What is E-mail Marketing?
As a business owner, you understand the importance of building a loyal and engaged customer base. Email marketing is a way for you, the business owner to reach out to your customers and leads through E-mail. E-mail marketing is a cost-effective and personal way to share your information, services, new products and information to build relationships and drive sales. It’s also considered one of the most important component of marketing and relationship building.
A goal of email marketing is to build relationships with your customers and leads, keep them informed about your business, and ultimately drive sales and revenue.
You will frequently hear the term “list building”. In a nutshell, this is the process of collecting E-mail addresses from clients, customers and leads. You manage your list by allowing new subscribers and unsubscribing people who do not wish to hear from your business.
Here are 5 benefits E-mail marketing and owning your own list of contacts
You own your email list: Unlike social media, where you are at the mercy of algorithm changes and platform updates, your email list is yours to keep. Consider it an asset to your company that you can always count on.
Direct access to your customers and leads: With an email list, you have direct access to your customers and leads, allowing you to build a relationship with them and keep them informed about your business.
Build relationships with your audience: By sending targeted and personalized emails, you can build a strong relationship with your audience and keep them engaged with your brand. This can lead to increased customer loyalty and repeat business.
How to Start ?
No two businesses are the same nor are any two business owners in the same point for E-Mail marketing. This is for business owners who do not have a system set up at all.
The first step is to subscribe to an E-mail system. Two popular and free-entry level systems are MailerLite and MailChimp. I’ve used both platforms. You will find many virtual assistants know one if not both of these platforms.
The next step is to gather all E-mails and customer and lead contact information you have. Organize and collect this information in a spreadsheet. This is easier and allows you to update spelling, email addresses and formatting easily.
Finding and collecting your contact information can be time consuming, if you do not have an e-mail list already. Places to find contact information are your business email accounts, customer lists, if you have an online store, the e-commerce platform records email addresses.
You want to find as many contacts as possible.
With a curated and clean list of current contacts, you will want to upload this information into your email system of choice, again many new business owners will use MailerLite or Mailchimp.
Do not stop here.
Enter new customers and leads into your centrally located e-mail list. Ask customers to sign up on a list in your store and have a sign up form on your website.
The next step is to mail out your first newsletter. Watch for a future post on this topic.
