For those among you who have yet to send out their first email newsletter, this post’s for you. And as I said in the title, it’s never too late to begin… making a positive change in your marketing program is always a good thing.
Sending out email newsletters or other email marketing tools is a lot more affordable (and more effective) than sending out printed material. Also, it gets you moving in the right direction, which is toward a more fully developed digital marketing program (more on that in a later post).
Getting started is easy.
Step One: Choose an online email marketing service and set up an account. Account set-up should be free, so don’t use a service that charges you to set up your account. We always recommend MailChimp because we use it and love it. Another good service is emma, and there are many others to pick from. One thing to check when you are deciding on which service to use is how they charge. Some services charge by the length of your list. Others charge per email sent. Some offer both options. It varies, so choose what’s most appropriate for you. One thing we love about MailChimp is that if your list isn’t too large, you may be able to do your sending for free… which is always affordable.
Step Two: Build email marketing into your firm’s overall content strategy. All of your marketing messaging… all of the content you are producing should be working in harmony. That’s something your content strategy will help assure. It is important to coordinate your marketing efforts, so give some thought to what you hope to accomplish by reaching out to your community.
Step Three: Once you’ve got your head around why you’re doing this and what you want to say, develop the content for your first mailing. The content people out there will understand that quite a bit of thinking should go into this. Things like knowing your audience and what they want to know, because this is about them, it’s not about you. Give them something useful, and try to structure your email content to provide a bit of value, along with the promise of even greater value if they click through to your website. And build that value into your site. Your goal is get your audience to come to your site and engage with you in some way.
Step Four: You now need your email template design. Many services provide stock template designs, but it’s much better to use a custom-designed template. Your email is making a statement about your firm’s brand, and it’s design really needs to match and support that brand. If you don’t have one on staff, you will probably want to work with a professional graphic designer who has experience creating custom email templates. And once they have the template looking the way you want, have them show you how to plug your content into your new template and get your email ready to send.
Step Five: Go over your mailing list and make sure it’s a good one. Every name on the list should be okay with receiving email from your firm. Bring your list up to snuff, because you don’t want to be accused of being a spammer. There are negative consequences to that. So, when you know you’ve got a good list, upload it to your new email marketing service. Actually, this step can happen right after you set up your account, but the point is, it has to happen before you can send anything out, so make sure you allow time to do it.
Step Six: Send out your first email, and start checking your analytics to see who all is opening it. Be happy.
Step Seven: Put an email newsletter opt-in sign-up on your website to add new names to your mailing list.
I’m not trying to make light of how much actual work goes into this process, because there’s a lot effort involved. But in relative terms, getting this particular marketing tool up and running is something you can accomplish fairly quickly and with a limited investment. In return, you will have significantly upgraded your digital marketing infrastructure, and you’ll be in a position to greatly expand the way you think about how to reach out to your online community.
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