Effective Email Marketing for Building Your Blog
Email marketing can be an effective way to build your blog readership. But you have to do it well. Get it wrong and you risk alienating readers. It’s all about being appropriate. Sending too many emails can result in email overload and readers will unsubscribe from your emails and may quit visiting your blog.
Ensuring that your email marketing is really effective means that you need to send high quality emails no more than once or twice a week.
What Constitutes Quality?
The emails you’re sending need to be highly relevant and offer value to your readers. When I sign up for emails from the Gap, it’s a mutually beneficial arrangement. They send me occasional emails informing me of significant sales events. I respond by purchasing clothing. They don’t abuse me with spam or email overloads and they reap rewards from me for their restraint.
Bloggers need to think about their emails in the same way—give readers value. Don’t send them daily emails about upcoming blog posts. That can begin to resemble spam. Send an email before an especially gripping series of articles—maybe on a Monday before a weekly series begins. That can help ensure that readers will enjoy and even anticipate your emails.
Harness the Power of Timeliness
Emails that use season specific themes work well. But beyond integrating holiday themes, start thinking about timeliness in terms of current events. When you can offer unique and articulate blog posts about timely events in which readers have high interest, you can leverage timeliness into an email that’s sure to get read. That goes a long way to driving readers to your blog and sharing your blog with friends. Well-written material with timely content can produce good buzz. And there’s no better way to build your blog than the ability to consistently produce buzz. If something monumental occurs over a weekend, strike while the iron is hot. Begin writing content and email your readers on Monday morning. Let them know you have a series of timely posts going up over the course of the next week.
Be Personable
When people sign up for email newsletters, make sure you have an area where they can put their birthdays and any personal details they want to share. Any information you can garner will allow you to increase your ability to be more personable. Sending birthday greetings and holiday wishes goes a long way to solidifying readership loyalty. Letting readers know you appreciate them and don’t take them for granted will make them feel more connected. And the whole purpose of your emails is effectively connecting with readers.
Social Media Integration
When you have an effective email marketing campaign, you can leverage your readership into your social media efforts. Your Twitter and Facebook blog promotion can benefit greatly. Encourage individuals via email to subscribe to your Twitter feed and “like” you on Facebook. This can turn dedicated readers into fervent retweeters of your blog posts and garner new readers from their followers. And when readers “like” your Facebook status updates two things can happen. Those “likes” show up in their friends’ newsfeeds and can drive them to your blog. But the best result is when a “like” turns into a comment. That’s the start of your readership beginning to interact with you and reader interaction is a sign of engagement and increased connection. That means you’re making great progress in continuing to build your blog.
Guest Post By: Jesse Langley
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About The Blog Author
Alex Sysoef is an IT Consultant, Internet Marketer and ProBlogger who shares his passion and knowledge of WordPress, SEO, Social Media and traffic strategies on his blog WordPress Howto Spotter. Connect on Twitter or Facebook
24 Responses to “Effective Email Marketing for Building Your Blog”
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You are right about sending a lot of emails. Sometimes it’s kinda annoying. It’s flooding my email. I think social media helps to promote blogs. You don’t need to send emails just to promote your blog. Very nice tips you have here.
John T. recently posted..Propiedades del alpiste.
Twitter: jbc15
says:
Hi,
My box is filled with emails every day from internet gurus trying to get me to buy something. Sometimes they provide some decent content but most of the time, it is an affiliate offer. I have been unsubscribing to a lot of them. I think one email a week is plenty. Using facebook and twitter along with email will be more effective in the long run.
Jim Calaman recently posted..Lowering Your Cholesterol Levels With Diet
Twitter: MichaelGibsonIM
says:
Personalization is pretty important as well I’ve found. Instead of using just “Hi there” a “Hi there John” is going to get their attention much more. Luckily a lot of auto responders can do this for you!
It’s kind of weird though. Most people know that the emails with their names aren’t hand crafted specifically for them, but they still feel as though they’re more personalized anyway.
Michael Gibson recently posted..The Three Foundations For Motivation
Twitter: AnishG6
says:
Quite good tips. IMO, the biggest mistake a blogger with an email list can make in email marketing is sending promotional e-mails for products they haven’t even personally tested or reviewed. Most people get tempted by the potential of quick-easy-money, but I think the ROI in long term is MUCH better if you focus more on establishing a rapport.
If you recommend a product that people genuinely find very useful, they’ll love you!
Anish G. recently posted..Zquiet Reviews from Experts & Users
Twitter: davidwalkertv
says:
I love the part about birthdays. I think it’s vitally important to truly connect with and understand your subscribers. Another tactic that is often appreciated is simply ‘checking in’ with them to find out if there’s anything in particular they’re struggling with that they could use some help with. ~David Walker
David Walker recently posted..Why I Thought About You All Weekend
Agreed with all of your points, especially emailing out on Mondays.
It kind of shocks me sometimes when people release big stuff on a Saturday on their blogs: weekdays rule in terms of traffic.
I just started an email newsletter myself after putting it off for a long time. I hate when a marketer keeps flooding my email inbox as well. I would have to agree that being personal is a must, and not marketing products that you haven’t personally used is a big no-no. I like your point about sending mail on Monday. Nice job and thanks!
Chuck recently posted..How To Upload Audio, Video, and Downloadable Files To Your Web Server
Twitter: eyedisease
says:
One has to wonder if email marketing is still viable. I’m not seeing much success with it as I had early on in blogging. Now I find it’s hit or miss. Perhaps it’s my content in my email?
It’s difficult right now. I’m even finding I’m unsubscribing from more lists because things just don’t interest me as much either.
Are you seeing this?
Its normal, people subscribe when they have interest in something and unsubscribe as their needs change.
Although people are getting overloaded with email, you just need to find group of people willing to read it long enough from you
It is a good idea to look at things from the other side, limited emails is good. Being to pushy can be a turn off.
Steve recently posted..Awakening w/World Peace Self Hypnosis CD or MP3
Twitter: thewritestuff1
says:
I send e-mails quite sparingly on my main account, and manage to keep up very healthy open rates (perhaps because of it this). One thing I do notice is that it is worth adding a photo to personalize the e-mail and I also link to the last blog post on my site as well.
My tips: keep it simple, personalize and offer a secondary reason to click.
Hi! Sending emails maybe one way in building blogs, but I don’t think it is an effective way. You know, people tends do delete immediately emails which are not sent by their friends or families. They thought it was just a spam mails. So I may say that social media is still the best way in building your blogs. I hope you would not take my comment personally.
Jasper recently posted..Want to bring out the color of your arowana with tanning lights?
Thanks for a great post.
I am new in the industry and have a few Danish niche sites.
I have not made much of email marketing, but it’s certainly an area I would focus a little more.
Creating an effective email marketing campaign is not always an easy task. However, there are a few things to keep in mind that may help take some of the fear out of launching your own campaign. Not every campaign will be successful but if you’re good about analyzing results, admitting shortcomings and making changes, who says you can’t learn from your mistakes?
Nothing hurts an email campaign more than inconsistent messaging and lack of direction. Your sales and marketing message should be aligned and you MUST have a plan for distributing your content. Email campaigns should always be written for your target audience. If you are targeting different decision makers in different industries, guess what? You will have to adapt your approach to meet the needs of your customer segment.your prospect base customer segment. Email is not always a “one size fits all” solution, but it should still follow a consistent process with end goals in mind.
If possible, embed sharable icons to your email communication. Why? If your audience does have interest in the message you’ve shared and would like to distribute that message to their own network it is important to make it as easy as possible for readers to extend the reach of your email message to social networks at large. Just think: If even just a fraction of your target audience are sharing your information, how many more users and prospective clients that will put you in front of?