Everyone goes on about how great email marketing is, but it can be a little intimidating if you’re not sure where to start or what to do.
Are you ready to build up an email list and lay the foundations for a fantastic long-term marketing strategy? Let’s dive into what you can do to jumpstart your email marketing over the next 6 months!
Getting Started with Email Marketing
Starting is always the hardest part, but it’s easier if you know exactly what you need to do. Here’s your step-by-step guide to getting started with email marketing.
1. Define your goals
Why do you want to start email marketing? There are plenty of great reasons to do it, but what’s your specific reason?
You need to have definable goals before you can make a plan to work towards those goals. Just take a little time to write down what you want to get out of your email marketing.
2. Know your audience
Once you have a goal defined, your next step is to define who your audience is for your email list. If you already have an audience defined for your business, your email marketing audience will probably be similar to that.
Even if you don’t have an existing business or following, you should still come up with a target audience for your email list. It may be a good launching pad to help you lay out who your target audience is when you’re starting your main business.
3. Lay out a strategy
Knowing your audience and goals, it’s time to plan out how you’re going to use email marketing to reach your goals. Your email marketing strategy is a guideline for how you’ll interact with your email list and what you’ll be sending out.
For example, many ecommerce businesses use email marketing to send out promotions and product recommendations while service businesses may focus more on content that educates their customers on the purpose of their services.
Your initial strategy should lay out what kind of emails you want to send out, how often you want to send out emails, and how you plan to communicate with your email list. This will help you start off on the right foot with a clear idea of how you want to move forward once you get people signing up for your list.
If you need help developing a strategy, read more about the 4 Golden Rules of Email Marketing here.
4. Choose your toolkit
With your goals, audience, and strategy defined, your last preparation step is choosing your email marketing toolset. You don’t need much for email marketing. Here are some tools you can consider using:
- Email management software
An email management software helps you keep track of your email list and automate parts of the process to make it way easier. There are tons of different free and paid email management software you can check out with varying levels of features.
MailWhizz – Email Marketing Management
Launch your email marketing with a full-service email management software that makes your job easier than ever!
Make sure that whatever software you’re using allows you to have full control over what you’re doing and who’s on your list. A big point to look for is whether you can download a backup of your email subscribers list or not. You need to be able to keep a hold of your email subscribers list so you can move to other programs and switch things up without losing your most valuable asset: your subscribers!
- Design software
An optional piece of software you can add to your toolkit is design software to help you create mockups of your emails before you send them out. If you’ll be using images or other media in your emails, it can be helpful to design them ahead of time to make sure your ideas look as good on the screen as they do in your head.
PlaceIt – Create Mockups and Simple Designs in a Snap
Lay out your email designs before you send them to avoid any messy design fails.
Anything else you want to add that helps you reach your goals is encouraged, but you don’t need to overcomplicate it. When you’re just starting out, keep your email marketing simple so you don’t get overwhelmed by it.
5. Test… and go!
Got everything set up how you want it? Place a few of your own emails on the list and send out test messages to make sure everything’s working as it should. A simple test can help save you from a lot of embarrassment once you go live.
Testing done? Let’s work on getting your first email subscribers!
Capturing Your First Email List Subscribers
Getting that first email list subscriber feels like an impossible task. But, if you can just pass that hurdle you’ll be well on your way to growing a successful email list in no time.
Here are a few ideas to get you started.
Use a Lead Magnet
Offering a valuable digital asset is the simplest way to get new email list subscribers. Lead magnets are usually digital content of some kind that you offer to anyone who signs up for your email list. Examples of lead magnets are short ebooks, printables, checklists, daily affirmation plans, or other useful content that people in your target audience may want.
If you think back over the last week, you’ve probably been offered a few lead magnets from different websites or online creators. You may even have signed up to an email list to get a lead magnet at some point. Not everyone will want what you’re offering, but those who do are likely a great fit for your marketing strategy, so it’s not a wasted effort!
Create Exclusive Content
Any kind of exclusive content is a good excuse to ask for email addresses. Exclusives can be anything from a private Facebook group to a webinar or course. If you have something valuable to offer in exchange for an email address, it’s a good way to draw people in and convince them to sign up for your list.
Give a Discount
Promotions and discounts can be sent out through email marketing as a good way to draw people into your list. Offer exclusive discounts for new sign-ups. These can be discounts for something you’re selling or offers you have with partner companies. Focus on giving discounts your target audience will want.
Just Ask!
It turns out that just asking for an email address will earn you a decent number of subscribers. Anywhere you’re communicating with your target audience, include an ask for email list subscription.
This is especially true if you’ve already got an online presence of any kind. If you’ve got people making purchases from your store or you’ve got a website of any kind, simply having a prompt asking for an email address can go a long way.
Spread Your Opt-in Offer around
All the great deals in the world won’t make a difference if nobody knows about them. Go everywhere you can and talk about what you’ve got on offer for new email list subscribers. Spread your deals far and wide on social media, forums, comment sections, blog posts, TikTok… Wherever!
You don’t need to have your own website and an established audience to start growing your email list. Get a head start by just talking about it anywhere and everywhere you can. You might be surprised how many people you can reach on your own before your website is even launched.
This is a simplified overview of getting more email list subscribers. Learn more about growing your email list here.
Maintaining Momentum
Once you’ve gotten even a single sign-up on your email list, you need to hit the ground running. It’s time to be sending out emails and interacting with your list, enacting the strategy you’ve had planned since step one.
Make it so those who sign up for your list consider it worthwhile. This is how you’ll keep people subscribed, but it also helps you continue to grow your list.
Momentum is built when you keep people invested in what you’re offering while continuing to reach out to more people. You can even use the success stories and recommendations of your current subscribers as social proof to encourage new sign-ups.
No matter how well your marketing is going with your initial signups, the single best way to grow your email list is to continue doing all the things you did to draw in your first subscribers. If you stop your outreach, how will find new people and get your ask in front of more people?
Email marketing works best when you continually seek out more subscribers. Good outreach will help your list grow at a steady rate, even if some people ultimately unsubscribe once they get what they want. As long as you have a steady trickle of new signups, you’ll end up growing month after month.
Email marketing feels scarier than it actually is. Once you see the process demystified, you can take it step by step and get started as soon as today! The earlier you start, the sooner you’ll see the benefits.
