Email list management | Permission Blast

Email Marketing Basics

If you're not using email marketing, you're going to fall further and further behind the trends. Email marketing is the wave of the future, and marketers who don't use email to build their businesses are going to see their competitors taking more and more of the market share.

If you haven't done email marketing before, there are some very basic email marketing principles you need to understand. Once you understand the basics, you can start looking for an email marketing service to help you . . . but you'll have a much easier time understanding what your service is telling you if you take some time to educate yourself.

Email marketing: more than just a free email account
Many people think email marketing is as easy as doing a search for a free email account like hotmail, signing up, plugging some names into the "To" line, and clicking "send."

That strategy might've worked 10 years ago, but no more. Spammers and scammers have done that so often that Congress had to pass a law against it! Sending emails like that will quickly get you flagged as a spammer, your email address will be blocked from sending emails, and you could even get fined.

So that's not how you do email marketing. But how do you do it?

Capturing email addresses the right way
First, you need some kind of capture page. This is a website where people enter their email address in exchange for receiving a benefit. The majority of people aren't going to give you their email addresses for no reason. You need to promise them a reward.

Your email marketing service can help you set up a capture page. They can also develop content like an email newsletter, white paper, or other benefit for those people who decide to opt-in to receive your emails.

You also have to drive traffic to your capture page. An online advertising campaign is the key to this effort, so you can find the people who are truly interested in what you're selling.

Once you've gotten your traffic to your site, your email marketing service will then start keeping a list of all the potential customers who have opted-in to receive email from you. This list is incredibly valuable, and email list management is crucial. Each email you send must have a way for the recipient to unsubscribe from your list (in order to keep it legal), and your email marketing service can manage your list so that people who opt out are automatically removed.

Congratulations! You now have a list of potential customers who have asked to receive your emails! You and your email marketing team can work together from here to create content, html emails, etc. Each email you send should have good information, or an insider bonus, or a special sale price, or some other reward. And most importantly, your emails should encourage your readers to purchase something from you. By staying connected with your email subscribers, you'll enjoy a healthy, increasing flow of profits for years to come.