Basic Email Marketing for Beginners

Understanding the basics of email marketing is crucial for beginners looking to leverage this powerful tool to connect with their audience. Email marketing involves sending targeted messages to a group of individuals who have provided their email addresses, with the goal of building relationships, promoting products or services, and driving conversions.

The first step for beginners is to build an email list. This can be done by collecting email addresses from website visitors, social media followers, or customers. Offering incentives like exclusive discounts or valuable content can entice individuals to sign up. It is important to ensure that you have permission to email these individuals and clearly communicate how their email addresses will be used. Building a quality email list is the foundation of successful email marketing campaigns.

Benefits of Email Marketing / List Building

For those gurus who say email marketing is slowing down or dead are completely wrong, it is actually getting stronger. The business world is changing swiftly, and email marketing is increasingly becoming an important tool for your business. In a broader sense, every email you send to a potential customer can be considered to be some form of email marketing.

When email marketing is carried out properly, you stand to benefit as a business owner.

Let’s look at the 5 Big Benefits of Email Marketing / List Building

I have learnt over my journey of internet marketing that selling and earning is a by-product of your marketing strategy. The question is How come? Simply put it this way, once you build your brand/authority with your audience that are following and interested in your information, they will buy what you put before them, there is no second guessing this.

That is why this is such a strong long-term business and is very sustainable for years to come. Therefore, do not focus on making a quick buck here and there, keep your eye on the long-term business model and then work towards it, I am pretty confident you will succeed.

Now, Let’s Talk about the Five (5) Key Parts of making an email marketing business successful.

1. Creating an Opt-in Page (Landing Page)

First step to starting with Email Marketing is to have an Opt-In Page. We will explain in detail why this is such an important component of an Email Marketing campaign. If you are not aware of what Opt-in page is, it is kind of single webpage or Landing Page where you collect email addresses from your visitors in exchange for something you will be giving. Some examples of Opt-in page are shown below:

Typically, it is always enticing to give away something for free so it increases your conversions and people will be happy to give their email address. This is called
“Opt-in” page or “lead magnet”.

Building an attractive, high-converting opt-in page a few years ago was tough. You would have to spend hours trying to make everything perfect + hours tweaking your opt-in page once it was up, but now you can do everything within minutes.

You can potentially start a business or other money-making venture only without having a web-page or website, however, if you want to be serious in email marketing then having a website or a funnel is a must-have.

Luckily for you, creating your own site has never been easier before. One can literally have a web site up and running from scratch in less than 60 minutes. To make things easier for you, we suggest you not to overthink this part, select one that fits your budget and go with it. Let us first cover some basic terms, so you can follow as we go along.

Website & Webpage

If you want your own “piece of land” on the web, you must purchase your own domain. There are different types of domains out there, the most popular ones are .com, .org, and .net. If you plan to operate mostly inside your own country, then you can go with the ending that corresponds to your country (example: co.uk is for the UK).

Also read: Domain Name Selection

Once you purchase your domain, you must also purchase hosting, which is a server where your site and all the contented will be stored. It is easy to use one of the popular domain-hosting websites. We will provide you with some suggestions below.

Once you have your domain and hosting set in place, then you have a website. Within that Website you can create single or multiple pages. For our case we can create one single page for our Opt-In function.

It is easy to use one of the popular domain-hosting websites and set up hosting:

• Namecheap
• Bluehost
• Siteground
• LiquidWeb

Once you have done the hosting then you need to install WordPress (a very popular) website builder, WordPress or in short WP has many ready-to-use plugins and a variety of Posts and Page types you can use to create different pages and posts for your products and contents.

Also check other Post: Webhosting & Plans

Website vs. Funnel

Marketing gurus have been able to determine, that funnels are way more efficient than old-fashioned websites. A funnel is basically a very narrow-focused set of webpages on your website that leads a visitor into a single direction, normally to purchase a specific product or service.

Modern websites or funnels builders are very simple to use. They most have drag-and-drop options, which make all editing very intuitive and, of course, require no coding.

The reason your life is now a hundred times easier is thanks to software, which will do all the work for you, even if you don’t know a lick of code. As a complete opt-in page newbie, you’ll be able to maximize your conversion rate just as well as the professionals. From my experience there are 3-top funnel tools for creating opt-in pages within few minutes.

Even though they all do the similar things they’re not the exact same, so which of these sounds appealing to you is up to you.

a. LeadsLeap:

 a. Builderall:

The Builderall platform project started in 2011, with one goal in mind: to generate real online results for companies and individuals all over the world with a complete and comprehensive platform. Builderall is intended for online entrepreneurs as it is truly a leading platform when it comes to the pallet of tools they provide:

b. Clickfunnels:

The man behind this success story is Russel Brunson, one of the most reputable entrepreneurs. I perceive him as one of the most honest guys in this sphere.

He genuinely seems to be doing the best he can to help out everyone who decides to be an entrepreneur in this modern era.

Clickfunnels is built around creating simple to complex funnels instead of websites, they are very good to capture leads and email addresses of your visitors. Some of the features are:

c. Unbounce:

This is also one of the strongest Opt-In page builders with ease of integration with
email autoresponders. It is a Canadian company based in Vancouver. They have high quality Opt-in pages that are also mobile optimized for better user experience:

Which Option Should You Choose? At the end of the day, Whether you go with your own website or the direct funnel method like Builderall, Clickfunnels or Unbounce, each has the capacity to skyrocket your business.

No matter which one you opt for, your subscriber count is going to go through the roof.

When you have more email subscribers, you’ll earn more money, so I can understand why you’d want to make sure you choose the right one.

2. Choosing an Autoresponder

Our next step in the email marketing process is having an autoresponder. This is imperative to have, without it you would not be able to communicate and connect with your subscribers that are captured through your Opt-in page.

Autoresponders are emails that are sent out automatically/manually to your subscribers at once on a specific routine you set, whether it is a single message or series of messages that are scheduled hourly, daily, weekly or even monthly.

These days there are lots of different kinds of autoresponders to choose from. How do you know whether you need a free autoresponder script, a self-hosted service or a professional service. In this section, we will compare and contrast these types of autoresponders.

What Is A Free Autoresponder?

This type of autoresponder service operates by putting ads in your emails. This isn’t a good idea if you are running a serious business. These ads can cause your mailings to look like spam. This interferes with delivery of your message and may get you blacklisted as a spammer. This can ruin your reputation and your business.

What Are Self-Hosted Autoresponders?

This solution is a step up from free autoresponders because self-hosted autoresponder services don’t put ads in your emails. Additionally, they often offer quite a good variety of flexible services and free autoresponding scripts.

The downside to this type of service is that you do need some know-how to be able to install the scripts correctly. This can be difficult, so even if you use a free autoresponder script service, you may have to hire an IT expert to help you with installation.

Another thing you should be cautious about when using a self-hosted autoresponder is use of shared hosting. The reason for this is that you never know when your account might be shut down because a handful of subscribers perceive your emails as spam. You may be exercising extreme diligence to avoid spamming, but that doesn’t matter.

What matters is the reports received by the service. This sort of incident could cause you to be wrongly blacklisted. This phenomenon will also cause you to have to keep a close eye on your IP address to be sure you are still in good standing.

If you have been wrongly labeled a spammer, you could be merrily sending out information that is automatically blocked, and you’d never know it. That’s why you have to keep a vigilant eye on the status of your IP address and whitelist it manually yourself if you encounter a problem.

Professional Autoresponder Services

There are also professional paid autoresponder services. They provide full automation and autoresponder functions with plug and play tools to make your marketing less time consuming.

Among the best known are:

* Email Octupus
* Aweber
* GetResponse

a. Email Octopus:

Email Octopus helps you connect with your audience and grow your business using email marketing software. EmailOctopus is the low-cost email marketing platform providing the essential features businesses and individual creators need to grow their mailing list and engage their audience. The easy-to-use email editor makes it possible to build both HTML-rich and simple plain text emails.

b. Aweber:

Typically, AWeber offers small business owners a simplified, easy to use, email marketing solution to help them build their brand. Besides offering remarkable 24/7 customer support, AWeber also facilitates easy and quick management and loading of contacts and sending quality emails.What’s more, AWeber is a properly integrated system that easily blends in multiple software ecosystems. It works impeccably with many other platforms meaning that you can utilize it with various platforms like WordPress, Cyfe, and Raven, among others seamlessly.

c. GetResponse:

GetResponse is a complete online marketing solution. It provides turnkey newsletter publishing and hosting features, as well as unlimited follow-up autoresponders, landing pages, webinars, marketing automation, and CRM to deliver information to your contacts and convert them to paying customers.

The platform delivers over 5 billion emails each year in 172 countries. GetResponse is fully scalable and capable of handling both small and very large lists (1+ million subscribers).

Professional Paid Autoresponder type of service can be a very good choice because it guarantees that your messages will be delivered. They do this by white listing their IP addresses personally. This feature alone can make it well worth it to pay the nominal monthly fee for this service.

Which Is The Best Choice?

The type of autoresponder you use really depends on the type and size of your business and what you need. If you have a mailing list of fewer than 3000 recipients, you may do just fine with a good self-hosted autoresponder service. Just keep in mind that you’ll need to monitor it yourself and you may need to learn quite a bit of technical information in order to make the best use of it.

If you want an autoresponder service that is really a service and doesn’t require you to learn a lot of technical information or monitor your own IP address, you are better off with a professional service. This is just a simple case of “You get what you pay for”.

A professional autoresponder service will take care of getting your emails to your clients and potential clients while protecting your online reputation and leaving you free to build a successful business.

3. Getting Traffic to Your Opt-In Page

Our next step in the email marketing process is getting traffic to your page, without any visitor there is no point of having a perfect Opt-in page, traffic is the lifeblood of your business and this is where most marketers struggle. But we are here to help you sort this out.

You don’t want to be the jack of all trades. You’ll have much more success finding something you’re great at and focusing 100% of your energy on it. It’s the easiest way to bring in a huge amount of money, so if you don’t focus on your key skills you’ll always be leaving cash on the table.

That being said, maybe you don’t know what you’re great at yet. You might also fancy a change every now and again, because working on one thing non-stop can get boring. With that in mind, we’re going to look at 3 ways to get more traffic to your opt-in page that blow everything else out of the water.

Spend most of your time on the one bringing you the most results, but keep all of them in your arsenal.

Guest Posting On Other Websites

Reach out to people and ask if you can publish an article on their blog, after you’ve tried to build some sort of relationship with them. They’re busy and using one of your articles means they get a day off from writing content.

Less people are clicking on bio links these days, but the sign-up rate from those who click through is still going strong. Just make sure the link in your author bio sends traffic directly to an email opt-in page.

Deliver Valuable Content

If you want to build a huge brand, publishing excellent content on your own blog is still king. You’ll build up an army of fans, you’ll generate more social shares, search traffic will slowly increase, and there are countless other benefits that will help your list grow.

Speed this process up by adding opt-in boxes everywhere on your site, along with specific links to your dedicated opt-in page.

Purchase/Buy Traffic:

You may have already heard about PPC and FB ads, but they are little tricky to understand and not every ad gets approved on Google or Facebook. So, the question is what’s the best alternative that can give you premium traffic and give you real people to subscribe and later buy your products.

I will recommend four of the very best that can convert your Opt-In Page. Some call it “The Unknown Traffic Sources”. I have actually provided a full article about it.

Check These Traffic Sources here <==

So, here you have it, Any Of Them would work. Any of the 3 ways to get traffic to your opt-in page will work, so test them all out and find the one that brings you the best results.

4. Track Your Results

This is one of the 5 steps to your email marketing business. As with any marketing campaign that you run to assist your business, it is important to track the results of your Internet marketing campaign. This should be done on a continual basis so you can ensure the strategies you are utilizing are working.

It can also help you to determine when a strategy is not working so you do not continue to invest time and money on a strategy which is not beneficial to your business.

Marketers who utilize affiliate marketing during their Internet marketing campaign may also be interested in tracking the results of their campaigns. This is necessary because affiliates are often paid according to the results they generate but it is also useful for determining which affiliates campaigns are most successful.

This information can be useful if different emails with ads are running because it can be an indication of which campaigns are most effective. Imagine you do not have any tracking of clicks/visits people make on your website or your page, then how would you know how many clicks happened, how many were fake, how many were just useless, how much did you make because they were not targeted.

Solution

This is the moment you need someone or something to help you out, and for that reason Tracking is important. Trackers can help you to enhance your ROI (Return on Investment), it is never a wasted investment

A couple of well-known Tracking software are:

• Clickmagick
• Linktrackr

Clickmagick: A comprehensive tracking tool to track sales and conversions. You can see from which the click was generated, what device it was, what OS system was used, this helps to optimize your ad campaigns and target the real converting stuff.

Linktrackr: Another great tool for tracking conversions and sales. Their link cloaking (hiding long URLs to beautiful-looking ones) is great to have.

Tracking your results is crucial in internet marketing, without it you all at sea and would never be able to know what campaign is bringing you results and which ones are losing you money.

5. How to Write email Subject Lines That Get Opened

This is a step that many marketers forget to mention as part of the email marketing process. These days people are so busy and top of that they are bombarded with lots of stuff on a daily basis, so the window of a potential customer which is a new subscriber to you is very narrow. You literally have 3 to 5 seconds to grab the attention with your subject line.

Obviously, once you have established a connection with your subscriber then you can use normal subject lines, but initially in your email marketing you need to have the attention-grabbing headlines.

Here are a few basics for improving the chances of having your Internet marketing email campaign turn into a big success.

Create Urgency

An email with a subject line that creates a sense of urgency is a sure way to improve response rates. Subject line titles such as “Only One Sale day Left” or “Good Only For The First 100 People Who Respond” can result in a very high click-through rate. It is in essence the fear of loss that often motivates people to open an email.

Cause Controversy

Creating controversy is an excellent strategy for motivating people to open an email. Subject line titles such as “Why Our Product Is Banned In Four States” or “Click To Learn Why Our Product Is So Popular On Social Media” can gain conversions. Controversy excites while it also creates curiosity.

Develop Trust

Using a tagline or subject line that develops trust is a great way to get email recipients to open an email. Subject tiles like “We Have Earned The Trust Of The Community” or “We Are Approved To Work With Homeowners” will usually give the impression that a company or product is reliable and established.

Consider these simple yet effective ways of writing email subject lines that get opened to improve your conversions almost right away. Take the time to word your email subject tile in the right way and enjoy better conversions and better overall sales.

If you want to fast forward this process then This Guide with 45+ email templates will greatly help you with powerful subject lines and email body, you can also have this for FREE.

Bonus Tip:

3 Effective Ways on How to Avoid Writing Spammy Emails to Subscribers

It can be quite frustrating when you take time and effort to create useful content and send it out to subscribers via email, only for it to be flagged as spam. Beating spam filters is not an easy task. There’s always the challenge in ensuring that every genuine and relevant email you send out there is delivered in the inbox, and not the spam folder. Below are three useful tips on how to avoid writing spammy emails to subscribers.

1. Avoid Using Spam Words in Your Content

As obvious as the rule sounds, a staggering number of genuine emails dispatched on a daily basis across all mail providers end up in the spam folder because they contain common words, which filters will recognize as spam. Such include overuse of ‘free’, ‘bonuses’, ‘credit’, and many more. It’s best to avoid them entirely.

Some online tools will help scan your email content to attempt in identifying and flagging spam words. While they may not be 100 percent efficient, the tools can give an idea of what to avoid. Proceed to make the necessary edits before dispatching your emails to subscribers.

2. Simplify Your Email Subject

Subject lines play a critical role in determining where your emails land: either in the inbox, or spam folders. It is recommended that subject lines should be brief and short because most users notice only the first thirty-five to fifty characters of the line.

Avoiding spam words in the subject line will also maximize the chances of your emails going to the inbox. Sending test emails comes in handy here because if they go to the junk or spam, you can easily adjust your wording and subject line length before sending the actual emails.

3. Ensure the Unsubscribe Link is Clear and Prominent

This may appear contrary to common email marketing practices, but it is much better when your recipients have the option to opt out as subscribers than having to mark or report your emails as spam. Since users will, eventually, opt out if they do not want to receive any more emails, it is best to give them the option readily.

This is because if their only choice is to report the emails as spam, such actions may prove counterproductive and may affect your entire communication process. You can avoid heavy penalties from email service providers if you accord subscribes such options.

Conclusion:

So, there you have it, the above five components are the essential pieces to your email marketing business. Once these are setup properly you can be sure to have a successful business for long-term.

However, remember this, email marketing is a persistence and steady game, do not expect overnight results, that is the reason there are other associated techniques with it like first creating a connection and building trust with your subscribers, so you can then offer them products to buy and increase your sales.

DISCLOSURE:

Unless otherwise expressly stated, you should assume that the links contained in this post may be affiliate links, and either the author/publisher/reseller will earn a commission if you click on them and buy the product/service mentioned in this report. However, the author/publisher/reseller disclaims any liability that may result from your involvement with any such websites/products. You should perform due diligence before buying the mentioned products or services.