10 Things to consider when choosing an Email Marketing Provider [Infographic]

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If you need help with setting up and managing your email marketing campaigns, then check out our Email Marketing Service. We can advise you of the best email marketing program to use depending on your requirements, as well as create and schedule your newsletters, add a sign up form on your website, and manage your subscriber lists. Click on the arrow to find out more about our Email Marketing Service.

 

Make a date with your blog

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When you’re first starting out in business and you haven’t got much client work coming in then it’s very easy to spend time on your marketing, whether that’s going to networking events, posting stuff on Twitter or Facebook, or writing a blog.

However, the challenge comes when your workload starts to increase.  How do you juggle your client work with your marketing activities?

When I mention to people that I blog and do email marketing, a lot of people say that they would love to do it but just don’t have time to put content together.  Now I sympathise with this.  In fact, I was only saying to someone the other day that because I was so busy, I was now finding it difficult to write one blog a week.  However, I have gained clients through my email marketing activities and via my website, so I know how important it is to do this – however challenging it gets sometimes!.

If you want to be found online then you need to be creating and sharing content, otherwise you could be losing work to your competitors.

So if you haven’t posted a blog in a while, or perhaps it’s been a few months since you contacted your list, then you need to get back into a routine, otherwise you’re wasting a huge marketing opportunity.  See my previous blog about being consistent with your email marketing activities – The Key to Successful Email Marketing Campaigns – in fact that applies to all your marketing.

The only way to stay consistent is to make a date with your blog.  Set a day and time in the week when you’re going to write your content, eg Thursday afternoon.  Put that date in the diary and stick to it – don’t put it off or tell yourself that you’re too busy.  If you put it on your weekly schedule then there’s no excuse not to do it and you can plan your work around it.  And if an emergency strikes, then just reschedule to the next day.

By thinking of your blog and newsletter as an essential part of your business, then you’ll work it into your schedule in the same way as you do for raising invoices.  If you didn’t take the time to send out invoices, you wouldn’t get paid; if you don’t spend the time creating valuable content that you can share with your online audience, then you won’t be able to attract prospects and build relationships with them.

So make a date with your blog and start getting into a routine to write content that will help you to build a network of people that are interested in you and your business.

And if you want help setting up and managing your blog or email marketing newsletters, then check out our online marketing services.  We can help you to design a blog on WordPress, proofread and post your content, as well as set up and manage your email marketing campaigns.  So click on the link to check out our online marketing support.

Why Email Marketing Isn’t Right for Your Business

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As I mentioned in my previous blog, The 7 Deadly Sins of Email Marketing, email marketing is a great tool to connect and engage with an online audience who  you know are interested in your services or products.  However, many people rush into email marketing without thinking about whether it is right for their business.  Because it’s like any form of marketing, you need to have a clear strategy of what you want to get out of it before you start.

So if you’re thinking about using email marketing to promote your business online, then consider these 3 reasons why email marketing isn’t right for your business.

You don’t have the time to do it.  You’ve seen your competitors send newsletters out and you think that you should be doing something similar.  You sign up to an email marketing program and send out a newsletter; after that you find that time slips by and before you know it 6-9 months have passed and you have forgotten about your list.

And if you’ve forgotten about your list, you can be sure that they’ve forgotten about you too.  You need to be emailing out to your list at least once a month if you want them to remember you when they’re looking for services or products like yours.

You want a quick fix.  You think email marketing is a fast route to selling your services or products to a large group of people.  So you upload the details of everyone you have ever met on to your email marketing program and start sending emails out about what you do.

Like any other form of marketing, email marketing takes time and there is no fast route to success.  A clean list of 100 people, who have all opted in to receive emails from you, will be far more engaged with your content than 1000 people who you met once at a networking event and have probably forgotten all about you.

It’s all about you.   You don’t take the time to research valuable content that would interest your target market so your newsletters are all about you and what you’ve done in your business since your last email.

Remember, that most people nowadays are struggling to stay on top of their inbox so an email from you about your fantastic widgets is just going to go straight into the delete or junk folder.  You need to be giving your readers valuable and interesting content that will make them open up and read the email.

So now you know why email marketing isn’t right for your business, you can decide whether you want to set aside the necessary time to set up and manage your email marketing campaigns so they promote your business effectively to your online contacts.
 

Why Use Aweber for Your Email Marketing?

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As someone who provides email marketing services to business owners, I very often get asked what email marketing program I use.  Although many of my clients use Mailchimp to create their newsletters, personally I use Aweber to manage my email marketing campaigns.

Why use Aweber?  Because although there’s nothing wrong with programs like Mailchimp,  Aweber has functions that I think are more effective.

So here’s why I use Aweber for my email marketing campaigns.

Autoresponders. I love the ease with which you can set up autoresponders, or follow up messages as they are called on Aweber.  You can create a series of follow up messages and then select the number of day’s interval between each one going out.  If you want to reorder the messages then you can easily do this by just dragging and dropping them to another place in the list.  By looking at the follow up messages list, you can quickly see when each message goes out and how many days interval there is between each of them.

Send to more than one list.  Unlike Mailchimp where you cannot send one campaign to multiple lists, Aweber lets you include and exclude other lists when you are scheduling your email broadcast. So if you’re like me and have several contact lists then it’s really easy to get your email campaigns out to all your contacts without having to send them individually to each list.

Drag and drop message editor.  This is a fairly new feature on Aweber and enables you to create newsletters without having to learn HTML.  Like most email marketing programs, Aweber has a range of ready-made email templates for you to use and customise for your campaigns.  But the message editor enables you to create and design content without having to use HTML. So you can create headlines, paragraphs, images and social media buttons just by dragging them from the toolbar.  You can then edit the content by dragging and dropping the content blocks within the template; making it easy to play around with the look and design of your newsletter.

Double Opt-in.  Finally, Aweber has very strict rules about uploading subscribers to its system.  Like Mailchimp you can upload a list of contacts to your Aweber account, but unlike Mailchimp, Aweber forces you to take those contacts through the double optin process.  This means that everyone you manually upload on to your Aweber database has to confirm that they want to be added on to your mailing list.  This keeps your list clean and stops you from getting high unsubscribe rates and being seen as a spammer by your contacts.

 

If you need help with setting up and managing your email marketing campaigns, then check out our Email Marketing Service. We can advise you of the best email marketing program to use depending on your requirements, as well as create and schedule your newsletters, add a sign up form on your website, and manage lists. We will help you to use email marketing effectively so you can market to a wider audience and build your list. Click on the arrow to find out more about our email marketing service.

 

When doing email marketing, learn from the spammers!

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When you’re setting up your first email marketing campaign, the one thing that you’ll hear from the experts is that you need to ensure that you’re not spamming your list.  Whether that’s adding people without their permission or sending out emails that aren’t relevant or consistent, you need to be doing your email marketing correctly so that you are seen as someone who respects your contacts’ time and information.

One way to do this is to learn from the spammers themselves and here are 5 essential lessons that you can learn from spam emails.

Mind your language.  One way to ensure that your message will end up in the junk folder is to use words like “free” “£££” “bonus” etc and add exclamation marks and use UPPERCASE WORDS in the subject line and body of the email.  Make sure your subject line and any call to actions are compelling without coming across as too ‘salesy’ and ‘spammy’.

Be relevant.  Sending out information that people haven’t asked for is another way to get people to unsubscribe.  When people sign up to your list, explain clearly what they will be getting, eg monthly newsletter, special offers etc.  And make it relevant.  People who have signed up to receive your free guide on losing weight, don’t want to start receiving emails on how to use social media!

Engage with your readers.  Most spam emails you get are just broadcasting links or sales messages.  Make yours stand out by engaging with your readers.  You can do this by asking people to comment on a blog post or LinkedIn discussion.  Alternatively you could capture people’s phone numbers and give them a call.  It’s said that the majority of people who sign up to a list will give a valid phone number if asked.  By initiating a discussion, you can find out why they signed up  and what kind of information they would find useful.  This is all good market research that you can use for planning future email marketing campaigns.

Let them go. You’ll find that many spam emails won’t let you unsubscribe.  Most email marketing programs will add a one-click unsubscribe link as standard.  If people do unsubscribe, then respect their decision. On no account challenge or get aggressive towards anyone who decides to leave!  By letting people unsubscribe, you’re keeping your list relevant and engaged.

Respect their time.   We all struggle with keeping on top of our inbox so sending out endless emails to your list isn’t going to go down well.  Be respectful of their time by emailing your list no more than once or twice a week.  But make sure that you are communicating with them regularly otherwise they will forget about you.

So look at how spammers are using email marketing and educate yourself to ensure that you stand apart from them.  By using email marketing correctly, you can build a relationship with your contacts which will increase your profits and get your information to the people who most want to see it.
 

If you want to get more tips on how to use email marketing to promote your business, then download our guide The Essentials of Email Marketing. This guide is packed full of useful information from how to set up your first campaign to the best time to send your newsletter. Click on the link to download the guide >> The Essentials of Email Marketing