A great way to maintain a community of active readers and customers for your site is through email marketing. With email marketing, you can proactively communicate with your email or subscriber list and with constant communication you can easily mobilize your audience to take action.
Traffic alone does not generate a lot of sales. You need a way to convert that traffic and make it profitable. This is where email marketing comes from. It connects with your leads and builds relationships with them through constant communication.
Email marketing though is not a simple send and reply process. Imagine the task of keeping connected with all of your Facebook friends and keeping track of your communication with each of them. This indeed seems like an insurmountable task to manually take care of.
This is why every email marketing campaign needs to be managed through the use of email marketing tools. What I am currently using is MailChimp and to be honest, what attracted me at first was the trial version which is free for a 2000 subscriber list.
WHAT IS MAILCHIMP?
Eventually, as I kept on using MailChimp and my sales started improving, I started to appreciate the main features that this email marketing platform offers.
Subscriber Profiles
Get to know who your contacts are by keeping track of their engagement, web activity, and conversations with you. Add notes to each of your contacts to update their profile so you can remember who your customers are. Having enough information about each contact, you can easily organize and segment our list for a more effective email distribution.
Autoresponder
With a detailed subscriber list, you can send automated emails based on customer behavior and activity. You can use built-in workflows, or you can build your own with custom rules and guidelines to determine which emails are sent to whom based on a segmented list. Keep your emails timely, relevant and personalized based on how you know them.
With the tools that MailChimp provides, you can get detailed reports to check which automated series is performing.
You can determine what the best time is to send through the Send Time Optimization feature which is powered by the Email Genome Project.
Segment building is taken to another level by Discover Similar Subscribers which analyzes your list and grouping together like-minded people.
Advanced Analytics
Through advanced reporting options, you can monitor data as open rate, click rate as well as the number of unsubscribed people and complaints. You can also determine unique clicks from total clicks which give you a better insight into customer behavior.
You can also use A/B split testing to determine which emails are working to maximize future results.
Flexible Design Options
Using MailChimp’s Email designer, you have a wide array of templates to choose from which you can further improve to add more uniqueness.
With a drag and drop function and WYSWIG email editor, you have total control on how you want your email to look like, and you can add rich media as well.
Through the multi-user accounts option, you can collaborate with your team to speed up the design process as well as to improve the content of the email.
Here is a list of email creation tools that MailChimp offers
- Email Beamer
- Email Designer
- Email Templates
- Integrations
- Merge Tags
- Multi-User Accounts
Send Anytime, Anywhere
MailChimp is a mobile device responsive app which means you can take full control of your email marketing campaign anytime, anywhere.
Through MailChimp mobile, you can check reports, add notes, or even send a campaign to your team. MailChimp editor, on the other hand, lets you collaborate with your team and edit campaigns right out of your mobile device.
It is not just the platform that is mobile friendly but your templates and forms as well. Do not worry about coding for compatibility purposes because rest assured your email will look great on every OS and every device. You do not need to be a programmer when you have MailChimp around you.
Delivery is not going to be an issue as long as you are using MailChimp. With this platform you can be assured of the following:
- Automation
- Spam Filter Diagnostics
- Email Delivery
- Geolocation
- Email Client Testing
- RSS-to-Email
- Delivery by Time Zone
Innovation
There are always new products and new tools out in the market, and MailChimp shows that it is continuously looking for new ways to improve the platform. Current products let you determine what the best time is to send a campaign, test subject lines before sending them, and automatically send your campaigns simultaneously in varying time zones.
Growth
MailChimp understands its customers that’s why it allows you to fit your marketing campaign into its workflow. Not all marketing platforms allow this. This platform scales with our business and lets you do what you need to do.
MailChimp integrates with apps like Shopify, Marketo, WordPress, Facebook, and Salesforce.com to further improve your campaign and increase its reach.
Mobile Reach
With an even higher mobile device penetration for this year, more and more people are turning into their mobile devices to check their emails and other messages.
This is why it is important to ensure that your emails are mobile device friendly. Here are some mobile device features that you can take advantage of:
- MailChimp Coupon Scanner
- MailChimp Editor
- MailChimp Mobile
- MailChimp Snap
- MailChimp VIPs
- Mobile Signup Forms
- SMS for Events
WHO SHOULD USE MAILCHIMP?
There are a lot of different online marketing tactics, and there is no all around solution that can drive traffic and convert visitors into buyers. Email marketing is one of these strategies and if you are a
- website owner wanting to build a community
- shop owner who want to keep old customers and attract new ones
- online marketer handling different websites
- blogger who wants to drive qualified traffic
- business owner who wants to widen the brand’s client base,
MailChimp is an awesome tool to use to stay connected with your subscriber list and maintain good relationships with them. Traffic alone does not convert. You need a workflow that does the job.
Automated yet personalized emails are efficient and at the same time builds trust. Your subscribers trust you more because you make them feel that you spend time reaching out to them and sending personalized emails rather than generic ones that keep on pitching products and services.
WHY USE MAILCHIMP?
As someone who is running one or several websites and understands the importance of an email marketing campaign, it is important to understand why MailChimp stands out among other platforms. With the features that MailChimp offers, you can:
Easily Reach Mobile Customers – More and more people are using mobile devices now. Most shoppers prefer to check products and services online rather than in a physical store. Since MailChimp is mobile friendly, you do not have to worry about customers not being able to load your media-rich email through their phones
Your Customers are Always Informed – Through an automated and personalized system built on a segmented subscriber list, you can design workflows to ensure that customers always receive regular emails from you. Customers who are always informed tend to stay with the brand more.
Inexpensive Marketing – MailChimp is an inexpensive way to market your brand. Compared to other tactics as well as email marketing tools, you can see that MailChimp has affordable prices with high-quality products and services
Advantage in Designing Emails – The tools that MailChimp comes with allows you to design your emails to make them more interesting and engaging for readers. Furthermore, it allows multi-account collaboration which lets you and your team to pool your efforts together in designing the best emails.
PRICING
Entrepreneur (Free) – This package can help you get started with MailChimp and allows you to send 12,000 emails per month to no more than 2000 subscribers. By upgrading for as low as $10/month, you can get automation, delivery by time zone, non-voice support, or any of the other features available.
Growing Business (Price depends on volume and number of subscribers) – With a growing business and subscriber list, you need to be able to send more emails at a more active rate. You need to send targeted messages, integrate with services that you already use and work better collaboratively with your team if you want to keep your marketing campaign successful.
High Volume Sender (Price depends on volume and number of subscribers) – If you need fast and reliable email, high security, full featured API, and advanced segmentation, you can check out the monthly cost calculator on the website to determine how much you need to spend every month to send emails to your clientele.
