Online Marketing 101 – Part 5: Email Marketing and Blogs

Before the introduction of SPAM filters, our inboxes were clogged with emails from all sorts of organisations and non-organisations attempting to sell us things, buy us things or convince us of things. Fortunately, the slew of unwanted emails has been curbed and these days, sending an email to your client on a regular basis with information that is relevant and interesting to them (just like this one) is the number one method of keeping in touch.

What is email marketing?

There are a number of a different terms used in email marketing but essentially, email marketing is sending information directly to your customer’s inbox. There are number of elements that go into making up effective email marketing.

1. Email Marketing Software

Sending out an individual email to each of your customers would be incredibly time wasting and ineffective. Fortunately, there are programs that help you easily set up emails that are pushed out to large amounts of people lie our email marketing software. These programs track who opened it, who clicked on what and who unsubscribed. Everyone who uses an email-marketing tactic employs the help of email campaign tools.

2. Email Lists

Within the program you will have two main elements. Your email list and your email campaigns. Your email list is the list of all the people who have signed up to receive your emails. It contains either just their email address or lots of information like their name, job description, company and specific preferences on information they want to receive.

3. Email Campaigns

Your email campaigns are the emails you send out. You might have one campaign that is your regular fortnightly update and another one that goes out only to new customers. Campaigns are usually developed from a template into which new, fresh content is placed each time it is sent.

How Does It Work?

The best way to get maximum reach for the content you create is to make a newsletter out of blog articles. The blogs will help in your SEO rankings while sending them directly to your customers’ inboxes ensures they will receive the information on a regular basis.

• Once your campaign templates have been set up, the content is created or pulled from your blog and put into the newsletter.
• The newsletter is then sent. It can be sent immediately or scheduled for a date in the future. In this way you can prepare your newsletters ahead of time and save on stress.
• Your email software management will track the results allowing you to see what works and continue to improve it.

Rules around email marketing

• Only provide information interesting to your target audience. They are not all interested in all your products.
• Only email those who have requested and given you their permission to be emailed.
• Provide opt-out options. These usually come standard with your email marketing tools.
• Incorporate social media share buttons. This will ensure you get the most traction from your content across your social media platforms as well.

Tools for email marketing campaigns

• Email marketing software
• Content writing and design services
• All in one package. Complete Cloud offers a full email marketing and content package for regular and professional engagement with your customers.