As a blogger, you understand the power of digital platforms. But what if you learned that one of the most effective marketing platforms to promote your blog isn’t new tech like social media or search engine marketing, but old-fashioned email?
Email marketing has one of the highest average returns on investment of an incredible $36 for every $1 spent. Talk about cost effectiveness! Here are six ways for you to get started with email marketing to grow your blog.
Choose the Right Email Marketing Platform
The first step to developing a great email marketing campaign for your blog is to choose the right platform. There are dozens of email marketing platforms out there, and they all have different features and abilities.
You’ll want to start with an email marketing platform that has all the features you’ll need to design and implement campaigns:
- Plenty of email template designs
- Contact management capabilities
- Analytics tracking
- Mobile design optimization
The right email marketing platform will simplify your campaigns and help you grow your blog readership even faster. You also want to make sure the platform you choose is scalable to fit future needs. It’s no fun transferring all those contacts in the future if you choose a platform that isn’t quite what you need — so do your research and try plenty of free trials!
Grow Your Contact List
Once you choose an email marketing platform and have your customer relationship management (CRM) system set up, it’s time to start collecting email addresses. After all, what good is a well-designed email campaign if you don’t have anyone to send it to!?
There are plenty of ways to collect email addresses. Here are some of the most popular for bloggers:
- Include a signup form on your website
- Post your signup form on your social media channels
- Giveaways or contests for anyone who provides their contact info
- Add gated content on your blog
Of course, this list isn’t exhaustive. Be creative and come up with new ways to get your readers excited about giving you their contact information. The more email addresses you collect, the more effective your email marketing campaigns will be! There’s no such thing as “too many” email addresses in your email marketing platform’s CRM.
Use Eye-catching Email Designs
Your emails are a representation of your brand. If you send boring plain-text emails, what does that say about your blog? It says you’re boring! When you’re designing your first email marketing campaign, be sure to use eye-catching designs that accurately represent your brand.
Since you’re busy creating new content for your blog, you might not have time to design amazing email layouts from scratch. This is where it helps to choose an email marketing platform that has plenty of templates available. Templates help you save time designing emails from scratch without taking up your valuable time.
Include a Value Proposition
The average person receives hundreds of emails every single day. Because they get so many emails, a lot of them go straight to the trash folder without even being opened! According to a 2022 report, the average email marketing open rate across industries was just over 20%. That means 80% of emails aren’t ever read.
With the hoards of emails entering inboxes daily, people need a reason to open anything. If you want people to read your amazing emails, you need to show them the value.
Before sending an email, ask yourself, “Why would someone want to read this?” Then, make the answer abundantly clear.
For example, if your latest blog is about the best laptops you can buy right now, make your subject line something like, “Learn about the best laptops on the market today.” Anyone who reads that will know exactly what the email is about, and if they’re in the market for a new laptop, they’ll be able to see the value right away.
Every email you send should provide some value to the reader. The stronger your value proposition, the more likely people will take the time to open and read your emails.
Send Regular Updates about Your Latest Content
The key to any type of marketing campaign is consistency. You want to keep your brand top of mind, so your readers won’t forget about you in the ever-increasing mass of content they consume every day. One of the easiest ways to make your email campaigns consistent is to send updates whenever you upload new content.
Your email subscribers follow you because they like your content. Whenever you get ready to press the “post” button on your website, make sure you have an email ready to follow it, alerting all your readers there’s new content for them to enjoy. You can even send teaser emails before you post new content to get your readers excited.
Of course, you don’t want to annoy your readers with constant emails. That’s a surefire way to encourage unsubscribes. Most marketing professionals suggest sending two to four emails per month. That’s typically enough to keep your brand top of mind without irritating your followers. If you post content more frequently than that, it might be a good idea to batch new content together into one weekly email.
Track the Right KPI
How do you know whether your campaigns have been successful unless you track the right data? Email marketing doesn’t end with the send button. Once your emails have reached their intended recipients, it’s time to track data.
There are several key performance indicators (KPI) that you should always track after sending an email marketing campaign:
- Clickthrough rate
- Conversion rate
- Bounce rate
- Forwarding rate
- Overall ROI
- Open rate
- Unsubscribe rate
If you notice a specific email lacks in any one of these areas, you know it’s time to make some improvements. Implement a few changes in your next campaign and see how the data changes. Over time, you’ll learn what your readers like and, perhaps more importantly, what they don’t like. You can use that data to design even more effective email marketing campaigns in the future!
Tracking essential KPI is another reason why it’s important to choose the right email marketing platform. Make sure you have access to all this crucial data!
Build Your Blog with the Power of Email Marketing
Even in the age of social media and direct messaging, email is still a marketing force to be reckoned with. If you want to grow your blog with email marketing, start by choosing the right email marketing platform to suit your needs, use professional templates, showcase your value proposition, and track the right data to strengthen future campaigns.
With a little old-school email marketing, you can grow your blog readership and take your subscription rates to the next level.
