The Ultimate Step by Step Email Marketing Guide (for SMEs)

Email marketing is still the most effective channel to direct your digital marketing efforts. It's direct and effective with lead nurturing and is one of the highest converting marketing channels. Mailchimp covers some great industry statistics on email marketing here.

The biggest benefit of investing in an email marketing funnel is the ability for you to sell once but to many. In this guide, we'll take you step by step in setting up your email marketing funnel so that you can acquire leads and generate sales.

What is email marketing?

Email marketing is a strategy which uses email as a way to promote your products and services to prospective customers or to keep in touch with purchasing customers. 

Email marketing keeps the conversation going as converted customers are consistently kept in touch with key marketing topics to nurture and drive interest in your business.

Who is this guide for?

This guide is for you if you have the intention to implement email marketing as part of your digital marketing strategy. Also, this guide is for you if you intend to learn about the time and effort required as you plan to implement an email marketing strategy.

Disclaimer

This guide is long and detailed. You'll walk away with results if you implement and consistently apply the teachings here. To ease your ability to reference, this guide is segmented according to different sections.

What you will gain from this guide?

1. How to build an email list full of targeted customers.
2. How to optimise your emails for the highest open rates and click-through rates (CTR).
3. How to automate the process of nurturing your leads and turning your prospects into customers.

Why choose Email Marketing?

Despite the rise of social media and the negative connotation with email and spam. Email still remains the most effective way to nurture leads and to turn them into customers.

Why Email is great for Sales?

1. Email is still the world's #1 communication channel. 
2. You own your customer database. Your Social Media Platform can be suspended at any time without notice.
3. Email converts better. People who buy products marketed through email spend 138% more than those who do not receive email offers.

How to Start?

Although email marketing may seem complicated, in essence, but it just covers a few major sections which can be easily broken down into 2 major sections.

1. Start with your list. 
2. Add an email service provider.

How to grow your email list?

Growing your list does generally involve an opt-in form on your website. However, just placing an opt-in form on your website and hoping for people to sign-up is a strategy that is sure to fail.

To entice people to sign-up for your email list, you need to attract people with a compelling offer. This can be done through a Lead Magnet. A Lead Magnet is something free that you give away in exchange for someone's email address. Some common examples of Lead Magnets include PDFs, MP3 Audio files, or videos that you can create yourself at minimal or no cost.

Some ideas of Lead Magnets are:

• eBooks
• Cheat Sheet with Tips and/or Resources
• White Papers or Case Studies
• A Webinar
• Free Trials or Samples
• A Free Quote or Consultation
• Quizzes or a Self-Assessment
• A Coupon

How to create an Opt-in Form which converts?

An opt-in form isn't just any boring old form. Its main purpose is to convey the big benefit of your Lead Magnet.

Here's how you can create an opt-in form which converts:

1. Enticing Headline: Make sure your headline is attractive and clearly describes the big benefit of your Lead Magnet. 
2. Write a helpful description: A short and brief description is clear and to the point. Use bullet points to help the reader's eye quickly scan what they will get.
3. Attractive visuals.
4. Construct a simple opt-in form.
5. An easy to understand button.

Some places where you can place your opt-in form for maximum results are:

• Floating bar
• Your website's header
• Blog archive page
• Within your blog posts
• Your sidebar
• In a scroll box
• Your footer
• Your about page
• Resource Pages
• Email Signature

Choosing an Email Marketing Service

To email anyone you need their permission. If you started with an opt-in, usually this includes a permission intent. This is what makes opt-in email marketing great. 

OptinMonster

Constant Contact

sendinblue

Drip

AWeber

ConvertKit

Mailchimp

Personalise your marketing with Email List Segmentation

This is done by all marketing experts and is a process of identifying groups of your subscribers based on smaller interest or criteria for the purposes of sending them more personalised and relevant emails. For example, you wouldn't send father's day promotions to a teenager.

Segmenting your email list is proven to increase your email open rates, and decrease your unsubscribe rates. There are many ways to segment your email list into segments, and to get you started here are a few ways you can organise your segments for your email list:

• New subscribers: You can send a welcome email series
• Preferences: Based on what type of content they are interested to receive (eg.: marketing, promotions, etc.)
• Interests: Based on interests (eg.: pop music vs. rock music)
• Location: based on where your subscribers are located to share a local event happening near them.
• Open Rate: Reward customers who are more engaged with a special offer
• Inactivity: A reminder or a new promotion to entice further engagement.
• Lead Magnet: Send targeted emails depending on which Lead Magnet has attracted them.

Take time to spring clean your email list

It is important to email your subscribers on a consistent basis, so your list doesn't go stale. Even then, over time, email subscribers will go stale. This can be for various reasons but the most common reasons are a change of email accounts or they are generally not interested in your brand anymore. To keep your list fresh and active, it is advised to remove inactive subscribers periodically.

Write to Just One Person

When you draft your email subject line and message content, it's natural to think of the many thousands if not millions of people who are about to receive it. However, remember the recipient is only receiving an email from you. Thus, it is far more effective to write as though you are writing to one person with a highly personal subject line and a personalised message. To write this way you'll have to really know your buyer persona. You need to understand their problems, their desires, their values, their likes and their dislikes.

Inject some humour

Humour has a way of making a strong, instant connection with people. It's personal, entertaining and stands out in people's minds. It isn't really that hard, all you need to think outside the box.

Conclusion

You should absolutely be sending emails. Even if it is just an email newsletter. More than 83% of business-to-business marketers send email newsletters as part of their content marketing strategy. Email marketing is a very cost-effective way for brands to communicate with their customers and email is an essential piece in any marketing strategy.

Learn about professional email hosting here.

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8 Ways to Increase Website Traffic

With a global pandemic upon us all, it is even more essential for businesses to implement digital-first initiatives. There have been some great highlights during these difficult times, like restaurants and grocery businesses have led the way for online orders and distanced fulfilment. 

Yes, that means it is more important now than ever to have an online website that can allow you to receive, make and deliver your products or services to your customers.

A website is essentially space for your business on the Internet allowing visitors to learn more about your business and solutions which you can offer to them.

Having a website solves one-half of the puzzle of a digital-first initiative. The other more important half is focusing on obtaining a higher conversion rate.

Let's take a step back here. A higher conversion rate just means new visitors who are looking for your product or service which would be more likely to find your website first and for them to purchase what you have on offer.

You've likely heard that growing a website takes time. Requires consistent sharing of great content for months and months on end. And usually, it takes around 2 years of disciplined committed work for your website to get big.

It's slow. Not very thrilling.

This article isn't about to be boring. It'll cover some great ways to help your website gain spikes in traffic as and when you carry out any of the following suggestions. Read on.

Here's 8 ways you can increase your website traffic:

1. Make use of your email list

There are so many content marketing strategies available today, and it can be confusing. However, email marketing is the simplest, most cost-effective, and effective way to advertise your website.

As it is generally inexpensive email is more likely to drive a favourable ROI while being versatile. Create campaigns which encourage your email subscribers to share your content with their friends and family.

2. Build a presence on social media

Social media is the future. Don't take this lightly, as many businesses are already monetising from their social profiles. Social media worldwide is increasing at a rapid rate, and there hasn't been any sign of a slowdown yet.

Think outside the box. Don't just rely on Facebook. There are plenty of other alternatives such as Snapchat, Instagram, Pinterest, etc.

Do more than just create a profile. Make sure you spend time to curate valuable and useful information or content that encourage engagement as these actions will make it much easier for you to generate new sales opportunities.

3. Start blogging

Make sure you create a blog and treat this as a priority because it doesn't matter what type of business you are in, blogging is one of the best ways to increase your website's traffic and generate new sales opportunities.

When you blog, you're taking steps to improve your SEO. As you continue to consistently add new content to your page, your SEO factor is improved. Yes, the success of this is directly related to the frequency of your posts. Stronger results came from more frequent blog posts.

4. Use influencer marketing to establish digital credibility

A website is only as credible as other people say it is. A fast way to hack this is to leverage your relationships with influencers. There are 2 ways to this (1) established celebrities (2) micro-influencers. 

5. Improve your backend infrastructure for more streamlined search engine optimisation

One of the key elements to discoverability on any search engine is website speed. Make sure you are with a reliable hosting partner to ensure your website loads fast, and is optimised for key target regions. You can find more information about this here.

6. Leverage long-tail SEO

You might have heard a big emphasis on including key search phrases in your SEO strategy. Who doesn't want to rank for terms like "web hosting" and "Kuala Lumpur's Best Web Hosting Company". Although those terms are lucrative they are also very difficult to rank for. Because of a large competitive base tussling for those keywords.

On the other hand, long-tail keywords are much less competitive and could drive the majority of website traffic to your website.

7. Writing a high-quality guest post

One of the hottest and easiest ways to give your traffic a significant bump is to write a guest article for an already popular blog.

Here's how you can do this:

1. Establish and build a relationship with the blog's owner. 
2. Contact them via Twitter, and comment on their postings.
3. Leave high-quality comments on their website.
4. Get introduced by another guest writer.
5. Meet them face-to-face.

Here are some great tips for your guest post:

1. Use simple words
2. Write advanced how-to blog posts
3. Links
4. Create conversations
5. Prove you are the authority
6. Create powerful headlines

8. Create a giveaway worth wanting

There are many free giveaways, but very few take the time to craft a great giveaway that people actually want. Remember people are not signing up to your list because they like you, they're signing up because they believe you can help them with their problem. 

Conclusion

We get really excited just talking about all of these tactics because these are tactics that anybody can use, and some of the tactics that we also use. If you have any other findings that work for you do share them in the comments below.

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