If you look in your “promotional” or “spam” folders, you’ll see hundreds of examples of email marketing. Email marketing is a great idea to incorporate into your website to stay connected with visitors. Now you might be thinking, “who’s going to read my emails if they’re just going to go to the spam folder?” That’s the challenge of email marketing: creating communications that your audience will look forward to reading. Whether it’s a newsletter, special offer, or reminding shoppers what they’re missing out on, reconnecting with your audience will encourage them to revisit your site.

NEXTFLY is happy to help you with your digital marketing needs. We find that email marketing is a particularly effective tool to encourage brand loyalty and increase customer engagement. Contact us today to see how we can help you with your email marketing needs.

What is Email Marketing?

Email marketing is a cost-effective marketing strategy that has shown a high return on investment (ROI). In fact, the average return of every dollar spent on email marketing is $38-44. Creating an Email Marketing campaign can help encourage one time visitors to visit your website again. If your visitors see consistent value or incentives to revisit they will.

To start an email marketing campaign, you’ll need a few things: a mailing list, an email marketing service, and a strategy for the types of emails you’ll send.

How Do I Create A Mailing List?

In order to correct a mailing list, you need to collect emails. You can do this by adding forms to your websites that people can subscribe to with their email addresses. There’s a number of places and ways you can entice people to sign up for your mailing list.

• Popups when customers first enter the site. A lot of times they’ll say “give us your email for $3 off your order.”
• Exit-intent popups appear to users when they’re about to leave your page. These ensure your visitors still see your content, and you encourage them to sign up before they leave your site. If they liked what they saw on your site, they might sign up
• Have an email subscription popup block your entire site when people enter. Like forcing people to log in before they can see content, but instead, you’re just asking for their emails.
• Have a low effort contest where a visitor could win one of a variety of prizes ($5 off, 10% off), but to claim their prize, they must subscribe with their email address.
• A lot of great landing pages have subscription forms or contact forms on the side of their page to collect interest based on their offerings.
• Email forms in the footer of your website are pretty commonplace these days. If a visitor likes your web content, the footer might be the first place they look to subscribe to your site.

Can I buy a mailing list?

Some people don’t have the patience to wait for enough people to subscribe to their websites, so they look for lists of emails they can buy so they can start their campaigns. This is a dangerous practice and is highly discouraged in the email marketing world. In fact, many email marketing services will not allow you to send emails from a purchased list. Emails bought from an email list tend to have high unsubscribed rates. Some email spam filters will flag an email campaign if anyone with the same IP has sent spam in the past. It’s best to be patient and wait for subscribers to help grow your brand.

Once you have an email list, you should separate your subscribers into groups. These segments are great for specific targeting and special promotions that will make your customers feel like you recognize their loyalty.

Email Marketing Services

There are many different types of email marketing services you can sign up for. Some cost small fees, others are free with limited capabilities. Some are easier to create eye-catching emails than others.

Constant Contact and MailChimp are very affordable services with in-depth reporting and a/b testing capabilities. If you are a large company, many CRMs like Hubspot and Salesforce have email marketing capabilities that can easily connect to your current customer data. Some other services like Drip and Convertkit are great for bloggers and digital marketers. Many of these services offer free trials before you have to subscribe, so check a few out to see which you like best.

Types of Email Marketing Campaigns

Now that you know what email marketing is, what kinds of emails should you send? Depending on the automation you have set up, some will be easier to implement than others. It’s good to make a schedule of how often you want to create and send out new emails anyway.

• Welcome Email – thank your subscribers for subscribing and give them a little something to entice them to be a customer. You can send them other emails to encourage them to follow you on social media or showcase your brand in a more intimate way.
• Seasonal Campaigns – This is great for retailers who are advertising their new stock for the seasons and upcoming holidays. Be sure to stress the urgency of these promotions as they are only offered for the season.
• Newsletters – let your subscribers know what changes are happening at the company, what’s up next, or keep them in the loop with exciting updates and news.
• Remarketing & Upselling – Remarketing email campaigns are very effective at encouraging customers to make purchases. “We noticed you left items in your cart, do you want to buy these?” These types of emails make customers reconsider buying. Sometimes after purchase, send your customer an email letting them know of other compatible products to the one they just purchased, or encourage them to purchase more of that brand. “If you liked X, maybe you’d like to try Y.”
• Reengagement Campaigns – this is a good idea to remind people to come back to your site. “Hey, we haven’t seen you in a while. Here’s 10% off your next purchase.” These emails are also good because if you’re worried about your open and click rates, this might entice your customers to unsubscribe. Which you’d hate to see them go, but if they do, then you know your emails are no longer someone’s spam problem.

Ask How NEXTFLY Can Help You with Email Marketing

Ready to start sending emails to your visitors? Nextfly has Email Marketing solutions and strategies that can help boost your sales and traffic. Talk to us today to learn more.