Doing email marketing can be simple, fun and of course effective and affordable. Email marketing is not about preparing a flyer or artwork and send it to the most persons you can. Email marketing is about cultivating and building relationships with your customers. Learning how to do your own email is often an asset to your business and can pay big dividends.

To get started, here are the things you’ll need:

  1. Email Marketing Software
  2. Customer Contact Database (Permission-based)
  3. Email Campaign Content
  4. Email Marketing Template
  5. Analytic Tools

Email Marketing Software

The email software you choose is very important in being successful with your email marketing. If you are not tech savvy you might want to select a software that is easy to learn and easy to use.

Here are some examples of a few good email marketing software on the market you can consider. These are in no specific order.

  • Constant Contact
  • iContact
  • Mail Chimp
  • Vertical Response
  • Benchmark email

All the above software offers a free account based on the total number of contacts or emails you plan to send.

Customer Contact Database(Permission-based)

For starters, you will not be able to send emails without email addresses. This is where a customer contact database comes into play. Persons who are currently doing business with you or have done business with you, are ideally who should make up your contact database. Building a permission based database is always recommended as you prepare customers to expect emails from your brand. That means getting permission from your customers to send them information. You may have customers with specific product, service or category interest and they would only need updates relating only to those products and services. You can give customers options based on the nature of your business.

The suggestion is to start with any amount of customer contacts you have, even it is a small amount. You can prepare this database in an excel sheet which is normally the format most software will accept. What you are actually doing is building and maintaining relationships with your customers.

Email Template

You may need an email template to format and design the look and feel of your email. You can create a template yourself or choose an existing template provided by the email marketing software you use. The template allows you to determine the desired presentation of your email and it has built-in elements that you can use permanently for all your email campaigns.

Email Campaign Content

Depending on your interpretation of it, an email campaign is a single or a series of email content prepared and distributed with information about your products or services to a target audience. The purpose of email campaigns can range from creating awareness, educating customers, informing or marketing products and services to customers. You can also conduct promotional sales campaigns.

Most businesses use a flyer/ad-artwork designed by a graphic designer as the main content insertion in email campaigns. However, not all messages are appropriate via a flyer or an ad-artwork. Some messages will require building an email from scratch with a combination of texts, images, links and other graphics to make an attractive message.

We strongly suggest linking your content to a landing page, social media or website where your customers can engage.

Analytic tools

Monitoring the feedback you received from distributed email campaigns will inform your decision for future ones. Almost all email marketing software provides a tool to help you understand certain metrics such as email opens, bounces, clicks and so on.

Summary

Email marketing campaigns can certainly be of great help to your business as you commit to consistently update your customers on events or activities within your business. You will be surprised at its power.

As you decide on how to launch your next email campaign, ensure that you understand these basics and practice as often as you can. We provide an easy-to-use email marketing software that can be tested or demonstrated. Send us an email at marketing@migroupco.com. Digital Marketing by MI Group is a service provided by our Media division. Service includes Email, Social and Web or Online Marketing.