One the
best things you can do to market your blog is to launch your email
marketing campaign. Here’s why you need to start NOW!
What Is Email Marketing?
Ethical
email marketing is simply sending emails to a list of people who chose to
receive them. They have given you permission to send them emails – they
actually want to hear from you. Anything else is spam. Your goal with
email marketing is to create loyalty and trust with your subscribers so that
when you recommend a product or service to them, they trust you and they buy.
It really is that simple.
Why You Need An Email List
If you’re
not building your email list right now, you’re making a big mistake. There’s an
old saying – “the money is in the list.” Well, it’s TRUE.
Here are just a few reasons to start your email marketing campaign
NOW…
Visitor retention.
You work
hard for every visitor that comes to your site. If they leave without even
having the opportunity to subscribe to your list, you’ve lost a potential
customer and/or loyal follower. People are busy. Even if they love your blog,
life happens. Email provides a way to help them remember who you are.
Everyone has email.
Seriously,
EVERYONE you know has an email account. Whether it’s a personal account like
gmail or a work account, they have an email address that gets mail every single
day. I may not check social media every day, but I do check my email every day
– that’s where the important stuff goes. 
It’s a very targeted audience.
These are
people who went to your blog and liked it enough to give you their email
address. They want to hear from you and you know that they’re interested in
your niche.
Increased Exposure = Increased Sales.
Buyers
typically need multiple exposures to a product or service before they buy. They
need time to learn to trust you. Regular email marketing campaigns to your
list ensures that you are top of mind with potential customers so that when
they are ready to buy a product or service in your niche they’ll buy it from
you.
Repeat blog visitors.
Emails
are a wonderful way to get repeat visitors to your blog. Subscribers click on a
link in your email to read a post on your blog. This is a great way to let your
readers know that you’ve published new content.
Email does not expire.
There may
be something hot and trending on Twitter today (or even this hour), but it’s
gone tomorrow. You’ll never find it again! That’s not the case with email. It
stays in your inbox until you delete it. Your message will be there waiting for
your subscribers even if they’re gone on vacation when you send the email out.
Your list belongs to you.
While you
may have thousands of followers on social media, those followers do not belong
to you. If your account is terminated for any reason, those followers are
simply GONE. There’s nothing you can do about it. That’s not the case with
email. Your email list DOES belong to you. You can download and backup your
list of subscribers and even migrate them easily to a new email provider.
Convinced? Good. Let’s start building your list…
We
personally use and recommend MailChimp as your email
marketing service. In our experience, they have the best list management
tools and excellent chat support when you need help.
