How to Run a Successful Email Marketing Campaign

I run quite a few email marketing campaigns for my different websites and have thousands of subscribers in each. My most popular email following exceeds 36,000 and I love it! An email following represents my “customer base” of which many of whom already are or will become repeat customers and we all know the success of any business, whether online or retail high street is the amount of repeat business you get.

I do all my email marketing through Aweber. I choose them due to their fantastic delivery rates, easy to use system and fab email templates they provide. It’s so easy to use and most of all it allows you to try it out for free!!

It is true what a lot of companies believe; by generating an email list they can induce huge amounts of traffic and revenue from customers who are already interested in their offerings. That’s the essential end goal of your email marketing campaign.

So, how have I managed to build this large following? It’s pretty simple to be honest – I can break it down into five brief steps that if you follow properly you can replicate pretty easily.

Step 1 – Attract the Right Following

This is where a successful SEO campaign will help you.

For example; If your website is about selling bicycle tires and *someone* in Google enters a query on “discounts on bicycle tires” and your website appears on Page 1 in Google. They click on it because a highly relevant website to their search query is right in front of their eyes.

Bliss, hey? Well that’s the power of SEO!!

Attracting this type of audience (i.e. those who willingly visit your site because it’s relevant to what they are searching for) is key to any successful online business.

Step 2 – Ensure your Content is Relevant

Continuing with the above example, the willing web visitor clicks on your website from the Google search page but finds information about pets – totally unrelated to bicycle tyres…or actually let’s say it is about bicycle tyres but all the page says is “for more info sign up to our free newsletter”. How much of a turn-off will that be?

Give the web visitors a huge amount of relevant data which when they read they will think – “these guys know their stuff” or “this is a really useful website and i’m glad i clicked on it”.

This will, very likely, in turn lead to them filling in their details on your email subscriber form as they would want access to more of this “great information”.

"DO NOT only put a mailing list link on the page with no data as your audience will see that as a huge turn-off and think…what EXACTLY will i be getting?"

Step 3 – Offer Something for Free

The killer line that you see on all web mailing lists is “if you enter your email address here, we’ll send you xyz for free”. It’s the most over-used phrase in email marketing but it’s overused for a reason; it works. Everyone wants something for free and if you’ve followed the advice in Steps 1 and 2 properly then this “free” information is valuable and useful too – even more of a reason to sign-up.

Step 4 – Don’t Sell Straight Away

Once you’ve got the all important “subscribe” it’s important not to throw it away quickly! Your first few emails should give more helpful and useful information to your subscriber. Continue to build your credibility with them.

Customers only buy once they trust. No trust = no sales!

Step 5 – Keep in Touch

Email marketing is not a a one-shot wonder. you need to send regular emails (don’t annoy your email subscribers with 10 emails a day…but maybe 1 a day or 1 a week?)

The more emails you send, the less chance your customers have to forget about you. The next time they want advice or a product on the subject of whatever subject your website is about they will think of you. It follows natural thought process!