There is no doubt that, today, email marketing has become a fundamental channel for any brand, company or entrepreneur that has a presence on the internet. Its effectiveness has led it to be included in all online marketing strategies, and it is considered the most profitable online marketing action.
For this reason, in this post, we will see why you should start working with an email marketing software, by analyzing different points of view, such as capturing emails, community building, or creating engagement with your customers.
If you are thinking of starting to send free email marketing and you are looking for options to create an email list, pay close attention to these recommendations, because they will be beneficial to your strategy.
7 reasons to start sending email marketing now
1) Direct channel of information and communication
Email marketing is possibly one of the most direct channels that exist to transmit messages on the Internet.
This is a two-way channel: the sender (you send a newsletter to an email list) and the receiver (your subscriber, who receives this email campaign). That is, there are no noises or interferences, as happens, for example, in social networks, where there are many distraction points (ads, videos, comments, etc.). In this way, email marketing is a very useful tool for keeping your subscribers informed about your brand, about the latest articles on your blog or your new products/services.
Using it, you can send a newsletter to your subscribers whenever you have to tell them something relevant to your project.
2) Strengthen your corporate image
Another advantage of working with an email marketing software is the possibility to strengthen your brand image and also improve engagement with your audience.
How can you enhance your brand image?
At this point, my recommendation is to use story telling techniques, to capture the attention of your subscribers and connect with them in a more personal way.
Tell them a story (your own story), to create a friendly relationship with your readers. The goal is to get closer to your customers, build trust and increase your credibility.
3)Loyalty to your customers
If you have a virtual store, sell a product or offer some kind of service, this point will be interesting.
Email marketing also allows you to build loyalty with your customers, which means that you will be able to achieve several goals at the same time:
First of all, the experience after the purchase should be satisfactory. If you can manage that, they may buy new products.
Also, if they like buying from you, they may recommend your brand to other customers, which is critical to your marketing strategy (a user’s recommendation of your brand will be much more efficient than any advertising you could pay for)
4) Promote and sell your products or services
As I mentioned in the first few paragraphs, one of the advantages of working with an email marketing software is that the fact that you can send thousands of emails at once, with information about products, services or news about your blog.
Best of all, you can target campaigns according to the interests of your users: gender, age, preferences, etc. That is, you can choose to which email list you will send a promotion, creating a custom newsletter for these subscribers.
5) Create A/B tests
Another advantage of working with an email marketing software is that it allows you to test your newsletter before sending it to the entire email list.
This means that before you send a newsletter to your subscribers, you can run different tests by selecting a small group of subscribers.
Once this test has been done and the results were analyzed, you can send the newsletter to the rest of the email list.
With these A/B tests, you can test different subjects (they are a good option for improving the open rate of your newsletters), different colors and layouts.
6) Campaign Analysis: Measuring Results and Calculating Your ROI
The concept of ROI (Return On Investment) is fundamental in the world of online marketing and sales, as it will allow you to measure the level of profitability of a specific action. That is, with these data, you will be able to know the performance and profits of any marketing campaign.
Regarding the analysis of email marketing campaigns, you can extract a series of data to know the effectiveness of your newsletter. Some examples are: number of emails opened (the number of people who are readings your emails), number of clicks on your links, number of bounces, number of users requesting removal from your email list, the best hours and days to send email marketing as well as information about users in your list (country, device, operating system, etc.).
7) Save money and resources
Developing an email marketing strategy is much cheaper then other types of online marketing actions, like buying ads or campaigns in social networks.
You just need to have an email marketing software, an email list, and a well-defined strategy.
Also, the design of a newsletter is very simple (you don’t need advanced knowledge) and you will have other benefits, such as the possibility of scheduling your campaign or the automation of certain actions, with the use of autoresponders.
Some Important Tips for Sending Email Marketing Campaigns
Now that you know why you should start working with an email marketing software, I want to give you some tips to create an effective campaign with a few simple steps.
- Plan your campaigns, that is, don’t send a newsletter to your email list without having a defined strategy, however simple it may be.
- Carefully review the content you will include in your emails, to be sure that you will offer relevant information to your subscribers.
- Segment your email list. I am convinced that if you have, for example, 2,000 users on your list, not all of them will be interested in the same products, nor will they have the same preferences. Certainly, some will read your newsletter because they like the articles published on your blog, others because of the services you offer and some because they want specific information about a product or service. This means that to maximize your results, you should target your email list by creating different subscriber groups based on their preferences.
- Customize the emails. As we have seen, one of the benefits of email marketing is the possibility of reinforcing the image of your brand. For this, you can use different strategies, such as adding the name of the person who will read the newsletter. The goal is to humanize your marketing and create a long-term link with your subscribers.
- Try to send the newsletter at different hours or days. Another essential factor to consider when you will send your email marketing campaigns. I recommend that you send your newsletter at the most appropriate times when your subscribers will be more likely to read your emails (for example, don’t send a newsletter very late in the night, when most of them will not be online to read it).
- Include different subscription forms on your site so that you have several options for capturing leads. The most common places to add them are: pop-ups (windows in the header, footer, or sidebar of your blog or in the posts you publish.
Advantages of using Mailrelay as your email marketing software
I didn’t want to end this article without mentioning the advantages of working with Mailrelay as your email marketing software (a bit of self-promotion is never too much). If you are reading this blog, hopefully you are using this platform and if you don’t use it, pay close attention to its features 😉
- You can test your free account with no commitment or restrictions. With this account, you can send up to 80 thousand emails per month to an email list of up to 20000 contacts. Also, you can register for the free promotion, or if you need a larger package, you can find all plans and prices here.
- The email marketing software has its algorithm. Mailrelay has its algorithm, called Smartdelivery, which is responsible for improving the results of all the newsletters you send.
- It will not include advertising in your campaigns. You can send email marketing without any logo or publicity; your newsletter will be sent with the same layout you created.
- Technical support. In my opinion, the Mailrelay support team is one of the best features of this email marketing software. They offer specialized and personalized support, to answer all your doubts. If you have any questions or problems, they will help you as soon as possible.
- HTML editor for creating your newsletters. Mailrelay offers a very easy-to-use editor (it’s very similar to the WordPress editor, for example). With this editor, you can create your newsletter, as well as check the spam score of the message before sending it. Therefore, you will not need to have advanced knowledge of HTML.
- Free Templates. In addition to this HTML editor, all Mailrelay accounts have a variety of templates that you can use to create newsletters, without having to create your designs. There are different types of templates you can use depending on the kind of email marketing campaign you want to create. You just need to select the one that best suits your needs and modify what you need (logo, images, texts, links or social networking buttons) to fit your brand.
- Subscription forms. Mailrelay allows you to create custom Subscription forms. You just need to create the form and insert the code generated in your blog. You can configure various parameters, such as subscriber group, success page, error page and confirmation page.
- Scheduled campaigns. In addition to being able to send email marketing immediately, you can schedule your message to send it later. That way, your subscribers will receive your message at the best possible moment, which will help to improve your open rates.
- Autoresponders. The autoresponders are one of the most useful features of this email marketing software. They allow you to automate the sending of your newsletters. For example: When a user subscribes to your email list, the tool can send a welcome email, to welcome the new subscriber to your community. With Mailrelay, the autoresponders are available for all accounts, even for users who want to send free email marketing.
- Advanced Statistics. Mailrelay allows you to analyze the result of your email marketing campaigns, thanks to advanced statistics. You will have details like Views, clicks, location, browser, email client, operating system, etc. Also, as an extra feature, the email marketing software allows you to compare statistics from different campaigns.
- Newsletter by RSS. Another fascinating option is the possibility of sending newsletters automatically using an RSS feed. This feature will allow, for example, to send an automated newsletter to your email list with the news of your blog every time you post a new article, which will make your work much more comfortable. The email marketing software allows you to configure, for example, the number of articles that will be included in the newsletter, the frequency of the messages (daily, weekly, monthly, etc.), the time and the day.
- Google Analytics. To get more information about your campaigns, and the conversions, the platform allows you to include the Google Analytics tag on all the links in your newsletter. You only need to add the campaign name and nothing else, to have all the reports available on Google analytics.
- Synchronization plugins. If you use WordPress, Joomla!, Magento, Drupal or Prestashop as a CMS on your site or virtual store, Mailrelay has synchronization plug-ins that allow you to export all your contacts and automatically import them into your account.
In my opinion, these are some of the most relevant features offered by Mailrelay (although there are many others). I hope this list of recommendations and advice will help you to start working with an email marketing software.