7 Email Marketing Tips For Beginners Using WordPress

If you have a WordPress blog or any kind of website then these 7 email marketing tips for beginners will help you get the most out of your campaigns and achieve maximum results. These are really simple yet effective strategies that anyone can follow.

I’ve also written an overview of email marketing with a website which will help you get started setting everything up and give you an idea on what a basic campaign looks like. If you’ve never set up an email marketing system before, I recommend reading that article first.

Anyway, here’s some useful tips…

#1 Create A Good Lead Magnet

First and foremost, you need subscribers to join your mailing list. There’s two things you need to accomplish this task if you already have an operational website…

1. Website visitors (traffic)
2. Something that will make people want to join your list (lead magnet)

Some marketers refer to the lead magnet as an ‘ethical bribe’ which basically means you are giving your website visitors something for free in return for a valid email address so you can contact them later. This could be a free 1 page report, a tutorial, an entire e-book or something else of value.

The main idea is that your target audience will want to put their email in to get it and that when they do get it, it’s genuinely valuable to them. You are trying to build trust so don’t just give people some crappy sales letter or something.

Longer doesn’t always mean better either. Sometimes a one page report will achieve your goal much better than 150 page PDF. It really depends on your audience and the topic, just give something a go and test the results.

#2 Add Regular Value To Your List

Whether you are getting people to sign up to an automated series of emails or just keeping people informed about news and events on your website, keep in regular contact.

If you have an automated flow of emails make sure they are genuinely helpful and not just promoting something, email your list a link to a great post or page you published that week. Giving regular value to your list will help them to know, like and trust you which are key ingredients to success online.

The exact amount of emailing depends on your audience and what you are trying to achieve.

If you are trying to promote something then perhaps sending an initial 5-7 daily emails (or every other day) will work and then just send one useful or helpful email per week after that. For example, out of those 7 emails you might send 2 promo emails and the rest useful tips or something interesting. This is adding value to your audience without coming across as an annoying spammer.

If you are just wanting to send out ‘broadcast’ messages then maybe once or twice per week will work well to keep your audience informed.

Whatever you decide to do, make sure you are delivering value first and foremost and work out an emailing schedule that allows you to keep in regular contact, so you don’t become a stranger to them.

#3 Track & Tweak

Tracking the effectiveness of your campaign is one of the most important things you could do to maximise your results. The auto-responder you sign up for will determine how you go about this but the concept is to work out a system that allows you to track your results.

You want to know the amount of emails sent, how many were delivered, how many people opened your emails and who clicked on your links within the content. You may also want to look into doing some split testing, which means testing out different versions of a similar email to see which ones convert better into whatever action you are wanting your subscribers to take.

All of these things can help you craft a better campaign and ultimately achieve better results.

#4 Follow Best Practices

Understand what kind of policies and procedures are in place to make sure you adhere to email marketing best practice. A good auto-responder will have some of the core requirements in built but it always pays to do your homework.

An obvious one is making sure that the person knows they are signing up to receive additional emails from you in the future. Make sure this is apparent BEFORE they do the second opt-in. A second opt-in is advisable because it ensures you are sending emails to the right people.

Here’s how a double opt-in works:

Jenny puts her email address into your subscriber box to get a free gift, she then gets an email asking her to confirm her request for information, once she clicks the ‘confirm’ link in that email she will be confirming her email address and be added to your list.

Just be honest and ethical in your dealings with people, follow some basic guidelines and don’t spam them with endless promo offers and you’ll be fine. Never promote junk under any circumstances, even if the payout is high… it’s never worth it in the long run.

#5 It’s Not All About Giving Away Free Stuff

As much as your emails are about providing people with relevant value, it doesn’t always have to be free. People pay for things they like all day everyday so if you have something of value to offer that costs money, don’t be shy.

If people get used to always getting free stuff from you then they may be less inclined to buy something from you at the right time. As long as it’s a decent product and will help your audience, tell them about it.

#6 Find a Good Plugin

One of the best ways to maximise your subscribers is with a great Plugin. Personally I use a plugin called Sumome and it works extremely well. It gives you a few extra ways you can maximise your subscriber base.

Here’s how:

• Hello bar- little bar at the top of your website that scrolls down with your visitor and asks them to opt-in
• Scroll box- a little opt-in box on the bottom right or left corner that appears as the visitor scrolls down the page
• Exit pop-up- these can be very effective at converting people that were about to leave into subscribers. It isn’t intrusive and will not stop people exiting which is good, but it genuinely works well

Sumome also does other things like show you where people are clicking within your content through ‘heat maps’ and gives you some pretty cool stats to track your overall campaign performance. There’s probably other plugins that do a good job of this as well but this one works for me and it’s free to try. The free version is all you need to get up and running.

#7 Drive More Targeted Traffic To Increase Sign Ups

Once you have everything set up and it’s working well the biggest thing you are going to want to do to maximise your subscriber base, and increase profits, is to drive more targeted traffic to your website. The more traffic you have the more subscribers you will ultimately get.

Only a percentage of your visitors will sign up to your list so the more visitors you have the better.

Bottom Line

By following these tips and getting a grasp on some of these basic concepts, you’ll be building a responsive and ultimately profitable list in no time.

When you have things set up right you’re list will literally build itself while you focus on what you do best, writing quality content that helps people.