Hi there, as a beginner to marketing we get lost by so much information that is given to us in huge chunks spread all across the internet.

Sometimes we just don’t know where to start.

You may have been doing internet marketing or blogging for some time, but you are still trying to master email marketing. In fact, perhaps you do not yet know the importance of email marketing and what it can do for your business.

Well I am hoping to help you solve that problem with this in depth tutorial about how to start email marketing and what the best email practices are when it comes to building your email list.

In case you don’t know yet what an email list is, stop by my post How To Build Your First Email List From Scratch, where I take you and show you step by step, how to start an email list using the two most popular platforms, GetResponse and Aweber.

If you have already set up with another email marketing provider, then no problemos! The steps that I outline can be applied to any email marketing provider.

They’re just basic guides and best practices that you should be aware of when using email marketing as a way to grow your business.

What You Will Learn Learn

• What is email marketing
• Why you need email marketing in your business
• How to start collecting email subscribers
• Email marketing using a blog
• Email marketing using a landing page
• Your subscriber journey
• The best email strategy for your business with examples
• How to build relationships with your email subscribers
• What to do when your email list goes cold
• How to create your email marketing list
• Email marketing jargon you need to know

What Is Email Marketing?

Email marketing is simply the promotion of a product or service via email.

So let’s say you have a business and you use social media outlets like Facebook or Instagram. You’re pretty active on those forums promoting your product or service right?

Your goal on those platforms is to convert your followers into customers or clients.

Well you’re doing the same thing in email marketing. The only difference is that you’re using email. 

Why You Need Email Marketing In Your Business

Email marketing is important for the growth of any business.

|Ownership

As a blogger, marketer or beginner whilst it is great that you have decided to create a following on today’s popular social media networks, it is important that you understand that the followers that you gain from them do not belong to you.

Ok so what do I mean by that?

Let’s look at some of the social media network’s terms and conditions.

This is Facebook’s

Here is Instagram’s

So you can see from the Terms of Use of these popular networks, that they do not belong to you and your account can be terminated at any time AND without notice to you.

So essentially you can wake up one morning and find that your 20k+ followers have vanished, because Instagram decided that you violated its terms of service and terminated your account.

This is why it is super important that if you do have any of these accounts that you start encouraging your followers to subscribe to your email list.

The reason why subscribing to your email list is important is because you own it. It is yours forever. You can easily export your subscribers (or as they say, back it up) in an Excel spreadsheet and keep it for safekeeping in the event that your email service provider decides to suspend your account one day.

|Income Source

Another crucial reason why email marketing is important to your business is because “the money is in the list”. Build a list, nurture and care for it and they will pay you forward by buying your products or buying tools that you recommend.

Your email list can be gold if you treat it right (I will get to that later on about how to build a relationship with your list.)

|Instant Traffic

When you build an email list to a sizeable amount, you can get instant traffic to any offer that you have on demand.

How can you get instant traffic? All you have to do is send an email to your subscribers. If they are interested in your offer and they click on the link to your offer contained in the email, that represents immediate eyes on your offer.

Plus the traffic is free and takes less than five minutes to draft the email and hit send.

How To Start Collecting Email Subscribers

Collecting email subscribers is simple when you follow certain strategies.

Without subscribers, your email list is useless. Remember that those subscribers are people, so you want effective ways at capturing someone’s email address so you can talk to them later on.

Let’s talk about the different ways you can collect email subscribers.

|Blog

If you have a blog there are different strategic places that you can place opt in forms on your blog to collect someone’s name and email address.

Side bar opt in form

On my blog, I have a static side bar opt in form that does not move. It is there if someone likes my content and wants to subscribe to receive more information from me.

Header opt in form

Most bloggers or website owners have an opt in form at the very top of their blog or website. It is the first thing a visitor will see when they get to the website/blog. Here’s an example of one from the Making Sense of Cents website.

Content opt in form

You can also place opt in forms within content that you are writing. I like this technique as I can give away a piece of content that is relevant to what the reader is reading.

For example, if the reader is reading an article on How To Start An Online Clothing Store, I will place an opt in form within the content to interrupt them to provide me with their email address for content that would be of value to them.

In this case, the piece of content is an eCommerce Wholesaler’s List.

In your case, think of anything that is of value that you can offer to your reader to entice them to provide their email address. Also, make sure that the content is relevant to the article that they are reading.

So I would not offer recipes in an article that is about Arts and Craft. Got the drift?

Footer opt in form

This is where the opt in form is found at the bottom of the article. How I do this, is I ask the reader a question. The strategy here is that if they like what they read, then perhaps they would like my other articles.

You can also offer anything for free in a footer opt in to entice the reader to hand over their email address.

Pop over opt in form

As a way to interrupt the reader you can configure your opt in form to drop in on the reader when they least expect it or maybe when they are going to leave the blog or website.

The key here is to offer something so good that they will want to leave their email address so they can receive the content.

Here’s an example of my pop over opt in.

|Landing Page

If you do not have a blog or website, you can also collect email subscribers via landing pages.

Landing pages are also called lead capture pages, lead pages and squeeze pages. So if you have ever heard any of those terminologies, they all mean the same thing.

The main purpose of a landing page is to solely collect email subscribers and then divert them to an offer for a product or service.

When you use a landing page, you will also use some form of advertising such as Google, Bing or Facebook to attract viewers to your landing page to sell a product.

I use LeadPages. You can also try Clickfunnel’s landing pages but if you want more options check out my review post of the 4 Awesomest Landing Page Builders You Should Use.

Your Subscriber Journey

Once you have collected your next subscriber’s email address there are a few things that you need to decide as a marketer or blogger.

There is a huge debate amongst marketers and bloggers about whether subscribers should go through a single opt in or a double opt in.

When you start using email marketing software, the provider will also ask you what is your preferred choice so let’s go over that now.

|A Single Opt In

A single opt in requires no further confirmation from your subscriber. They opt in to your opt in form and they receive your email.

Great! Pretty simple right? Not quite!

The icky thing about this, is that with single opt ins, you are more prone to receiving junk email addresses. Sometimes the email address may not be spelt correctly.

If you are only using a landing page and have an offer on the back side of that landing page, the user only needs to enter a fake email address to see what’s on the other side. 

This is what I call the curious cats. They are the ones who really do not want your offer and is only curious to see what’s on the other side, so they enter a fake email address to get pass.

What you end up with, is a bunch of non-quality email subscribers added to your list, which brings down the quality score for your email list.

So essentially, you can have a dead email list filled with fake email addresses that are of no use to you.

Bummer!

|Double Opt In

A double opt in requires you to confirm your subscription as a verification that you do want to receive the content that you have subscribed for.

The idea with double opt ins, is that only serious people will provide their real email address if they really want the content.

Double opt ins therefore ensure that you are connecting with real people. It also ensures that your list is of a high quality and improves your open email rates.

Here is what my subscriber journey is like when they opt into one of my opt in forms:

Firstly, the reader will enter their email address.

They will then see a pop up page like this asking them to confirm their subscription from the email sent to their email address.

They must check their email inbox and find the email that reads like this. They must also click on the link to confirm their subscription.

Once they click on the link, they are directed to a thank you page like this, asking them to share my content with their friends and family if I sent them content or to follow me on my social media. This helps create more exposure to my website and increase my following so I can connect with my subscribers in other ways.

You can create your own thank you page and ask your new subscribers to follow you on any social media platform you like.

Perfect! Now the next few chapters is where the action really starts, so keep on reading.

The Best Email Strategy For Your Business With Examples

Once you have started collecting email subscribers, what do you do next?

Talk to them of course.

You want to have a conversation with them so you can build a relationship with your subscribers. 

This is most important, as you want your subscribers to like you, know you and trust you. When you have their trust, you can recommend anything to your subscribers and generate a sale for a product or service.

So how exactly do you start building a relationship? Well this is where you will create email autoresponders within your email marketing software. Aweber is my preferred choice of email autoresponders.

|Email autoresponder

An email autoresponder, is a series of pre-written emails that are sent out to your subscribers automatically, daily or weekly.

The content of your email autoresponder will be based on your end goal.

So ask yourself, what exactly do you want to achieve from sending your email autoresponder?

If you simply want to connect with your readers and offer value, then your email autoresponder can be like this one.

In this autoresponder, you will see that I delivered the content on my lead magnet in the first email.

Then I am inviting the subscriber to connect with me.

Observe how I am being informal with my use of greetings like “Hey” or “Here’s Something Special”.

Your goal with this type of email autoresponder is simply for the subscriber to get to know you, so you will be providing more value than anything.

If your goal is to sell a product or service then your autoresponder can be like this one.

Notice how I am specifically targeting the reader with headlines where the goal is to encourage the subscriber to open the email to take a specific action.

So I have used headlines like “Do This To Start Seeing Results” or “Have You Seen It Yet”. I am also using proof emails to show that the product works.

How To Build Relationships With Your Subscribers

Here are some examples of the type of emails that I send to build relationships with my subscribers.

|The Welcome Email

|The Inspiration Email

Notice how in the above email I added my photo just to add a personal touch.

|The New Blog Post Email

You can write anything to your email list. The best advice I can give to you is to keep it personable, friendly and inviting.

If that fails and you do not know what to write, ASK YOUR LIST!! This way you show that you are interested in answering to their needs and you are giving them what they want. This really helps to strengthen the relationship with your list.

What To Do When Your Email List Goes Cold

Sometimes your email list will grow cold when your readers are no longer engaged with you.

This can happen for a number of reasons:

• Maybe they are no longer interested in your content
• Perhaps you forgot to email your list for a long time
• Some of your subscribers have changed their email address

If that happens, do not worry. It is normal.

You will find that some of your subscribers unsubscribe from your email list. That’s ok too.

You will know when your email list is no longer engaged with you, when your email open rates are low. So if 30%+ of your email subscribers open your emails, then this is an acceptable industry standard and you are doing ok.

If your open rates are less than 3% then something is wrong and it is time to have a clear out.

Aweber makes it easy for you to see how many people have not opened your emails and have not engaged with you for some time.

This is how you will do it.

First from your dashboard select the list that you want to inspect.

Next select the filter for No Opens and the since when date. So if you want to check for emails that have not been opened since three months ago, you will select the date three months in the past.

Aweber will then tell you how many people have not opened your email based on your criteria.

You can name your segment and save it.

Once you have created that group of people who have not opened your email in let’s say three months, you can send them an email letting them know that you will be removing them from your list.

Within the email you can also invite them to take some action, such as clicking a link, to confirm that they do want to stay on your list.

If they do not click on the link, they get the boot.

I give these subscribers two to three days to respond. Then on the third day whomever does not click on the link, I delete.

How To Create Your Email Marketing List

By now, I hope you understand why it is so important to get started with building your email list.

If you are just starting out as a beginner, I would recommend that you start building an email list today.

If you are already a marketer or blogger and do not have an email list then you too should get started today.

In my article, How To Start An Email List From Scratch, I break down how to start your own email list using Aweber and GetResponse.

Check out the article here.

Email Marketing Jargon You Need to Know

The worst thing about learning a new skill, is all the jargon you are bound to come across.

I have tried to make this tutorial free from jargon but as you continue on your marketing journey, you will see a few words that will leave you scratching your head and heading across to our beloved Google.

To help you avoid the confusion here is my list of email marketing jargon (words) that you should know:

Blacklist a list that identifies someone as a spammer and prevents them from delivering emails. As opposed to whitelist.

Bounce rate the rate at which your emails are not delivered. Usually your email service provider will let you know whether any of your emails have bounced or have not been delivered.

CAN SPAM Act this is a law set by the US for the regulation of commercial email and establishes the requirements for commercial messages. It gives the subscriber the right to have you stop emailing them and outlines the consequences if you fail to honour their request. This is why every email service provider adds an unsubscribe button at the bottom of every email you send to a subscriber.

Clicks your email service provider will let you know how many clicks you achieved from an email you sent, if that email has a link in it. This means how many people clicked on your link.

Double Opt in subscribers will confirm and verify that they do want to opt into your email list by clicking a link in a confirmation email sent to them before they subscribe.

Email Campaign a series of emails sent to subscribers to achieve a desired marketing goal.

Email List a list of persons who subscribe to receive emails from you.

Landing Page a page on your website that allows visitors to enter their contact details to subscribe to your email list. Otherwise known as a lead capture page, squeeze page, lead page, opt in page.

Open Rate the percentage of subscribers who have opened your emails.

Opt In to provide your contact details, usually your name and email address on a landing page giving permission to receive an email or emails from a company or individual.

Opt out to unsubscribe from an email list thereby preventing the company or individual from emailing you.

Privacy Policy a legal policy that must be provided on your website advising the reader how their details are used by you and what is done or not done with their data.

Single Opt in to provide your contact details on a landing page once, which immediately subscribes you to the email list without further need for verification.

Spam unrequested email sent to someone who has not provided permission to email them. This is unlawful and if reported can get your email account suspended.

Whitelist approving an email address as being trusted to be delivered to the recipient. As opposed to blacklist.

Congratulations!

Let’s wrap this up. You should now have a better understanding of what email marketing is all about, why it is important and why you should use it in your business.

Feel free to give everything that you have learned here a test and fit it into your own business.

Then comment below what you think. Was it hard? Easy? Anything else you’re not sure about?

Cheers,

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