Today we will discuss why email marketing is a crucial part of blogging and how to get it right. Blogging and email marketing are associated and go hand in glove.
Why Bloggers Are The Masters Of Email Marketing
You have never stopped to think about this right? But that’s the way it is, most bloggers understand online marketing and email marketing better than the rest of the mortals.
Note that when you visit a blogger’s website, you are shown multiple options to subscribe to their newsletter .
A blogger who does this especially well is Neil Patel, who already has the registration form for his newsletter on the front page of his website.
If you look at other blogs, you will see that they try to capture your email by different means.
Why?… To use it in drip marketing campaigns.
However, most online stores or websites that offer other services, lack a subscription form, or if they do, it is located in an inconspicuous position.
As if it were placed there by compromise, because there was a gap in the design of the web.
There are plenty of examples, but I’ll leave you this one … let’s see if it sounds familiar.
(Look, at the bottom I have a tiny hole left, I fill it in with the form … 😉)
It turns out to be of little use.
As if that were not enough, they lack other types of recruitment strategies, such as popups, landing pages, promotions to incentivize subscription, etc.
Why does this difference in approach occur?
In many cases it is a basic error, from the inception of the business. The business begins with the design of a product or service that the company will develop and offer.
The product or service is usually good, and obviously solves a problem or need in the market. Many times in a better or more efficient way than the existing ones.
If we look at the approach that is usually used to develop the product or service, it is usually similar to this:
- Idea → something we know and can work
- Fit the idea and adapt it to an existing need
- Advertise and promote the product or service
With this approach, it is not surprising that the promotion phase uses an online marketing strategy that only communicates in one direction:
Towards the client
Either through Adwords campaigns, blog banners, advertisements on third-party sites, etc.
Even if social media campaigns or email marketing are used, they are usually focused on one-way communication.
It is true that companies take the trouble to analyze the results of these campaigns (campaigns that do not offer the potential customer the ability to communicate).
This can lead the company to wonder why it does not have sales, and although this information can be extracted from online marketing campaigns, a high volume of information is necessary to obtain reliable data on the reasons why the product is not sold.
Email marketing campaigns are often rejected as an online marketing method
The reason is simple. You need a list of subscribers to work with and that requires effort to generate it. It is not difficult, but it implies designing strategies where you offer something in exchange for interested people leaving their email.
And when the company already has the product or service developed, what it wants is to “find” new customers, something that other online marketing tools seem to offer in a simpler way.
From the assurance that the product or service is good (and it does not have to be so), campaigns to attract visitors prevail.
There is an idea that once the potential customer discovers the product or service, nothing else will be necessary to eventually make the sale. Can you get more wrong?
Some companies even think that it is not necessary to listen to potential customers.
Unfortunately in a world where supply exceeds demand and there are substitute products for almost everything, you pay an expensive price for not listening to the potential customer.
Having a good product, or even the best product, is useless if potential customers do not want to buy it, or do not perceive it as such.
Email marketing, as described at www. SMTPServers.co, offers a fantastic communication channel. Two-way email, which many companies reject in the (false) belief that a good product and its promotion is all that is needed.
Forgetting that communication with the client is essential.
The bloggers I’ve met take advantage of email marketing
And they use it not only as a promotional tool, but also for communication.
This is not to say that your goal is not to sell your products and services.
Obviously it is.
They want to sell their products and services, do what they do best. However, the approach that I have most often come across in these cases is more like this:
- Idea → something we know and can do
- Advertise it
- Communication with customers
- Adapt the idea (product or service) to fit the needs of customers
- Development of new products or services based on communication with customers
Especially this last part, the development of new products based on communication with customers is basic.
It is the key to generating products that really sell well.
Personally, on many occasions I have received emails from bloggers interested, not because of my opinion about their products, but because of my needs.
Asking for my frequent doubts, my problems, etc.
Over time these bloggers offer products or services that solve these problems discussed.
They use email marketing as a market research tool.
And not like the digital version of the pamphlet in the mailbox.
Why then do bloggers use email marketing better?
Because they value it as:
- Communication channel
- Promotion and sales channel
- Method to increase the ROI of other online marketing campaigns
While in the case of the other businesses that we mentioned, email marketing represents a mere extra to send discount coupons at Christmas, in the hope of selling more.
We must avoid being blinded by our product.
Think that it is not normal that potential customers are not interested in the product itself, but in solving a problem or need they have.
No more, no less, and no matter how much we love our products.
And as we have said, there are thousands of possible options to do the same.
If we are realistic and assume that our product is capable of being improved, that we can talk to customers to obtain more information, we can take the step of creating and using this communication channel (email marketing) and we will do like many bloggers, who sell solutions and not just products.
What do you think? Do you use email marketing in your online marketing strategy? What results does it give you?
