Email marketing is one of the most cost-effective ways of marketing your business and also to stay in touch with your clients and contacts.

There’s no need to send an elaborate email newsletter, nor is there a need to send one every day or every week. You could just send something regularly once a month – the key thing is to keep content relevant to your subscribers, and to be consistent.

The key is to get started with something small and manageable, and improve from there based on feedback and analytics.

Email Marketing Tools

Please, please, please for the love of beer…Do not use the primitive method of Outlook to send stuff out to your mailing list!

Use Mailchimp or Smore instead. They are free to use up till a certain number of subscribers, and track crucial data like opens, clicks, forwards. These apps also automate the whole subscribe/unsubscribe process.

Stats and data are important to help you understand what’s working or not working with your content, and give you a chance to tweak and improve.

The best thing is that you don’t need to know how to code to use these email marketing apps. They come with built-in visual editors that allows you to do basic customisations.

Building your mailing list

For starters, leverage on your current pool of contacts. Clients, partners, networking contacts, even friends, could be part of your mailing list.

Be respectful and send them an email from your regular email client (Gmail, Outlook etc), inviting them to check out your newsletter (link it to the browser version) and to subscribe if they found it useful. There should be a subscribe link (generated by your email marketing app) in your email, as well as within the actual newsletter.

Every subscriber has different interests and backgrounds. The best way to keep subscribers interested is to put them into groups or segments. This way, you’ll find it easy to send relevant and specialised content to each segment when you need to.

Here are more creative ways to grow your mailing list.

Suggestions for Content

Email newsletters are used as a digest of what’s happening, and should not be a 100-page thesis. Keep them short and punchy – if subscribers want to find out more, they will do a click-through for full details.

• Blogposts/articles
  Not everyone will visit your blog every day, professionals check their email often. Including the blog title and a little summary in your email newsletter prompts them to check it out.
• Showcase of your work
  Did you just complete a successful project? Here’s your chance for a show-and-tell!

• Announcements
  Did your company win a coveted award? Moving offices?
• Tips & tricks
  Give your recipients something that can help them at work, or in their personal lives. It could be a productivity app or life hack – pick something that’s relatable to your subscribers and they’ll look forward to the next newsletter!
• Events/workshops
  They don’t even need to be hosted by you – just make sure they are of interest to your subscribers

Crucial Do’s and Don’ts

• DO: Get your contacts to opt in/subscribe
  Getting permission to send your marketing content means subscribers of a high quality, and maintains your business reputation.
• DO: Ensure subscribers can opt out/unsubscribe easily
  Make sure the unsubscribe link is easily accessible (and that it works!) within the email newsletter. You don’t want to be labeled as spam and get blacklisted, nor do you want to annoy your subscribers.
• DO: Monitor your email campaign analytics
  Data from campaign analytics can help you to fine-tune your email marketing, like improving on email titles, cleaning up your list, finding out what works and what doesn’t.
• DON’T: Harvest email addresses from websites
  Scouring websites and adding the email addresses of people you don’t know and have never corresponded with is a big no-no. This practice is called email address harvesting/scraping and illegal in many countries. It can hurt your business reputation – don’t do it.
• DON’T: Purchase email lists
  They’re expensive. They’re also not very effective as these email addresses are not pre-qualified. Who knows where they’re from, and this practice could get you blacklisted.
• DON’T: Send out your email campaign without doing test emails
  There’s no “Undo” button once you send out a campaign, so be sure to do a test email to yourself. This will cut out any silly and embarrassing mistakes, and it’ll enhance your professionalism.

So there you have it, some baby steps for you to take and get your first email newsletter out! Everyone has to start somewhere!

Need help with a customised email newsletter design? Give me a holler!

PS: We’ll be launching our new email newsletter soon! Subscribe here to receive useful articles, tips and tricks for entrepreneurs.

Visit Brew Creative page to find out more about Vicki Lew's work.

_{Images: www.stocksnap.io, www.mailchimp.com, www.smore.com}

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