Email marketing, in simple terms, is the targeting of customers via emails. It involves sending ads and promotional emails to subscribers. Email marketing enables business owners to earn trust, promote brand awareness, and build customer loyalty while encouraging your prospects/subscribers to purchase from you. In fact, every email sent to targeted customers can be considered as email marketing.
Email marketing requires certain essential tools in order to make your campaign effective and fruitful. This article talks about five basic tools you’ll need to get started with your email marketing campaign.
1. List Building Tools
List building tools may include a wide variety of tools including an automatic traffic generating software but the first must-have list building tool is a good autoresponder. An autoresponder is basically a system that catches your leads and stores them in a database. It allows easy access to all your leads at one place and facilitates contacting them any time you wish to. Besides, an autoresponder enables you to include follow-up messages for your new prospects/subscribers and allows you to send any broadcast messages to them.
The next is the squeeze page; it is the page which reveals to visitors the contents of what they will get after signing up for your list. A successful squeeze page depends on your offer, graphics, and a strong call to action.
2. Email Template
Email templates are the meant to connect and keep in touch with multiple clients in just a single click. They are practically the shortest means to reach a huge number of recipients. Considering, the huge number of emails that we receive daily, your message is most likely to go unnoticed if it isn’t creative or if it lacks a personal touch. Email templates are designed to allow users to customize/personalize email messages while still reaching multiple clients.
3. SMTP Service
Emailing could actually be time-wasting if they are sent one at a time to multiple clients. The appropriate solution to this issue is to have an SMTP service that allows sending bulk emails in a cost-effective manner. It’s helpful in preventing your emails from landing into spam folders and facilitates tracking of your emails. Additionally, you can use a dedicated IP address and boost your sender reputation.
4. Landing Page
Ultimately, you would want your email recipients to take some action. A landing page is a page which a visitor arrives at after clicking on a link. It can be your site’s homepage or any other page. A landing page typically drives sales, so when you direct traffic towards the landing page, it works to convert your goal of selling a product, offering a service, getting someone to sign up for your mailing list, and so on. Landing page plays an important role in converting your leads. Make sure you have an effective landing page to make the most of your email marketing campaign.
5. Analytics
Just the way you use web analytics to measure how well your website is performing, it’s important that you use email analytics to measure the performance of your email campaign in terms of sales, marketing, and engagement. Most of the email analytics software provide detailed reports on a number of parameters like bounce rate, open rate, forward rate, and unsubscribe rate. It’s most likely that an analytics module is already included in one of the email marketing tools you use, but if it’s not there, you may have to buy it separately.
