Time to announce your new site. Most likely you will want to send out an email blast or newsletter to your list of contacts. There will probably be a lot of email addresses, and you won’t be able to do this easily from your general email account.
Subscribe to Email Marketing Service
You will need to subscribe to an email marketing service. Most offer easy to use templates and low monthly fees, usually with a free trial so you can try it out first.
Expect the fee schedule to increase according to the number of email addresses, or subscribers, in your database. For example, $10/month for up to 250 subscribers, $14/month for up to 500, and so on.
I use MailChimp, free up to 2,000 subscribers.
Sign-up Form on Your Site
Email marketing providers will offer various tools to help you maximize your account. One tool I recommend is an on-line sign up form. See if they offer one, and use it to create the necessary code to insert a sign-up form on your website.
The idea is to give your readership as much opportunity to add themselves to your contacts database as you can. Here are some tips for an effective sign-up form.
- Positioning. As with everything else in email marketing, you want your form to be visible without being overwhelming. Try placing your sign-up form on the top-right of the page, on the left navigation bar or at the bottom of the page below your content.
- Enticement. Whenever someone signs up for your newsletter, he or she must know why joining is a benefit. It’s a good idea to provide a tag line with your form. It shouldn’t be anything fancy, just a simple explanation of what the newsletter provides.
- Offer Opt-in Incentives. Another way of providing value is to offer some kind of incentive for joining a list. Customers are likely to sign up if they receive bonuses like whitepapers, discounts or special reports.
- Form Design. Make sure that your sign-up form is clear and straightforward. Keep requested information to a minimum, for example first name and email.
- Privacy Reassurance. Your subscribers want to know that their email won’t be sold or spammed as a result of signing up. This link could open a page with your detailed privacy policy, if you have one.
- Frequency. Tell your contacts how often you’ll be sending to them – and make sure you stick to that routine!
Words to Avoid in Your Email Marketing Messages
Avoid the following words and phrases in your email campaigns. These words, and others like them, are likely to trigger spam filters and using them will land your message in the recipient’s spam folder, never to be seen again. Avoid ‘em!
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Hi Samantha,
A bunch of good stuff here. I will be targetting specific folk so I will not need the services of an email marketting company.
Thanks.
John
Little did I know and much does Samantha know. I will be needed an email marketing service.