10 Ways To Get Start Email Marketing For Bloggers
Whether you’re brand new to blogging, or you’ve been slowly growing your traffic (and email list) for years, it’s never too soon to take your email marketing efforts seriously. Here’s my guide to blog email marketing for this year.
We’re here to break down email marketing as it applies to bloggers, so let’s dive in. One of the questions I’m frequently asked by readers who are new to blogging is, “When should I start building my email list?”
My answer to that question is always today. As a blogger, it’s never too early (or too late) to start building your email list.
What is Email Marketing?
Email marketing is a direct marketing channel that lets businesses share new products, sales, and updates with customers on their contact lists. Its high return on investment (ROI) makes it crucial to most businesses’ overall inbound strategy.
Modern email marketing has moved away from one-size-fits-all mass mailings and instead focuses on consent, segmentation, and personalization. This may sound time-consuming, but marketing automation handles most of the heavy lifting for you. In the long run, a well-designed email marketing strategy not only drives sales but helps build a community around your brand.
Why email marketing is useful for bloggers
In a general sense, every email you send to a potential or current customer is email marketing. However, this technique typically involves cultivating a subscriber list, then sending them messages with varying degrees of frequency depending on your goals.
This can be an extremely powerful way to connect with your audience. As a blogger, you can keep your captive subscriber list up to date on your latest posts or other relevant events. In turn, this encourages return visits and, over time, builds a sense of community.
In addition, your emails can be a good way to connect with your audience on a more personal level. Many people enjoy getting emails, as long as they are informational, useful, and not ‘spammy.’ Some may even engage directly as a result, providing you with further opportunities to connect.
Benefits Of Email Marketing For Bloggers
As a digital marketing channel, email isn’t only cost-effective but has a plethora of advantages you need to know about. Here are a few of the benefits that email offers:
- The average email ROI is currently $42 for every $1 you spend on it.
- You can reach a large target audience, regardless of their location.
- Delivering personalized content the moment your email subscribers need it.
- Establishing meaningful connections with them.
Unlike search engine optimization (SEO) and social media, email marketing is one of the best ways to target your audience directly with personalized experiences. More specifically, through personalization, you can show your subscribers tailored content and turn them into loyal readers of your blog.
10 Ways To Get Start Email Marketing For Bloggers
Please note that some of the links below are affiliate links and at no additional cost to you, I may earn a commission. When you purchase a product or tool using one of my affiliate links, the company compensates me, which helps me keep all of this in-depth content free of charge to you. Know that I only recommend tools I’ve personally used and stand behind.
There’s even an ancient proverb in the blogging world that sums up the importance of growing your email list from day one with your blog… “There’s always money in the banana stand email list.”
1. Confirmation Email setup to ensure double opt-in works
One of the good things about Aweber is its double opt-in. That means, when a reader types his name and Email address on the subscription form on your blog or landing page, he will be sent a link to his email to confirm.
This is important to ensure legit signup. On this page, you can customize the email which will ask them to confirm the email newsletter. I personally use something like
“Hey $name, Before I start sending you blogging tips or free Books”, I need you to confirm by clicking on the confirmation link in this Email”
You can tweak it according to the user base you have for your blog.
2. Choose A Blogger-Friendly Email Service
The first step to every successful email marketing strategy is to select the right tools. As a blogger, you will need user-friendly email marketing software to craft, send, and optimize your campaigns.
Moreover, selecting the right plan is essential to get started on the right foot. So make sure to find an ESP that offers you all the functionality you need without breaking the bank.
Now, to get the best email platform for your blog, let’s see what features you need to look out for:
- Drag-and-drop email builder: select a tool that has ease of use and advanced features to create the best emails for your audience.
- Email templates: use pre-made newsletter templates to save time and effort.
- RSS feeds: create an RSS feed email to share your new blog content with your subscribers the moment you publish it.
- Marketing automation: set up a variety of email sequences (welcome emails, etc.) to reach the right person at the right time.
3. Email Marketing Can Help You Monetize Your Blog
Email marketing allows you to build real connections with your audience and personalize your content to better match their interests.
By building trust with your email list, you’ll be in a better position to eventually sell them a product or service. Here are a few examples of ways you can monetize your blog.
Product examples to monetize your email list:
- Paid eBooks
- Virtual summits
- Online courses
- Digital media
- Software and Apps
Service examples to monetize your email list:
- Consulting
- Personal Coaching
- Freelancing services
- Promotional services
- Premium memberships
4. ConvertKit – Email Creation Service
ConvertKit is another email marketing service you can use to promote your blog content. The tool sports an easy-to-use newsletter designer to create email campaigns in a few minutes. Moreover, you can create automated email marketing funnels to streamline your work and save valuable time.
Apart from that, ConvertKit has an online form builder to craft simple popups to capture your audience’s email addresses. When it comes to reporting, the platform gives you subscriber graphs to monitor your campaign performance. You can also use the A/B Testing feature to find which elements convert better and then target your audience with the winning email copy.
5. Social media signups for your email list
Don’t be afraid to promote your signup form on many different places on your website, as well as to include your social media profiles. Integrations for Facebook, WordPress, and Medium make it easy to implement your form.
You can also link your signup form on your Instagram, Pinterest, Twitter, and any other social media profiles to increase your exposure.
Want to learn more? We go into more detail on how to make email marketing and social media work together like BFFs in this guide.
6. Creating a newsletter concept
You greeted new readers, now it’s time to think about the newsletters that will follow.
Creating a newsletter concept all starts with defining your personal goal of using email marketing.
Do you want to get up close and personal with your fanbase? Or are you looking to grow the number of blog visitors?
Whatever your goal is, keep this in mind when creating your newsletters. It will define whether you’ll send out email content with questions to prompt responses from your readers, or host giveaways to expand your reach (more on this later).
To make your newsletters stand out, you need to get clear on your values and communication style. As a blogger, you’re expressing a part of yourself. Since people follow your stories, this means that they’re interested in the person behind the screen. Good emails don’t just convey information; they tell a story.
7. Segment your email lists
At this time it is also smart to think if there are any special groups on your list. Once you get to know your subscribers, you can separate them into lists, based on their interests and preferences.
For example, you can segment based on:
- The favorite topics they indicated in the sign-up form
- People that are very active versus not opening at all
- Potential leads versus already paying customers
This lets you really personalize your emails to get your audience engaged. Segmented campaigns based on the profile in your database get 54.79% higher clicks than non-segmented campaigns.
8. Craft Intriguing Email Subject Lines
Your subject lines are one of the most essential components of an email campaign. And since they are the first thing your subscribers see in their inbox, they need to communicate the benefit at first glance.
As a rule of thumb, your subject lines need to be:
- Valuable: show your subscribers why they need to open your campaign. Use actionable language and avoid fluff.
- Short: a great subject line doesn’t need to be lengthy. According to data, the ideal one should be about 9-14 words (40-50 characters).
- Unique: based on your blog tone you can craft subject lines with wordplays to intrigue your target audience.
- Attention-grabbing: the best way to stand out in the inbox is to add an emoji.If you follow all of the above, you’ll manage to create converting subject lines for your email marketing strategy.
9. Write Valuable Email Content
Now let’s talk about the content of your email campaigns. As you know from your blogging experience, your audience needs to recognize the immediate benefits of a piece to engage with it.
To succeed, you need to treat your email copy as you treat your blog content. This means that you need to favor actionable language, be consistent, and have a clear structure.
Moreover, different types of emails, require a different copy. For instance, your RSS feeds will draw a snippet directly from your blog post, so you don’t need to add anything else.
For the rest of your campaigns, though, you need to craft email copy that will be both friendly and useful. Let’s see a few examples to show you how to nail it
10. Optimize your blog to get more email subscribers
ESPs typically provide an HTML/CSS code snippet you can copy and paste into the code of your website or template — and ConvertKit integrates directly with all of the top WordPress themes and WordPress plugins.
Where you place your email capture form and what information you collect can have a big impact on how quickly you grow your email list. Additionally, you may choose to use a combination of locations for optimal effect.
Related More Posts :
