When a visitor arrives at your website via organic search or other marketing methods, it is essential to have a opt-in form on your website’s landing page. The visitor can then input his or her personal data such as email in the form in exchange for information, a free product or discount promotion. List building involves storing the email contact information of people who opt in to receive information from you in a database. You can then send them automated recurring email messages to provide them with content, promoting your products/services in a process known as email marketing.
And since the person opting in has granted you permission to send her information, you do not have to worry about spam policies and getting into trouble. However, with that said, it does not mean that you can blatantly send spam messages or downright promotion emails all the time.
Why Is Email Marketing So Important?
It is a known fact that most people don’t immediately buy from someone who they hardly know anything about unless that person owns a big and successful company with a lot of credibility. Therefore, you need to first build up your credibility. Email marketing allows you to maintain close relationships and provide value to your prospects so that they will trust you, and more likely buy from you.
How Do You Begin with Email Marketing?
Now that you are better aware about email marketing, here’s how you can begin with it.
Sign Up For An Autoresponder
An autoresponder is a list building and mass mailing email service that can store huge lists of email contacts and send regular automated email messages at a time. You can sign up for a free or relatively affordable account at numerous popular autoresponders such as Aweber and GetResponse.
Once you have sign up for an autoresponder account, you can start a new email marketing campaign. This is the location where all your email contacts will be stored on the autoresponder. The actual technical way varies in different autoresponders so do check out their support pages for more details.
Setup Opt In Form
You need to set up an opt in form on your blog/website where visitors can opt in to join your mailing list. Some autoresponders come with opt in form templates that you can auto-install on your website.
Remember to link your opt in form to the marketing campaign you set up in the previous step. Once leads join your mailing list, ask them to double confirm by checking their email and clicking on a confirmation link. This step is important as it is part of anti-spam policy as well as most autoresponders’ guidelines.
Craft & Send Emails
Craft and send your mailing list automated recurring email messages or a one time broadcast message, where you can provide valuable content while at the same time indirectly promote your events, products or services. Please note though that the exact processes to do so are very technically so it is highly recommended to peruse through the respective autoresponder support pages for full elaboration, illustrations, FAQs and video tutorials.
And there you have it, the fundamentals of list building and email marketing. But before you can begin building your list and do email marketing, you will need to drive traffic to your website via SEO first. In order to do that effectively, check out our ecommerce SEO services.