Get Started with Email PDF

8 Steps for your Email Marketing Checklist

1. Choose an email service provider:

Be prepared to do your research to find the best email service provider for your business. When choosing the best email service look for the following essential things:

• Easy to use: Narrow down your search and try each of the providers’ tutorials to gauge simplicity.
• Automation features: All the best software on the market offer solutions to automate your email marketing campaigns. Look at the automation offered from each provider and work out, which suits your needs best.
• Different Industries: Some email services are geared towards specific industries. If you sell a product vs. a service you will most likely need different features.
• Overall price: Business owners are always conscious of pricing so be sure to narrow down your choices and then go with the one you feel is most cost effective for your current business needs.
  

2. Build your list:

Email list building is the process of collecting email addresses from visitors, customers, and others who follow + support you. You can grow your list on your website, social media accounts, events, in-store signup sheets, and more. The most important thing to remember is that you must always be sure to have permission to send the email first. Your list is called “subscribers” for a reason. 

The simplest way to build your list is through an “opt in” where subscribers enter their email address WILLINGLY to hear from you.  This form can live on your website or you can create a “landing page” – a single-page website that contains your email opt-in form.

Create the opt in with your target audience in mind. Often, the best offers are your best resources, totally free. You can give your audience access to a free download that you know that they need, an ebook, a video training or something else that gives real value. When creating it, think about incentivizing your audience to give away their email address for free. What are you going to give them in return? Make it irresistible!

3. Add contacts to your account

Begin adding the new email addresses into your service provider account. There is an actual strategy that you can use in order to target different subscribers for the various services you offer or based on their likes/preferences-this is called “segmenting”. When you segment your audience with different “tags” (if your service provider offers this option) you can send emails that are specifically written for each segment’s needs + wants.

4. Create a welcome email

Things to consider:

• What is the objective of this email (what kind of feelings do I want to give my reader and how can I say it with my brand voice?)
• Does the “from” name clearly identify my business name
• Will the subject line intrigue my reader to open

***Remember this is your first impression…you want it to be a great one!

Follow this simple outline for all of your emails to get started:

1. What are you offering? — Headline
2. How will it help the reader? — Message body
3. What should they do next? — Call to action

5. Use a killer subject line

If you want to make a great first impression with your contacts you’ll need a subject line that can stand out amongst the rest in a crowded inbox. This quick one liner (6-8 words) is the difference between your email being opened + READ or immediately sent to the trash bin.

• Use the recipients name in the subject line
• Pique curiosity with urgency or mystery
• Incorporate trending topics or timely headlines 
• Implement inspiring or actionable language
• Ask a compelling question

6. Do a final review

Since you always want to put your best foot forward, preview, edit and test your emails before hitting send so you can catch any mistakes ahead of time. Your email service provider will have a “test” option so you can see the final email in its entirety before you send it out to your list. Our best recommendation is to also read your emails out loud to yourself…you’ll be amazed at what a difference it makes in the editing process.

7. Consider the most optimal time to schedule your send

When selecting a time to send out your emails, think about your specific audience and their daily habits. What time do you think they are most likely to sit down and check their emails? 

Try and answer the following questions about your audience:

• What do they do for a living?
• What is a typical daily schedule for them?
• What are their main problems?
• How can you solve these problems with your service?
• When and how might they see triggers that remind them of your service?

Your answers to these questions will help you to be more strategic with the times you hit their inbox and make it more likely that your dream connections will be opening your content, reading and engaging with it too! 

8. Study your audience’s behavior 

Take the time to read through your reports to learn more about who is opening your emails, clicking or even unsubscribing. On the backend of most service provider platforms you can track your open rate, click-through rate, unsubscribe rates, subject lines etc. In these reports you can also see what subject lines do better than others and what type of content gets more clicks than others.

Just as important as the content in your emails, so is tracking your email results. As any growing entrepreneur would agree, you always want to understand your customers better so you can tweak, edit and create according to their needs, desires and habits.

All in all, building trust with your email list is part of the GWGWG Master Connection Formula, because it gives you an opportunity to build customer loyalty and genuine relationships with your audience. It’s also a smart way to get to know your audience’s needs, wants, desires and habits so you can better serve them. 

Good luck and remember the only way to get better at it is to get started!