Getting Started with Email Marketing

This post corresponds to Free Marketing Made Easy podcast Episode 16: Email Marketing with MailChimp which is included in the Core Program, accompanied by workbook and video tutorials that show you how to do this on your own.



My last post explained the basics of Public Relations and Press Releases. Those things have been around for quite a while, but they are being revived because of new tools and distribution methods. Well, here’s another oldie-but-goody: you’ve been using email forever now, right? But how about email marketing? Is that something you know well? Are you already creating effective campaigns? If not, here is some background information and a few getting started tips that you should find helpful.

Don’t do it yourself

Theoretically speaking, you could dumb things way down and start email marketing just by dropping some names into a list and sending a notification from your Outlook, Yahoo or Gmail account. You shouldn’t do this though, and here’s why:

1. Spam is bad: email sent to anyone who did not specifically request communication from you counts as spam. In the worst-case scenario you could get reported for multiple violations and your Internet Service Provider would shut you down. To avoid this you should use a service that lets you manage your subscribers (more on that below).
2. It looks bad: Professional-looking email is so easy and so inexpensive now (as we’ll explain below) that there’s no excuse for poor quality presentation.
3. It might not get delivered: ISP’s and email clients are sensitive to bulk email, so your distribution might not even be received.

Platform benefits

Besides all of this, there are several reasons why using an email provider makes sense. When I say email provider I am talking about a company like MailChimp (a Free Marketing Made Easy partner), whose service helps you create and manage email campaigns. Most providers include these indispensable features:

• Templates: You can choose various pre-designed themes and change the colors or photos to match your brand in general or the specific intent of your email.
• WYSIWYG: What You See is What You Get means that you need absolutely no programming experience. Everything is created in plain English, just like creating a document in Microsoft Word.
• Statistics: You need to know how many of the emails you send are actually delivered, which of those are opened, how many people click on your links, etc. Without these simple measurement tools you are essentially blind and can’t improve the results of your campaigns.
• Opt-out: every professional email service includes a simple link that recipients can click to unsubscribe if they no longer wish to receive communication from you. This is a standard practice that people have come to expect, and you should respect that.
• The current best practice is opt-in: when someone signs up for your enewsletter (via a sign up box on your website, tradeshow list or any other means) you’ll send them a notification that they opted-in and need to click a link to confirm their subscription. This prevents undesired sign-ups by third parties.

Advanced features

There are several reasons why I like MailChimp best of the 16-or-so providers out there:

1. Advanced Statistics and A/B testing: as we discuss extensively in the Site Optimization and Conversion section of the Free Marketing Made Easy Core Program, we shouldn’t just leave well enough alone. Instead, we can use tools to discover how people are responding to our websites then make improvements that directly affect customer acquisition and retention. MailChimp uses this same approach by integrating A/B testing (“which works better, this subject line or that one?”), calculating the better performer then switching automatically. Cool stuff made simple.
2. Integration with other platforms: your day is busy enough, so anything you can do to automate should help. That’s why MailChimp integrates seamlessly with Salesforce.com and ecommerce platforms. When someone signs up for your newsletter from your website’s opt-in box, or makes a purchase through your shopping cart their information will be automatically added to your customer database. No more manual copying and pasting, thank you very much!
3. <500 = free forever: MailChimp has a great offer for small businesses. If you have fewer than 500 contacts your service is free. Forever. Once you exceed 500 you can pay monthly (if you’ll be sending regular emails) or purchase credits for less frequent distribution.
4. The right touch: Mail Chimp optimizes for specific email platforms. That means that your reader will see your update correctly whether they are using Yahoo, Gmail or any other email service.

Getting started

As our friend Amy Ellis (MailChimp Brand Manager) says, it is “super important” for you to take 15-20 minutes to create a plan for your email marketing campaign. Their Email Marketing Guide will help you define the purpose of your outreach and clarify your audience. It also outlines best practices, lots of technical stuff, etc. Go ahead and download it, and let us know how your new campaigns work out!

Next up, we’re going offline (sort of) by getting you ready to take all of your expertise into the world of teleclasses. There you’ll learn how to take your business way beyond traditional geographical and time limitations. Sweet!