Marketing constantly evolves. It’s all about the marketplace tendencies. Ten years back, no online marketer was using emails as a marketing strategy. Today, email lists are one of the most profitable resources of any possible offline or online business. Email marketing has truly evolved, and so have the tools that complement this trend.
Many successful webmasters and online marketers state “the money is in the list”. And they are right. They understand that email lists are powerful weapons for creating a better revenue stream and for improving the company’s overall brand awareness. In order for any email marketing campaign to be successful, there must be engagement between you and your email subscribers. During this article we’ll examine the benefits of creating and maintaining an email list. Moreover, we’ll present eight smart strategies for keeping your subscribers engaged.
Five Benefits of Having an Engaged Email List
The benefits of maintaining an efficient email list are quite significant for your business. Let’s take a quick look at what it means to have a responsive email list:
1. Emails Constantly Grab Attention
If your subscribers are genuine, and that means that they’ve actually opted in your email list on their own, they’re going to enjoy receiving relevant content on a consistent basis. Whenever you send an attention grabbing email title, which contains awesome content, you are improving your long term relationship with your subscribers.
2. High Engagement Means More Trust & Professionalism
When your readers notice that you’re dedicated and active, they’ll gain more trust and perceive you as a trustworthy entity in your field of activity. When there is more trust, your sales activity will get an impressive boost.
3. Engaged List = Powerful Feedback
The feedback you’ll get will often set you on the right track. Without it, you can’t figure out where you’re going wrong, and you can’t really know what there is to be improved. By having a responsive and engaged email list, you’re making sure that you’re receiving quality feedback every time you ask for it.
4. More Traffic
When you capture your subscribers’ attention, you are improving the chances of them sharing your content across social media platforms. Your emails could contain a link that leads to an article published on your blog. If they like what they see, they’ll share it around and improve your brand’s awareness big time.
5. More Sales
Let’s not forget about the main purpose of an email list. Selling through the use of email lists is a widely spread practice that many marketers use. When there’s more traffic and subscribers, you automatically get more sales. It’s a type of numbers game, but there’s one factor that can influence everything, and that’s the engagement of your list.
Three Steps to Create an Email List
1. Choose an Email Service
The first thing you have to do is decide what email service you’re going to choose. There are many free and paid options out there like MailChimp, ConstantContact, AWeber, etc. Choosing one service best suited for you shouldn’t be a difficulty. According to your list needs, which include the number of subscribers and the type of content you’re going to send, you should select one of the specialized email software.
2. Choose Your Content Type
Before even attempting to send emails to subscribers, decide what type of content you’re going to consistently send. It could be updates about new blog posts, exclusive offers, exclusive tips, and so on. You can also segment your list and allow your subscribers choose the content they want to receive. Do not ignore this process, as it’s going to influence your marketing campaign big time!
3. Start Promoting your List
An email list can be promoted in lot of ways. You can use your website, blog, social media profiles, and also use paid advertising options. That means create an established budget and spend it in order to directly promote your email list or blog.
Eight Strategies to Improve Your Email List’s Engagement Rate
There are certain strategies that will help you keep the engagement rate high. It’s best if you actually start applying the strategies instead of just learning them and keeping them on hold.
1. Consistent Schedule
In order to improve your emails open rate, you should decide specific timeframes in which you will consistently update your audience with content. If they know when to expect it, it is more likely that they’re going to open the emails and consume the information.
2. Choose the Right Frequency
You don’t want to spam your list, but you shouldn’t neglect them either. In order to hit the perfect balance, you must go through a trial and error process. Your goal is to find out the best number of emails per week/month. It all depends on your list, it’s up to their choice and you must adapt.
3. Give a Lot of Value
Engagement rate is extremely tied to the quality of the content you provide. It’s obvious that if the person is not receiving good tips that actually produce changes; no one would care about what you’re saying anymore. In order to prevent that, make sure that your content is extremely relevant and useful.
4. Make Your Emails Impeccable
Clean, professional, and properly designed emails make a much better impression. You can optimize them yourself, or you could outsource the services. We suggest the second option, as there are many professional services marketplaces such as Upwork and Fiverr. There you’ll find lots of professional freelancers, who can design, edit, proofread, and optimize your emails; and they’re also real cheap.
5. Constantly Ask for Feedback and Suggestions
Besides the huge advantage of knowing what your list wants from you, asking for feedback is going to improve the relationship with your subscribers. You’re letting them know that you care about their needs, so they’ll be genuine and help you with productive feedback and answers concerning almost anything.
6. Create Real Connections
If you are keeping your list engaged, you get the opportunity to create loyal followers and subscribers. These people can always turn into powerful connections. Some may be doctors; some may be investors…who know? Make sure that you network in your spare time and create some real connections.
7. Segment Your Email List
Segmenting your list means separating all your subscribers according to specific characteristics. For example, if you have a pregnancy blog, you should send personalized emails depending on their pregnancy condition. Some soon-to-be mothers will be in their third month, some will be in their seventh. The tips are different, so segmenting your list is the best way you can make sure that your emails are relevant to all of your list’s members.
8. Exclusive Offers
What better way of stimulating your followers other than offering them discounts and exclusive deals? Promise them exclusive content and/or coupon discounts. They’ll have to join a specific channel (such as Twitter Profile, or Facebook group) in order receive the exclusive information.
Conclusion
Keeping your email list engaged is a sure way to assure that your business remains active. Your subscribers are going to be repetitive customers, and you can make a real passive income out of their pockets. As long as you remain genuine and provide quality, you will see a lot of success in the email marketing campaigns.
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