Want email marketing best practices on How to do email marketing to make money?
Email marketing is really a powerful form of marketing online. It can be used to:
- turn prospects into customers; hence, effective for customer acquisition.
- build trust and get repeated sales per customer.
- increase traffic to your blog and get returned visitors.
When you do email marketing correctly, you earn an average of $1 per subscriber per year.
Like, if you pay $29 for 1000 subscribers per month or $348 per year, you’d make $1000 a year with that list on average.
That’s just the average.
However, just collecting emails isn’t gonna cut it. You need to know how to make money with your email list. I list 25+ best & effective email marketing tips that bring results.
They are email marketing strategies that I currently apply in my online business.
Table Of Contents
Let’s talk email marketing strategies that work.
What Is Email Marketing?
Email marketing is the process of building a list of people you can contact via email for marketing.
Why is Email Marketing Important?
This is the best way to reach your prospects, nurture them to become paying customers, and get your customers to buy more from you.
You can talk one to one with your subscriber. Truth is: we check our emails multiple times a day.
This is also the online marketing channel with the highest return on investment. $38 for each $1 spend on average according to a Constant Contact blog post.
Tools For Email Marketing
Email Marketing Software (mandatory): you need email marketing software to build a list and send emails.
I use and recommend Convertkit. It is easy to use and gives you the infrastructure to build automation and get your email delivered.
Want a deal? Get your 1st month of Convertkit free.
List building plugins: Most email marketing software give you tools to capture emails. Convertkit has beautiful opt-in forms and pop up forms you can use.
If you need advanced featured given by specific tool such as, you’ll like Optinmonster.
Landing page builder: you need a distraction-free page to get more email subscribers. Convertkit has landing page builder to help you build a page with drag and drop; no coding.
Again, if you need advanced features, you may use a paid landing page builder like LeadPages or Elementor.
However, the real requirement is an email software. Get your free month of Convertkit.
20+ Email Marketing Best Practices To Get Results
The following are the best email tips I follow in my business. I’ll break them into different stages of building an engaging email list.
Best Email Marketing Tips to build an engaged list
1.- Give the right incentive in exchange for an email of your ideal subscribers
To build an email list of your targeted customers, you need to give away something in return. I like giving away free email courses because it gives me opportunity to:
- teach the subscriber to open my email.
- focus on something specific I can fix and get the subscriber to like me.
- tell my story and build trust.
- recommend affiliate products without hard-sell techniques.
However, they are many freebies you can offer as a lead magnet and they work too.
The point is, nobody wants you to flood their inbox if you don’t have something valuable to offer.
But beware of freebie seekers or attracting the wrong audience.
Offer an incentive that fixes a problem for your target audience. Someone who will be happy to open your later emails and interact with your business.
2.- Enable double opt-in confirmation
While you want more subscribers to your email list, you don’t want fake emails and unwanted sign ups.
You’re paying your email marketing service provider based on subscriber count. You don’t want to spend money for fake emails that can easily add up and cost you a lot.
In addition to that, you will get nothing out of fake emails. They’ll never get, open, and click in your emails.
Some automated programs also sign up valid emails to your forms. Because these are unwanted sign ups, these subscribers are more likely to mark your email as spam. This will affect your sending score and even your legit subscribers may not receive your emails.
To fix it, enable confirmation email. When someone sign up on your forms, only confirmed emails will receive your emails; invalided address will not get added to your email list.
3.- Email your list consistently
A subscriber who don’t find valuable email from you can become a cold lead. To keep your email list engaged, send them them email consistently.
It is recommended to send at least one email per month.
If like me, you struggle to email consistently, you’ll like email software with easy automation.
This is mainly why I switched to Convertkit from a free plan on another provider.
4.- Re-engage cold subscribers
Over time, some people forget why they joined your email list and stop interacting.
You can help them to become engaged again.
Send them a sequence of emails asking them to confirm if they want to stay on your list.
Email 1: something your targeted subscribers would not want to miss.
Email 2: Action required email asking them to confirm they want to stay.
5.- Make it easy to unsubscribe
To keep an engaged list of subscribers who want to get emails from you, make it easy to unsubscribe.
It’s not counterintuitive.
Make sure your unsubscribe link is easy to found and not in small text.
If someone doesn’t want to receive your emails anymore, it is a better option for you if they unsubscribe. Otherwise, if they want to unsubscribe and don’t find a way to do so, they may mark your email as spam. This will affect your overall email marketing efforts.
6.- Segment your email list
You get people engaged by sending them emails they have interest in.
Segment your email list to send specific emails to people who want them.
Many email providers like Convertkit make it easy to segment your list. In Convertkit,
- segment emails subscribers based on links they click, and emails they open.
- segment your list based on pages they visited using Convertkit WordPress plugin.
7.- Clean your email list
Mailbox providers, like Gmail, Yahoo, and Hotmail, rank you based on how your subscribers interact with your emails.
If they open, click, and reply to your emails, you get a higher score and your emails are less likely to end up in spam folder.
So, it is important to clean your email list. Remove inactive subscribers. Before you do so, try to re-engage them like we saw earlier.
Email Marketing Tips to get your email delivered
If your email doesn’t reach the subscriber’s inbox, it does not matter how well you wrote it to converts. It will go unnoticed.
Deliverability means that your emails reach the subscriber’s inbox; not spam nor promotional folder.
So, you need your emails to be seen to get results such as trust and sales.
There’s mainly three things responsible for that:
- IP/server reputation
- Email Content
- Subscriber’s mailbox provider
Here are the email best practices for good deliverability.
1.- Use an email service with high-deliverability
Some email marketing platforms, especially free ones, are being used the wrong way by marketers. As a result, these email IP/servers are blacklisted or given a low score by mailbox providers.
That’s one reason why I recommend Convertkit. It shares publicly its high deliverability rate of more than 98% despite bounce emails.
This is the foundation of good deliverability.
2.- Increase your sender reputation
Each email providers assign you a score. A high score allows you to reach your subscribers’ inbox. It’s based mainly on how your subscribers react to your emails and the words you use.
Here are my email marketing best practices to increase your sender reputation.
- Send your best emails to new subscribers who are more likely to open your emails.
- avoid words in your title and copy that make your email looks like spam.
- Don’t buy an email list and build a consent-given list.
- Find the right balance so you don’t send too many emails (annoying) or too few (they forget about you).
- send emails from a professional email like your name @ your domain dot com.
3.- Keep the email short
Long emails are more likely to be falsely marked as spam and blocked by spam filters than short emails.
Write short emails then.
4.- Follow best practices to avoid promotion folder
Make emails like emails you send to a friend. Avoid over complicated HTML designed unless necessary.
Email Marketing Tips to get Subscribers to open what you send
Once that email reach the subscribers’ inbox, how to get them open your emails?
Think of how you use emails… how you choose the ones to read and the ones to delete without opening. Your subscribers do the same. So,…
1.- Use recognizable name as email sender:
This is the first thing that got their attention. If you use to send valuable emails, you may send an email with the title “Hey”, they will open it.
Use your first name or your first name and company name. Make it easy for them to differentiate you.
As example, your from name would be “Your Name | Company name” instead of “Name”. There may be hundred of people called by the same name.
2.- Craft headline your subscribers want to see
They joined your email list for a reason. Craft your headlines around that reason.
There are two main email techniques to come up with winning email subject lines:
- Focus on what’s in the email for them
- play on curiosity.
3.- Hook them with your email preheader
This is the line that gives them an idea of what’s inside the email. Some HTML designed emails give you an input form for them. For simple text emails, it’s mostly your first line of text.
4.- Add Personalization
Use the subscriber’s name in your emails to make it more personal and get them to open your emails.
5.- Resend to non-openers
You can double your open rates by resending emails to non-openers. You can change the title or the content to better target them.
5.- Build trust with your first emails
You’ll mostly get the highest open rates with your first emails. Use these to build trust for you future emails.
Send valuable emails. The next time, when they see your emails, they know you’re gonna provide value.
Email Marketing Copywriting Tips to get people to read your emails
1.- Write concise email
Your subscribers receive a lot of emails and are busy. If you’re writing long emails with fluff, they may open your emails, but they will not read them.
Thus, they will not take action.
Write concise emails, go to the point.
2.- Write short paragraph
No one wants to read a bunch of texts. It’s not visually pleasing.
Make it easy for people to read your emails with short paragraphs.
Another reason is that a large bunch of your subscribers will read your emails from mobile. A paragraph of 4 lines on Desktop may take 7 to 10 lines on mobile.
3.- Educate one email at a time
Send them emails that teach them something specific from a wider topic. One email, one thing learned.
This keep them hooked up for your next emails. It’s like they are watching a series where they can’t wait for the next episodes.
4.- Tell your story
Human loves stories. They love to read them.
If you send them emails with stories they can relate, they’ll read those emails.
Email Marketing Strategies to Make Money with your list
You don’t want an email list for the sake of it. You want to reach out to your subscribers and make money while helping.
How to monetize your list. Here’s my best marketing strategies to make money with emails.
1.- Build sales funnels with short email + landing pages
When you’re providing value, don’t be afraid to pitch products to make money.
However, you need to qualify your lead for your offer.
Email marketing is the best way to nurture your lead. But, to make your campaigns more effective, use email marketing + landing pages.
Instead of sending long form emails people won’t read, send them series of short emails. In each email, lead them to your landing pages where your CTA is clear.
Landing pages with videos convert very well.
2.- one email, one CTA
Stay focus with your emails. Add only one call to action in your emails. It is recommend to add the link near the top and repeat it at the end of your emails.
Too many choices lead to decision paralysis.
It also helps you write your email to get the one and only desired action.
3.- Automate your best converting emails
Do you have pieces of content that perform well?
Add your most converting pages in your automated sequences.
4.- Sell benefits not features
This selling tip is valuable whatever the marketing channel you’re using. It’s especially useful when you use a powerful marketing channel like email marketing to make money.
