Whether you are a blogger, you own a small business, or you work as a part of a much larger organization, online marketing is probably a big part of your strategy to grow and build your business. Many businesses focus their online efforts on social media marketing and working with influencers, and all too many avoid email marketing completely. Those that do have an email subscription option set up, often spend time collecting emails and never actually using them.

This is a mistake. Email marketing is a fantastic tool. It gives you an effective and fast way to communicate with your customers and followers, but also a way to promote your business and reach more people. If you are thinking about setting up your first email marketing campaign, here are some tips to help.

Stay Safe and Legal

Firstly, it’s essential that you know the law. You can’t trick people into giving you their email address, and your sign up forms can’t be auto-opt-in. If someone wants to provide you with their email address, it has to be their choice, and they have to fully understand why they are giving it and what they should be expecting to receive in return. Learn more about GDPR and privacy laws for help.

However, it’s also a good idea to protect yourself. If you are using an email service provider to communicate with all of your sign-ups, you’ll need to put a physical address at the bottom of your communications. Using a mailing address in NYC is a great way to protect your identity and privacy online.

Choose a Provider

Realistically, you aren’t going to send every single one of your follower’s personal emails. It would take far too much time that you don’t have. Instead, you’ll want to use an email provider like MailChimp to collect the addresses of your followers and send out emails. There are many different options available to you, and which you choose will depend on how many subscribers you’ve got, your future plans for growth and what analytics you want to receive after your campaigns. Explore your options before committing.

Know What Your Audience Want

Only your most loyal followers will ever sign up just to receive an email when you publish something new on your website. No one wants that. They’ll only give their email away for more. But, what do they want? Why do they visit your website? What are they looking for? Understand who your audience is, what they are looking for and how they spend their time. Then, find ways to give them extra in your email campaigns. When you know them, you can give them what they want.

Set Up an RSS feed

That said, fail to send them anything, and you’ll be forgotten. Send new campaigns with exciting extras and up to date communications when you can. But, there’ll be times that you’ve got nothing to say, and you certainly don’t want to say nothing. Set up an RSS feed with your service provider to ensure that your subscribers get a weekly, or monthly email with any news and website updates. If nothing else, this gets them clicking through to your sites and keeps you in their thoughts.