By Jessa Barron, NextAdvisor.com
Nowadays, we all know that establishing an online presence is vital when it comes to maintaining a successful business. Whether you opt to develop your brand on your website or social media, one aspect of marketing that you may not be using is email marketing. Unlike some other forms of communication with your customers, email marketing campaigns allow you to not only reach your customers on a personal level by sending newsletters directly to their email inbox, but also offer another way for your audience or consumers to keep up with your company. If you're new to email marketing or could use a quick refresher, we've outlined a few tips to help you get started with creating successful campaigns.
1. Make subscribing easy
As with finding links to your social media accounts, finding the subscribe button on your website should be just as easy. You could miss out on potential subscribers if your visitors can't find a way to subscribe to your email newsletter, so make sure it's visible and easy to locate across all pages on your website. And just as important as being able to click "subscribe" with ease, the sign up form itself should be just as simple. Don't make it too complicated because you could deter those from going through with subscribing. Instead, try to keep it as short and simple as you can -- asking for your customer's name, email address and possible offer the option to select how frequently they'd like to receive updates from your company.
2. Create mobile-friendly versions
In the ever expanding Digital Era, it's absolutely necessary to create a mobile-friendly version of your email newsletter so that people can open and read it on their smartphones and tablets. In fact, most Americans -- 64% according to Pew Research Center -- are smartphone users, which means they're likely exclusively checking their email from their phone or at least checking their email when they're away from home. If you don't ensure that your campaign can be opened on both mobile and desktop, you run the risk of having subscribers send your email to spam or trash, or worse -- having them opt out of receiving future emails form you entirely. Many email marketing services, especially the top-rated ones, will automatically create a mobile version of your newsletter for you, so it's important to double check with these providers before signing up for their services.
3. Send test emails
Another way to make sure your campaigns can be read on any device is to send it to yourself first. This way you can test it on a computer and on a mobile device, as well as double check to make sure any links you've included load properly. It's never a bad idea to have multiple people look over your email before sending it out to hundreds or thousands of subscribers, so ask your business partner, trusted employee or even a family member to take a look at the newsletter before sending it out. Having an extra set of eyes take a look will likely help you catch any grammar, punctuation or spelling errors you may have accidentally looked over.
4. Include social media links
This is another thing that those new to email marketing often forget about. You can increase your following on social media by including social media buttons (or links) to your company's Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn and other social media pages. Your subscribers and website visitors should be able to find your company's social media accounts easily via your email newsletter and website -- social media buttons are the easiest way to do this. Alternatively, you should also make it easy for people who "like" or "follow" you to be able to subscribe to your email campaign by including a newsletter sign-up form on our social media pages. Cross platform promotion is key when it comes to establishing and increasing a following for your business.
5. Maintain a regular schedule
A key component of email marketing is finding the right frequency to send your newsletter. You don't want to send out too many emails and overwhelm or annoy your subscribers, but you also don't want to send out too little where your subscribers lose interest. To help you figure out if you should be sending out newsletters weekly, bi-weekly or monthly, determine what you think your subscribers care about the most. Ask yourself whether the content you're including is important to your audience and if you can generate enough content to send out to your subscribers within a shorter time frame, such as weekly. Additionally, you could also provide an option for your subscribers to either select what type of content they want to receive or how often they want to receive your email newsletters.
If you're still looking for the right email marketing service to create the perfect email campaign for your company, head over to our email marketing reviews to see how the top-rated services compare with one another. Also, check out our email marketing blog to learn more about creating successful email campaigns.
This blog post originally appeared on NextAdvisor.com.