Despite the surge in the number of social media platforms and instant messaging services, emails are still considered the best means of generating new customers and maintaining relationships with existing ones. With around four billion email accounts in the world, most businesses try to leverage email communication to fulfill their marketing goals. According to a study, around 89% of marketers said that email was their primary channel for generating leads. Interestingly, another study suggested that around 72% of adults in the US prefer companies to communicate with them via emails.
As a business owner, when you launch your website and purchase hosting, you get the option of Email Hosting too. Having a Business Email service is essential to establish a professional image and trust with existing and prospective customers.
Today, we will talk about email marketing and offer a guide to help you use your Business Email for the same.
Before we proceed, check out the following video to understand what Email Hosting is:
Guide to Email Marketing using your Business Email account
Here are some things that you need to get started with your email marketing campaign:
- Create a high-performing website
- Purchase a Business Email Hosting This is different from the free email services offered by Yahoo, Gmail, etc. With Business Email, you can send messages in bulk – an essential need for email marketing. With professional email services, you also get a range of benefits like top-notch security, scalability, customizable storage based on the individual needs of users, maximum uptime, etc.
- Create an email marketing plan and define goals for what you want to achieve via your email marketing efforts.
- Choose an email marketing platform like ActiveCampaign, Drip, AWeber, etc., based on your email marketing needs.
- Build a subscriber list. This is an important step because the success of your email marketing campaign will rely heavily on how targeted and focused it is. Avoid purchasing email lists. Use your website to create a list of subscribers who are willing to receive emails from you.
- Create categories of emails to be sent under the marketing campaign like location-driven event invitations (if any), new customer-focused emails, any discounts or promotions being run by you, etc.
- Beware of your emails landing in the Spam folder. Most email marketers dread being spammed despite getting the user to opt-in to their email lists. Understand how spam filters work and keep an eye on spam triggers like the relationship between your business and the subscriber, the reputation of your IP address with respect to sending unsolicited emails, the subject line and content of the email, the inclusion of safe and high-quality links in the email body, images, presence of the text version of the email, etc.
- Create engaging, useful, and original emails. While your objective can be to get the subscriber to click a link or visit your website, it is important to remember that the user is spending time going through the email. Hence, ensure that there is something to gain for the user. Also, keep the email crisp and engaging.
- Test your email before sending it out. This is more important if you have included media like images, GIFs, infographics, or videos.
- Most people access their emails on their mobile phones via apps. Hence, it is important to create emails that are mobile-friendly and do not depend on larger screens for optimal display.
- Once the emails have been sent out, analyze the success of the campaign by measuring bounce rates, open rates, unsubscribe rates, click rates, spam score, etc.
Summing Up
Remember, email marketing is a powerful tool if approached strategically. Think about what you need as a user and avoid pushing too hard. Users are highly sensitive to being spammed or sent emails without their consent. Also, with each user receiving hundreds of marketing emails in a month, you must pay attention to the quality of the email being sent. Finally, it is important to create Business Email addresses for all accounts that you plan to use for email marketing. Many businesses use free emails that fail to establish trust with users. Use your Professional Business Email accounts and create a marketing strategy to successfully market your products and services to users. Good Luck!
