Email Marketing for Newbies

Is Email Marketing a Struggle for You?

Email marketing is truly a necessity for online entrepreneurs if you want to be competitive and succeed in the marketplace. However, you may be struggling with your strategy and in trying to identify what you’re doing wrong. Learning about email marketing for newbies is a worthwhile strategy and use of your time as you build and grow your business.

This is an aspect of your business that you always want to be improving over time. Simply by understanding some of the most common problems with the email marketing, you’ll be able to overcome the challenges you’ve been facing with the process of learning about email marketing for newbies so you will improve the engagement you’re getting from your subscribers.

Below, you’ll find six things you may not have been doing correctly – or tried at all – that can help you perform well with your email marketing efforts. Address them one at a time and track the changes that serve you best.

Segmenting and Personalizing Your List for Better Performance

First of all, I am going to recommend you get started with the same email and autoresponder service I’ve been using for well over a decade, AWeber. When you want your emails to perform better, there are two specific things you can do that tailor your messages to the individual receiving it. The first thing you can do is divide your list into groups based on certain information.

This might be demographic information or behavioral information that helps you send content specifically for their needs, rather than a catchall topic that might not be relevant to some people.

Your email autoresponder system will have a segmentation feature built into it so that you can target the emails to different audiences. Another thing you can do is personalize your emails with their name as well as information coming from you about your life that helps them build a bond with you.

Not only can you personalize the body of the email, but you can personalize the subject line, which often helps improve the open rate of your campaigns. These two strategies also increase brand loyalty because it shows that you understand their needs better.

Ensuring Deliverability So Your Emails Don’t End Up as Spam

One big problem many online entrepreneurs have with email marketing is that their messages never even get to the inbox of their recipients. They are immediately sent to spam filters.

You can write the most perfect copy for your message, but if a spam filter siphons it off, you won’t see the results you were hoping for. You have to use a reputable email autoresponder system so that Internet service providers will allow your messages through.

You want to build a high performing sender reputation score, which is assigned to your email domain and you can do this by getting better engagement and fewer complaints and keeping your list clean as you adhere to best practices so that your recipients are not labeling your messages as spam.

If you can avoid using spammy words, and ensure that you are sending out high quality content that people always want to open, this will serve you well in helping your emails bypass spam filters. Learning about email marketing for newbies means that you are making sure to employ best practices at all times.

Getting Better Engagement for Opens and Clicks in Your Emails

Whether or not someone opens your email begins with what you have used to craft your subject line. It needs to grab their attention and be compelling, and not rely on deceptive clickbait tactics.

In addition to being transparent with your subject lines, and personalizing them, too, you can use a call to action in your subject or pose a question. You can build a swipe file of effective words that perform well with your list in getting them to open your emails.

Once they are in the email itself, you want the body of your message to perform well in getting clicks to the links you are sending. You might use a teaser as the body of your email, with a link that makes them want to click through and find out more – or you can simply use a strong call to action that makes them not want to miss out.

Optimizing Your Emails for All Audiences

Everyone who is opening your emails is not going to be on a personal computer viewing them. You have to account for those who are opening your emails on-the-go, using mobile devices such as smartphones, tablets, and even laptops.

Whenever someone is opening your emails on a mobile device, and you have failed to optimize it, they will usually simply delete it and possibly unsubscribe. Not only does it impact the look of your emails, but it often makes it difficult for them to click on any links.

You have to use a responsive design that can adjust for any screen size and device that it’s being viewed on. The more complicated you make your emails, using bullet points, multiple links and multimedia, the more opportunity there is to run into a problem.

The best thing you can do is check to see how your emails look on a variety of different devices as well as browsers. You also want to make sure that the font you are using is big enough for people to read on a small screen.

Timing Your Emails for Maximum Impact

Timing is everything when it comes to email marketing. If you are not timing your email campaigns properly, you run the risk of not having your messages get opened, but instead deleted and ignored.

When it comes to timing, there are two different things you need to consider. The first is literally what time of day you are sending your emails. If most of your subscribers are in America, you still have three time zones to make a decision on.

Remember, you can segment your list to send your emails out at the right time if you know this demographic information. But you’ll be able to see what time of day performs best with your subscribers based on the performance you get out of them.

The second issue with time is frequency. Some subscriber lists do well with daily, or even multiple times per day communication. Others do better with less frequency, such as once or twice per week.

Even the day of the week may have an impact on whether or not your emails perform better, since Mondays are the days when most people are busy and just returning to work and Fridays or when they are getting ready to have a relaxing weekend.

Analytics Analysis That Can Improve Your Email Marketing Results

One thing you will find as a big relief as an email marketer is that you have analytic data at your fingertips to tell you what is going wrong, as well as what you’re doing right. Your email autoresponder system should have analytics built in that will show you information that you can use to make improvements.

For example, you can start by trying to get more people to open your emails and improve your open rate. You’ll be looking at how subject lines perform, whether personalization or emojis help or hurt you, etc.

You’ll also be able to see what your clickthrough rate or conversion rate is. This may be caused by a weak call to action or the fact that you are not sending the right offers to you are subscribers.

You also want to pay attention to your bounce rate. If these are high, you have to clean up your list so that your sender reputation will remain in good standing. Some new marketers are hesitant to delete subscribers who signed up, but are not getting their emails – but this will only hurt you in the long run.

I believe that email marketing for newbies is a topic that is not discussed nearly enough. Starting and building a home-based business is typically done alone, so you will want to make sure your primary method of communication with your new audience is clear in your mind.

Email marketing is an aspect of your business that can help you build strong connections with your prospective buyers. Remember that you won’t always be new as an email marketer, so embrace the email marketing for newbies strategies I’m sharing here to improve quickly and get better results to move to the next level in your online business. Unless you take time to identify weaknesses in your strategy, and repair them, you may be spinning your wheels and wasting precious hours in your day for much longer than you need to as an online entrepreneur.

Be Sure to Take a Look at My New, Ongoing Training – “Email Every Day… BEFORE You Have a List!”

I’m bestselling USA Today and Wall Street Journal author, publisher, and entrepreneur Connie Ragen Green and my goal is to connect with you if you have more than just a passing interest in getting started with an online business. I most recently released Really Simple SEO Tips and Keywords for Beginners and this is an excellent place to begin. Please take a look while it’s still at its introductory pricing.