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Email Marketing for Dummies: How to Use Email to Grow Your Customer Base

Email marketing is an immeasurable tool for small and large businesses. It’s an affordable way to send targeted messages to your target market. It’s friendly across all platforms and it’s so easy to track your ROI (Return on Investment). 

Are you aware that 76% of UK-based businesses describe email marketing as ‘important’ or ‘very important,’ and 66% of the marketers from these businesses say that the ROI is excellent? 

The key to a successful email marketing campaign is having healthy data. 

Your email list is your most valuable business asset. This email marketing for dummies guide shows you how to set up effective campaigns to grow your business.

What Is Email Marketing? 

The basis of email marketing is simple. It’s the process of sending informative content to current and potential customers with the end goal of increasing sales. 

Although the description is simple, there are many things that go into creating an effective email marketing campaign. 

The first thing a business needs to even consider launching an email campaign is a healthy database. You should have a database consisting of people who’ve visited your website, sent inquiry emails, called your office, or signed up for your newsletter. Also, contacts collected by your sales team on the road or even at trade shows should be in your email database. 

The ROI with email marketing is noted as very successful. This is because if you already have someone’s email address, they’ve already taken the first step to showing interest in your product or service. You’ve made half the sale already. 

Email Marketing 101 

You need to know the steps between taking yourself from email marketing for dummies, to someone who knows what they’re doing. 

The most important thing behind a successful email marketing campaign is reporting. There is no point in sending out emails to customers and potential customers without being able to track your success. 

You need to be able to track your email bounces. This means that you will be able to see which emails were undelivered. This could be because of a simple typo in the email address itself or a more in-depth error such as server bounce issues. 

Identifying what devices your readers are accessing your emails on is vital.

If your email marketing campaign isn’t tailored for viewing, your recipients will simply not finish reading it. But, if you’ve anticipated that most of your database will be accessed via mobile, you can design your emails in such a way that the readability is made for mobile and keep the reader engaged. 

Using Email Marketing for Customer Reviews

Customer reviews can boost SEO. 97% of consumers say reviews influence their buying decision. You can use your email marketing campaign as a way to touch base with your current customers by simply asking for feedback. 

This is conducive to your business and assists in other areas, it’s also a great way to maintain contact with your clients. It makes them feel like their opinion is important. It will drive up your SEO rankings, drive up your email campaign success statistics, and give you a competitive edge. 

Here are some tips for asking for customer reviews in your email marketing campaign: 

Keep Your Design Simple and Focused

Steer clear of unnecessary images and headers. The simplicity will help your recipient focus on the message and content. If you overload the recipient with too many flashy images, GIFs, or too much content, you’ll probably lose the likelihood of them responding. 

Use Email Personalization

How to personalize emails is more than a simple hello directly aimed at the customer. Try to use their company name, as well, within your email — or personalize the email through other information available to you. 

Say Why You Want the Information

If you’re considering rebranding, tell the customer that. If you want opinions on your product, tell the customer that. If you want input on your content, tell the customer that.

If they know why their opinion matters, they’re more likely to answer. 

Include a Clear CTA (Call To Action)

Don’t be vague with what you want the customer to do.

If you need them to click on a link, visit your website, or watch a video, you need to be clear with what action you’d like them to take. 

By having a clear goal in your email marketing campaign, you’ll be able to measure your results. You’ll want to see the number of emails that have been delivered, opened, and read — and which recipients have clicked through. Also, you can then take action with the feedback you’ve been armed with, instead of business decisions that are a shot in the dark.

Email Marketing Automation 

We’re down in the trenches now. You’ve got the basics down, but you’re most likely wondering how to make this all happen. Who has time for all of this?

Here’s where you need to know how to automate your email marketing. 

Email automation is having the ability, through a number of ways, to trigger your emails to different subscribers. Email automation creates a limitless form of contact. You’re able to schedule emails way ahead of time to different segments of your database. 

You can automate birthday greetings, nurture your leads, and create great emails with amazing CTAs with just a click of your index finger. 

With email marketing, you can selectively target customers or leads throughout any stage of your sales funnel by creating custom, personalized content. 

Be careful, though — email marketing automation requires that your data is kept up-to-date and consistent. If you don’t manage those reports and update inconsistent or incorrect information, your reports will not be great from an ROI point of view. You need to ensure that you have the resources to update this information regularly. 

Email automation makes email marketing more efficient, personalized, and relevant.

Email Marketing for Dummies Has You on the Road to Success 

Email marketing for dummies is an understatement. The world of email marketing sounds easy but in reality, there’s some hard work to be put in. 

Focusing on your base data is paramount to the success of any email marketing campaign. The rest will come with the type of content you want to create and the message you want to send.

Remember to set measurable goals before launching your campaign. Know what you want to achieve so you can adapt your strategy if it’s not performing the way that you want it to.

Email marketing is the chameleon of the digital world — it adapts to its surroundings for survival.