Never underestimate the power of a good email list. Emailing your customers is your chance to share your business voice, ethos, beliefs and personality. Modern-day consumers don’t just want quality products at good prices, they want to buy into a company’s story and their vision.
Apple and Tesla are prime examples of businesses that do this exceptionally well. Their customers love and believe in their brand. They share a similar vision and passion for what the company is doing. Building your own email list can help start your campaign to attract and retain loyal customers who not only like your products but love your company.
While admittedly, this may be far easier for the likes of Apple and Tesla this can apply to your small business even if you have zero budget for your email marketing. Here are 5 simples steps to launch your email marketing today.
1) Use Free Email Software
No money? No problem! These providers offer completely free email software that you can sign up to and get started right away. This software will help you with everything from creating sign up pop-ups that can be placed on your website to creating professional targeted emails completely free of charge. There is no need for an expensive digital marketing agency when first starting out on your email list.
Utilizing free email marketing software can help you take the first steps in building that important customer mail list. Using them is fairly easy to do. You will be building your email lists and creating engaging bulk messages for your customers in no time.
2) Don’t Purchase Email Lists
One sure-fire way to make your company look spammy is to start sending cold emails to random people’s email boxes. Successful email marketing depends on good open rates which you can not achieve by sending emails to strangers on the internet.
You should build up your list organically so that your list is full of people who are actually interested in your product or service. Avoid any digital marketing agencies offering an email list for sale.
3) Build Your List Organically
As mentioned above, you want to build a list full of interested and engaged people but how do you do that and with no budget? There are a few simple ways you can do this.
When creating content for your website including articles and blog posts you should add a personalized call-to-action at the end directing people to sign up for your emails. Make sure you use your new free email marketing software to create a pop up that appears when people first land on your site.
Avoid making your sign up pop-ups invasive or annoying for visitors as you will lose many potential customers in a heartbeat. Instead, make them timed so they only pop up if a person has spent significant time browsing your site. Also, you can change your settings so that it does not continue to pop up if they return your site multiple times without signing up.
4) Add Value
Remember, nobody has any reason to join your mailing list and actively get involved in your business. You need to tell them why they should sign up, why they should engage with your company and why they should buy your products or service.
It’s important to think about your value. People want companies that provide them with useful information, regular chances to save money, freebies and competitions. Stating what they will get out of joining your mail list will help get visitors signed up.
5) Social Media
If you’re not on social media then you don’t exist in the modern business world. Social media has transformed the way that businesses communicate with their customers and it helps build invaluable customer relationships you don’t want to miss out on.
Customers love that they can contact a real person from your business at any time and get the information they need. Creating a social media account for your business is completely free and you should try to be on all of the main social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, and LinkedIn.
On social media, you have a unique ability to speak with your customers and provide them with engaging news and content. It’s also the perfect place to entice people to sign up for your wonderful business newsletter. Many of the free email marketing services above will allow you to share your business emails via your social media accounts automatically too.
If your content is engaging, social media followers will join your email list in no time.