Should your site be doing e-mail marketing? Yes… you absolutely should be. E-mail marketing is the unsung hero of recapturing visitors that would have otherwise been lost forever. We don’t get many second chances in this game. In fact, about 95% of people that visit a website will NEVER RETURN to that site again. That is CRAZY… but what’s even crazier is most people don’t put in any effort to get those visitors to come back!
It’s easy to get wrapped up in trying to drive new visitors to your site, but not paying any attention to those that have already been there is a mistake. You’ve spent the time, effort and money to bring people in…. so wouldn’t it make sense to put in a little effort to keep them?
Of course it would. And that’s where e-mail marketing comes in.
I know you’re interested, so let’s dig in.
benefits of e-mail marketing
Brand awareness
It is almost impossible to go more than 5 minutes without seeing an ad for something. Companies pay big money to make sure people know who they are and what they do. Most of our blogs don’t have the luxury of a multi-million dollar ad budget… so we need to be creative. And this is where e-mail marketing comes in to play.
We know that 95% of people that visit our sites will never return. Of course that’s a general rule, but you can see what your number is in your analytics. Bet it will be higher than you think. And the problem with this is people aren’t getting to know us from that one visit.
Mass ad campaigns to stay in front of them would be expensive, so it makes sense to capture those visitors when they are on our site. This gives us an opportunity to build a relationship and show them what we are all about. It keeps us in front of them. And when they are looking for a product, service, or information that we offer, we will come to the front of their mind because they will already have a relationship with us.
Open line of communication
Having people opt-in to our mailing lists gives us access to a group of people that want to learn more about us and what we do. We know everyone isn’t going to sign up to be on our list. We also know that a lot of the people that do sign up will unsubscribe or ignore our e-mails all together. That’s fine. Because the group that does sign up and reads our e-mails are the people most likely to become customers. And we now have an open line of communication with them. There is nothing better than being able to reach out to people that are interested in our offerings… any time we want.
Targeted messaging
Segmentation gives us the opportunity to deploy targeted messaging. If someone made a specific purchase, we can let them know about related products. Maybe we are starting a subscription service and want to let people that have bought courses in the past know. Or maybe we are having a location specific event that we want to tell people about. Doing any of these things is very easy with e-mail segmentation
With segmentation we can isolate groups of people and send them information that is uniquely specific to them. This creates a stronger relationship and ensures we are providing the content or information that is relevant to their specific needs. If the goal is to meet people where they are, a target e-mail list should be the weapon of choice.
Good ROI
E-mail marketing does have some start-up and monthly fees associated with it. This is not something we can bootstrap and do successfully without the help of an e-mail service provider. With that said, we will be able to send our audience e-mails for fractions of a cent.
If you were to do paid advertising to reach your audience every time you had a new product, service or article… it would be very expensive. With e-mail marketing we already have the list of people, so we don’t need to pay to find them. We can just relay that information directly.
timely
Since we have our list, we can make contact whenever we want. This is great for product launches, holiday specials or new articles. We can just make the e-mail and present that to our audience at a moments notice. No big campaign or ad spend is required.
Automation
Automation is one of my favorite parts of e-mail marketing. I’m busy. You’re busy. WE ARE ALL BUSY! And we don’t have time to manually send out e-mails to everyone on our list.
With automation we can set up a welcome sequence, and people will start getting that once they sign up. After the welcome sequence is over, they will start getting our regularly published e-mails. Easy peasy.
We own the list
Above all else, this is maybe the most significant. You own those contacts. You could have a couple thousand people in a Facebook group, but if Facebook suspends or deletes your account…. those contacts are gone. Same goes for all of your other social media platform. Twitter, YouTube, Tik Tok, Instagram… it doesn’t matter. If they feel like you somehow violated their terms of service, those contacts are gone. I’ve seen it play out thousands of times.
With an e-mail list, we own those contacts. No third party platform can take them away from us. That allows you to make the content you want and distribute it to your audience without the fear of a third party suddenly putting you back to zero. Owning your list is power and it eliminates a major risk posed by third party apps.
How to build an e-mail list
To build an e-mail list, you need to have ways for people to sign up. There are a couple common ways that we’ve all seen:
in the header
The example below is from How-To Geek. You can see they have a sign-up for a free newsletter in bright orange. They made sure it stands out!
in the footer
Similar to having it in the header is to have it in the footer. Here in the bottom right you can see Elementor has a newsletter sign-up.
above the fold
Another good technique is to have a dedicated section above-the-fold on your website. You can see this website does it on the home page.
BUT THE MOST EFFECTIVE WAY….
lead magnets
Lead magnets can help grow your list faster than any other method. The idea behind a lead magnet is to offer your audience something of value in exchange for their e-mail. This could be a quick start guide, a cookbook, templates, or anything else your audience will value. If you are new to lead magnets, I highly recommend you read about the 10 best lead magnets. This article will go over 10 HIGHLY EFFECTIVE lead magnets, and show you examples of them at work.
The example below is from Hubspot. They put out an annual State of marketing report that is jam packed with trends and information. I am always trying to stay ahead of these trends, so i look forward to seeing what other people are doing. In order to get it, you need to give your e-mail. Personally, i would pay for this information so getting it in exchange for an e-mail address is a trade-off i’m more than willing to make.
Can't I Just Buy An E-mail List?
When you start to build an e-mail list, it can seem like a slow and daunting process. A huge list just doesn’t happen overnight. In times like this, many have turned to buying an e-mail list from a third party. In theory, this may sound appealing. They will promise you thousands of active e-mails in your niche. You could get the list and start marking to a large audience immediately, right? Unfortunately, no. Buying an e-mail list does nothing good for you. In fact, it can seriously hurt you. We’ll go over a couple key things you should consider:
- Spam – Buying a list can give you a one way ticket to e-mail jail. Your e-mail list has to opt-in to receive your e-mails. Sending e-mails to people that have not opted-in is acting in bad faith and e-mail companies will take note. Once your address is linked to sending spam, your e-mails will head right to the spam folder, never to be seen again.
- Hidden costs – Buying an e-mail list has hidden costs. Maybe not from the place you’re buying the list from, but definitely from your e-mail service provider. Pricing for e-mail services is usually based on the size of your list. If you add 10,000 e-mails, the price of service is bound to go up. And if those e-mail are worthless, your monthly bill went up for no reason.
- They don’t care – If people haven’t opted-in the receive you e-mail, they don’t care what you have to say. You could have the best offer in the world… but it won’t mean a thing to them. Your list needs to come from people that want to be on it. These are your customers. They are your loyal audience. You can’t buy that from a third party.
To sum it up, no, you should not buy an e-mail list. You will be paying for a list of people that have no interest in what you have to say. Beyond that, you can do serious harm to your brand. The list needs to be built organically.
what to do with an e-mail list
Now that you’ve built an e-mail list… what do you do with it? There can be many secondary goals, but the primary goal is to keep the line of communication open. This is a direct link between you and you customers. Let them know you are there, keep them engaged, and give them what they want.
Take this HubSpot e-mail for example. Since I signed up for the newsletter in exchange for the State of Marketing report, I get e-mails from them. This is one of the most recent ones. It shows me a couple of new articles and provides a way for me to view the content. They know this is the kind of stuff i am interested in, so this content is relevant to me.
There is also no doubt these articles contain affiliate links. HubSpot isn’t selling me anything directly, but they are directing me back to the site and giving themselves the opportunity for a commission. I am always looking for new tools, so there is a good chance they will earn affiliate income from me (if they haven’t already) as a result of these e-mails.
Here is another example. This one is from Bark Box. Bark Box is a subscription service that delivers toys and treats for your dog . I had created an account and put some stuff in my cart, but then i didn’t buy. Since I signed up and agreed to be e-mailed, they can retarget me. In this e-mail, they are offering an extra toy for my good boy Arnold. This e-mail reminds me I was interested and gives me an incentive to go back.
I should also say that Bark Box does an amazing job with branding and their e-mail campaigns on spot on. Signing up for their e-mail list is worth it just to see how a brand can really connect with their audience.
Marking people aware of your new product or service is another useful way to use your list. This e-mail from Digital marketer is trying to tap into the readers frustration with getting quality leads. He tries to be relatable, has some statistics and finally… the call to action. When you click on the link you are taken to a landing page for a course.
If you have been nurturing the relationship, providing value, and building trust… an e-mail like this will directly lead to sales. No doubt about it.
One last example comes from Marketing examples. They put on a master class in doing an introduction sequence. Harry sends out the 5 best articles over the course of a couple days and they are amazing. I was blown away. Then I found myself visiting the site, following on social media, and waiting for the next e-mail. Seriously. I get excited when I have a new email from them.
To me, they have become a valuable source of information. I love them. And I trust them. And it happened through e-mail. Think that’s valuable? Here’s a little teaser of the first e-mail, but you should just sign up and see how it’s done.
Best e-mail marketing companies
By this time I know you are full invested. You’re ready to go build that killer e-mail list that will take your business to the next level. Only problem is… what e-mail company should you use? No problem. I’ve got you covered.
When looking for an e-mail marketing comany there are a couple things I think are a must:
- Automation– We need our e-mail service provider to offer the ability for us to send e-mails based on certain triggers. I’m not going to go and manually send a welcome sequence to everyone that signs up for my newsletter. That needs to happen automatically.
- Reporting– Our e-mail service providers need to give us some reporting. Knowing open rates, unsubscribe rates, and conversion rates are all useful information that help us keep improving.
- Integration– An e-mail service provider should work seamlessly with a variety of different applications.
- Split testing– Our e-mail service provider should allow us to do split testing. This is another way of finding out what is working and what isn’t. I like to always be testing and improving.
- Segmentation– We need the ability to segment our list. People will be signing up from a variety of different places and lead magnets, and sometimes you want to target a specific group. Segmentation lets us deliver a more personalized experience to our customers.
Get Response is the service used for this website. They offer the core 5 requirements as well as a couple other special features. Two of note are:
- The ability to host webinars. This is not a common feature that is offered and is definitely a nice bonus. In the pro plan you can host up to 100 attendees at a time. You also have the ability to charge for admission if you choose. It’s an easy way to add additional revenue to your business.
- A chat feature. These are becoming more popular, so it is nice they offer it. This is an easy way to answer any of your customers questions or concerns.
Get Response has attractive pricing that is better than most of the competition. They also offer a free plan for up to 500 subscribers. If you are interested in Get Response I recommend you try the free plan, then upgrade if you like the feel of it. The basic plan does lack some of our core 5 things so I would go with the Pro plan. Get Response also offers a generous discount is you buy a year or two years of service.
Most people would agree that Send in Blue is one of the best e-mail service providers. They hot our core 5 with one caveat. A/B testing is a $12 add-on in the lite plan. It does come with the premium plan though. Even with the add-on, the lite plan is attractively priced and it will deliver everything you need in a provider.
The lite plan doesn’t come with a landing page builder, which isn’t the end of the world. Automation does cut out after 2,000 subscribers in the Lite plan, so be mindful of that. As your list grows, you will need to upgrade.
Send in Blue comes with a very capable CRM, which is a nice addition. They also have very good workflow automation, which they offer at every price level. Most will charge extra or add automation into a higher tear.
AWeber is a capable e-mail marketing service with a lot to offer. They have both a free and a pro plan available. The free plan does not meet our core 5 requirements, but not many do. I would use the free plan to gain access to the software and play around a little to see if it’s a fit. If you are going to be using it as a serious tool, you will need the pro plan.
In the pro plan you get everything we would expect and require. They also offer some additional link, cart and sales tracking which is noce if you sell products.
I am including Constant Contact in my list, only because it is so popular. Constant Contact meets our core 5 requirements, and has a couple cool extras. For one, the have Facebook and Instagram integration. This makes building you list from those platforms a lot easier. They also offer surveys. You can survey your audence and get feedback on how you’re doing. I am a big fan of surveying your audience. I think it’s important that you are meeting their needs, and surveys is one of the easierst ways to do that.
My only gripe with Constant Contact is it can get expensive. It is a good provider, but for me, the other providers offer a similar product at a better price. They do have a free sign-up so you can go ahead and poke around a bit.
Wrapping it up
I sincerly hope this guide was able to relay the importance of a newsletter. When you’re just starting out, it can feel slow and daunting. We always want immediate results. But the e-mail list will continue to grow as your site does. It is not uncommon for people to report up to 30% OF TOTAL REVENUE coming from e-mail marketing. That could men tens of thousands in extra revenue to your site every year. It really is that powerful.
When starting out, just take it one step at a time. Find a service provider. Add ways for people to join your list. Make a welcome sequence. Start creating newsletters. It doesn’t have to be perfect right away. But keep working at it.
Once your e-mail list starts to grow you will be amazed at how effective it is. Start as soon as you can, and before you know it your list… and revenue, will start to rise.
Good luck out there!
