How to succeed using email marketing as a blogger

Creating a blog is one of the most efficient ways to reach a large audience and promote yourself or your business.
However, if you want to build a strong relationship with your readers, you have to find an easy way to engage them with your content. In this case, email marketing for bloggers is exactly what you’ve been looking for!
Apart from the benefits of email marketing, this guide will show you how to:
- Build your email list
- Choose your email marketing platform
- Select your campaigns
- Segment your contacts
- Optimize your email marketing efforts
What is email marketing and why should you use it as a blogger?
With social media being all the hype these days, many bloggers go and find their online fame on places like Instagram and Facebook. Though it’s true that these platforms are great to build a following, they also come with a lot of risks.
Facebook algorithm change? Instagram inactive user clean-up? Tweets aren’t going out? Say bye-bye to your impressive reach.
The way to build relationships that can overcome a roadblock or two is to communicate via email marketing. Collecting followers using an email list makes sure you get to talk to them directly and whenever you want—without any third-party control.
Email marketing will help your blog gain more popularity by attracting new visitors and engaging existing fans.
In this guide, you’ll learn how to build a following, craft email campaigns that skyrocket your blog popularity and correctly measure your newly found success.
The Benefits of Email Marketing for Bloggers
The blogging tools and techniques marketers have at their disposal today are constantly evolving — which has caused some to lose interest in email.
But the latest data is crystal clear: email is here to stay. The number of email users is predicted to grow from 3.7 billion to 4.1 billion users by 2021.
An email has some of the highest ROI of any digital marketing channel, driving $44 for every $1 spent. Social media may make the headlines, but email is 40 times more effective at acquiring new customers than Facebook or Twitter.
Clearly, email marketing can be a powerful weapon in the blogger’s digital marketing arsenal.
Here are four key ways email stands out from other marketing techniques for bloggers:
- It’s personal: Email marketing allows you to personalize messages for each individual on your email list. By collecting information about your readers during sign-up, you can create segmented lists (using an email marketing tool like ConvertKit). This allows you to tailor your message in all sorts of creative ways.
- It’s measurable: While most digital marketing channels include some sort of analytics to gauge results, email is one of the most easily measurable. The impact of each email marketing campaign can often be measured in real-time across a wide range of behaviors, allowing you to accurately determine the ROI of your efforts.
- It’s scalable: Email is arguably the greatest one-to-many communication tool ever invented, especially for bloggers. No matter how much you grow your email list, email allows you to deliver a consistent experience to everyone on your list.
How to build a blogger email list
Now that you’ve picked your favorite email marketing tool, let’s start with the basics.
Building a blogger email list takes some time, but the reward is that once people signed up for your list, they’re there to stay (if you keep delivering great content, of course).
To start building and growing your blog email list, you need to create awareness and motivate blog readers to subscribe.
1. Strategically placing your signup forms for your email list
Email marketing software lets you easily create a signup form, either a static or a pop-up form. Once you’ve designed it, you can place it strategically in various places.
These signup form placements can be:
- Blog Sidebar
- Blog footer
- Underneath each blog article (or integrated as a content upgrade)
- About page
- A pop-up on your blog
- Integrated on Facebook
- As a redirect link in your Instagram biography
- On your Medium profile
- As a pop-up on your Pinterest page
2. Single Opt-in or Double Opt-in Form?
As mentioned above, the single opt-in method allows your new visitor to join your mailing list without following any extra steps. However, if you want to keep your email lists clean from “bad email addresses,” you need to adopt the double opt-in process.
This method adds an extra step where subscribers need to confirm their email addresses through their inboxes. This way, you can be sure that no invalid emails or spam accounts will find their way into your list. Setting up a double opt-in process is simple. All you need to do is to enable it through your email marketing platform.
For example, Moosend allows you to do that through the “Mailing lists” option, by going to the opt-in settings:
Then, you have to create a confirmation email for your new subscribers. Below, you can see a simple example by Brian Dean. Emails like these need to have a single CTA, prompting new recipients to confirm their email addresses. What’s more, you can include a thank-you message or any extra information to help your news subscribers.
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
4. 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.
5. Giving freebies to sign up for your email list
We’re not saying you need to give away cars, but you can think of a nice incentive as a motivation for people to sign up for your email list.
As a blogger, you probably have loads of helpful content that can be given away as a freebie, whether it’s blogging tips, a guide on something you’re great at, or an eBook. It doesn’t need to be grandiose, as long as it makes your reader go “I need that.”
For mompreneur bloggers, this might be a registry list or vacation packing guide, while entrepreneurial bloggers (like Marie Forleo) can offer free audio training, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) blog checklists, or a video course.
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