, you have to understand that the way you can build a striving and successful online business with email marketing is by solving people’s problems and providing value to their lives.
So, know your strengths and what you are good at and focus on the people or audience your expertise or skills can help the most.
Related post: How to choose a profitable niche.
Step #2. Determine your email marketing goals and strategy
Once you know your audience the next step is to define a measurable and long-term goal for your email marketing. What do you want to achieve with your audience? What is your business goal?
Do you want to generate more leads? Or do you want to increase your ROI or conversion rate?
Having a marketing strategy that will help you meet your email marketing goal is also important. Without a marketing strategy and adequate plan, meeting your business goals will be difficult – not to say impossible.
Know that your business goal and target audience set the foundation for your email marketing strategy.
Because if you don’t understand your audience or what your email marketing or business’s goal is, you’ll have a very hard time setting up or implementing an effective email marketing strategy.
Step # 3. Choose A Suitable Email Marketing Tool
Once you have set the foundation, I mean once you know your audience and your business goal, the next step is to choose an email marketing tool you will be using to implement your email marketing strategy.
There is a range of email marketing service providers out there to choose from.
The best one is the one that can help you meet your email marketing goal easier and with a good ROI.
Here are our top recommended email marketing tools:
Systeme.io
This is one of our top recommended all-in-one marketing tools because it comes with all the tools and suite you need to start and grow an online business.
With Systeme.io you can:
- Build sales funnels and landing pages to generate leads or sell products,
- Create membership sites or online courses to make passive income,
- Build up to 2000 email contacts for free,
- Connect your own domain name to the software for free,
- Create and send email campaigns, automate your entire online business with workflows, and much more.
You can learn more about systeme.io by reading my in-depth review here.
Getresponse
Getresponse is an all-in-one email marketing and automation tool designed for online entrepreneurs, eCommerce store owners, and small business owners.
You can create sales funnels, opt-in forms, and landing pages by using the pre-made templates or start from scratch with their drag-and-drop editor.
When it comes to marketing automation, this is a great tool to use. You can easily optimize your open and click-through rates by scheduling time and date for delivering your emails to your subscribers, and track and measure your campaigns with the use of this tool.
Read our Getresponse review for more information.
AWeber
This is also one of our top recommended email marketing tools out there.
It is an automation tool and comes with a lot of useful features.
With Aweber, you can create email lists, and campaigns, send automated emails to your subscribers, and much more.
It also provides opt-in forms, and landing page templates you can choose, customize and make them fit your brand and then use to build your email list.
The best part, it also comes with a built-in analytics tool that can help you to identify areas of improvement and optimize your future campaigns.
Read our Aweber review to learn more.
Want more tools to try?
Check out our top best email marketing tools.
Step #4. Create your landing page
In order to send emails, you need subscribers first.
In order words, you have to get people’s email addresses in order to be able to communicate with them with the use of your favored email marketing tool.
Right?
The first thing to do if you have zero subscribers is to create a landing page or lead funnel you can use to generate leads for your business.
This is where you pre-sell your audience your offer or solution.
To increase your opt-in rate, you can use a lead magnet. That can be an eBook, a gift card, a discount code, a free report, etc.
Note that you should build your landing page with your targeted audience in mind.
So make sure the copy is tailored to their need.
See an example of an opt-in page below.
If you are an affiliate marketer, here is a guide to learn how to build a high-converting affiliate marketing funnel.
Or learn how to create a sales funnel with Systeme.io if you want to sell products or services online.
Step #5. Create an email list and and segment it for a better conversion
Once you have created your landing page, the next step is to set up your email list and then connect it to your pre-sell page which is the landing page you have created in the previous section.
This is where your subscribers will be added once they opted-in to your list.
In other words, all the email addresses your visitors will exchange with your lead magnet will be stored in that email list.
This is what will allow you to broadcast or send emails to all your subscribers at the same time.
Now, it is the time to segment your email list for a better conversion rate
After you’ve built up your email list, the next step is to segment your list so you can reach out to the right people at the right time.
Email segmentation is very important because it allows you to segment your email list based on your audience’s specific needs or other useful criteria like their location, age, language, engagement, etc.
For example, if you have a product or service you promote that is not available to a specific country’s users, you can segment your list based on that.
That will prevent you from delivering irrelevant messages to your subscribers that come from that country.
Step #6. Set up email campaigns or automation and pair it with your list segmentation
Once you have built your email list and segmented it, the next step is to build your email marketing campaigns and automation.
That will allow you to deliver your emails or messages to the right person at the right time.
And most importantly every subscriber will receive emails or messages that are relevant to their interest. That leads to a higher open rate and click-through rate. That means better conversion and sales for your business.
By using email marketing tools like Systeme.io, Getresponse, or any automation tool, you can build drip email campaigns and activity-based emails that engage your subscribers.
Step #7. Send traffic to your landing page or lead funnel
Once you have your email campaigns and automation activated and up to running, your next step is to start sending traffic to your email marketing funnel.
Your email marketing funnel in this case looks like this: landing page – thank you page or bridge page – welcome email/autoresponder – email campaigns or automation that include transactional or promotional emails.
For traffic generation, you have several ways such as blogging, Facebook, Quora, Youtube, etc.
My favored traffic source is blogging because not only it is free but also the traffic is targeted and the best quality for conversion compared to other traffic sources like paid ads.
This is because a blog allows you to attract people who already are looking for your services or products while with paid ads you reach out to your audience without them being searching for your service.
Here is a guide on how to start a blog.
The best part is it doesn’t cost a lot of money. Find out how much does it cost to start a professional blog with this guide.
Step #8. Track and measure your results
With email automation tools you can build your email campaigns and automate your entire for weeks and even months without any extra work.
But note that email marketing is not a “set and forget it” system. You need to keep an eye on your campaigns from time to time to ensure your campaigns are delivering the results you are expecting.
Take a look at your email campaigns, and the different segments you built and find out which campaigns or segments are getting the most open rate and clicks, have a lot of unsubscribers, etc.
Doing so will allow you to find out your best-performing campaigns, and make adjustments on segments that are not performing well.
Conclusion
Money is on the list. You hear this quote million times. And that is true as email marketing allows you to provide more value to your audience, build a trust relationship and then convert them into customers.
People buy from people they like, know, and trust.
So the game is worth the candle.
Right?
Here are the steps to get you started today if you have followed me in this email marketing guide for beginners:
- Define your audience,
- Determine your email marketing or business goal,
- Choose your favored email marketing tool,
- Build your landing page,
- build your email list and segment your list,
- Set up your email campaigns and automation,
- Send traffic to your landing page to get your first subscribers, and
- Don’t forget to track and measure your campaigns for a better conversion rate.
I hope you found this guide helpful.
Let me know if you have a question regarding this guide.
Be an ACTION taker, SOW YOUR SEED TODAY!
To your success!
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