How To Do Email Marketing For Free
Shubhamoy Majumder
Last Modified: May 13, 2021
13 min read
This is the right time to start with email marketing, if you still have not started yet then you are losing the opportunity.
Email marketing has changed a lot since the first email marketing tool Constant Contact introduced for small businesses in 1998.
But the main thing is that after years of use, what hasn’t changed is email marketing’s super effectiveness.
Years of Studies show that email marketing continues to outperform other digital marketing ways including social media and paid search.
Studies show that it has an average return of $42 for every dollar spent, investing in email marketing tools can have some serious income opportunities..
From my hours of conversations with small businesses owners, I’ve learned that figuring out how to get started with email marketing is often the hardest part of them.
To help you out, I’ve figured out 10 things that you need to do when you’re getting started with email marketing:
1. Choose Your email marketing service provider
If you’re really serious about getting success with email marketing, then you need to work with an email marketing service provider. Working with a good service provider is the only way your business can leverage email marketing automation to effectively work and deliver messages to large sums of groups of contacts or subscribers.
You’ll also benefit from built- in professional email templates, tools to help you grow and manage your subscriber email list, and tracking features that show you who is opening and engaging with your running email campaigns and messages.
My Suggestion is that you should try Sendinblue as your email marketing provider.
2. Gather contacts for your email marketing list
Most of the small businesses have some existing customer contacts to start an email list. Think of the customers and members of your business, where you already have a relationship with. Maybe it’s the business contacts that you have to email with on a regular basis; maybe you just start with a few supportive friends and know neighbours and family members .
Even if you’re not have any contacts in your list and you want to build an email list completely from scratch, don’t get discouraged. Start by putting a form of newsletter sign-up sheet near your register, adding an online sign-up form to your website, and encouraging your social media followers and loyal customers to sign up.These is sign up form from one of our website
Sendinblue have their own automade subscriber form ready for you. What you have to do is just sign up and create the template for free.
Here you can create and customize your email form with lots of tools and customization.
Use these tips to grow your email list!
Whatever you do, don’t be too ambitious to purchase an email list. Email marketing is all about building and nurturing relationships with the customers. connecting with a smaller list of genuine authentic customer contacts will be more impactful than blasting out messages to contacts who don't even know your business.
3. Add your contacts into your email marketing account
Once you have set up your email marketing account and an initial list to send to, then you have to add your contacts into your account.
You can start by uploading a contact list from an existing csv spreadsheet file or importing contacts right from your Gmail or Outlook account.
If possible, organize your customer contacts into separate csv(comma separated value) lists based on what you know about them. For example, if you are a gym owner , then you can create separate email lists for people who have taken gym workout lessons versus those who have attended your yoga classes versus who have taken swimming lessons from you.
That way you can send out offers to your targeted email based on their specific interests.
4. Set up your welcome email Template
Your welcome email is the first message your new email subscribers receive from you.
Welcome emails are one of the most important things because they serve as your first impression to your customer and reach people at a time when they’re highly engaged with your business. You can expect a higher than average open rate for your welcome email template, so make sure you’re delivering the right value right away. Your welcome email must have a greeting eye catchy message, a good image and a cta button.
Start with a warm hello message, provide an overview of what they can expect to receive from you in the future emails , and offer them something useful right away.
Once you set up, your welcome email will be sent to all new contacts automatically.
Learn more: 4 Things Your Welcome Email Must Do
5. Create a reusable email template
This is the one of the fun parts of this whole learning! Even if you’re not a designer by profession, you can easily send beautifully-designed professional emails that look good on any device.
Sendinblue has hundreds of email templates for you to choose from — including timely templates to stand out in the inbox.
This is one of my setup template for my customers who are interested to purchase a wordpress web hosting.
This is one example where I Subscribe to another email list and that person send me this email .
Here Sunny Who sent me a template to live on youtube.
When we are choosing a template, look for a layout that has a clean message, eye-catching, and will get your message across very fast. Generally People scroll through the inbox quickly — often while on the go you have to make your impression in such a way that your customer will come to click your email — so choose a highly mobile-responsive email template that looks good on any sized device.
Next, customize your template with your brand by putting your business’s logo right at the top of your email tools and linking the image back to your website’s homepage. Add in your business’s signature colors and create an email footer at the end of your email where you mention your business name, contact information, and links to your active social media sites channels.
Once you have these essential design elements all set up, make a copy of your email and save a version as your master template. With this reusable template, you don’t have to start from the beginning and add in your branding every time when you create a template.
6. Practice writing persuasive messages
This is one of the hardest steps for business owners. Practicing of writer’s block happens to be the best.
What usually snaps me out here is that it is pretending I’m having a face-to-face conversation with my customer and in here I writing down exactly what I’d like to say to them.
It also helps to follow a repeatable golden process. What you have to do , just break your message down into three important sections:
- The Product that are you offering? — Headline
- How will the product help the reader? — Message body
- What should they do next? — Call to action
This simple and easy three-step formula helps you stay focused so you can write effective messages fast.
7. Spend time on subject lines
Another important thing is your email subject line .
Why? Because , Your subscribers see your subject line even before they open your message in the email box. Make a good impression of highly catchy subject headlines and people won’t be able to resist opening. Write something not eye catchy and bland and they might skip over your message without a second thought.
Your subject line should be short and snappy like newspaper headlines — around 40 characters.
You can draw attention by asking a compelling question, emotional message, including a deadline for urgency, or just teasing your message.
Use these tips to write good subject lines.
8. Preview and test your email before you send
Especially when you’re just starting with email marketing, it’s easy to slip up every once in a while.
Maybe you forget to add in an important cta link there or make a small mis-spelling mistake right in the subject line. Doh! Unfortunately, there’s no Back button with email, so always remember to send yourself or a staff member a Test Email before sending out to your entire list.
9. Ready to Send your email (at the best time)
When you’re ready to send out an email to your customer list, timing is an important factor to consider.
Every customer is different and the best time to send the email will differ based on who’s on your email list.
Based on customer data, our team has compiled some information on which day and time might work best for your industry.
You must create a consistent sending schedule and stick to it. For example, if you send out a newsletter on the first of every week, your audience will come to expect it in their inboxes.
If you do decide to follow a set schedule, tell people at the point of signing-up by saying something like:
“If you want to grow digitally then you should like to sign up for our Hints & Tips newsletter? We’ll send you a newsletter for our top blog posts, upcoming webinars, and best marketing advice on the second and fourth Wednesdays of every month.”
Your subscribers will know when they’ll hear from your email and they will wait for your email. , next and you can schedule your message to send based on your established schedule.
10. At the Last Track your results
Don’t be deceived — email marketing doesn’t end with just sending your email. You will want to track your customer behaviour by email open rate, click-through rate, unsubscribe rates, etc. and work to improve over time.
If you want to see real results from your email marketing tool, you need to have a strong understanding of how each email performs on the internet, so you can make improvements and learn more about your customers and subscribers.
Spending a few minutes and hours in your email reports will tell you valuable information like who opened your email, who clicked on your cta specific links, and what information was the most interesting to your readers.
While it’s very important to know how engaging your campaign messages are, make sure you’re tracking your actions that happen beyond your emails. How many clicks have dont to your donation page are translating into real donations? What is the total amount of funds raised from a single email campaign?
These are the types of questions that will show you the real impact of your marketing results.
Are you Feeling more confident in your ability to get started with your email marketing Campaign?
Like most things, email marketing seems overwhelming until you actually give it a try on your own . Now you have 10 easy-to-follow steps to help you hit the ground running with your first email marketing campaigns.
