The introduction of internet cafe business in Nigeria brought about the exploration of various email provider service. Yahoomail used to be the favourite of everyone then, for some it was hotmail while others go the extra mile of using mail.com and the rest. But most of us did not know the huge opportunity such a medium possess outside of sending a message or receiving one from friends and family in distant location.
Recent happenings (mind you am talking about Nigeria) has made us exposed to what effect email can have outside of our personal lives and most especially in our businesses.
You've heard email marketing is a good thing, but you're not sure it's right for you. You still need to be convinced it's a good channel for your business. But even if you're convinced, you don't know how to grow your list or develop an effective email marketing strategy. And you've no idea what to write about. This series will show you why email marketing is an essential tool for almost every business. It will also help you develop an email marketing strategy, showing you how to get attention with your emails, while giving you ideas for what to write about.

P.s: I would try to do a post at least once every weekday, so stay glued. Contents would be aggregated from other sources online.

Watching closely. Good stuff

Email marketing -- if you're not doing it, you should. There are few other tactics for acquiring and converting customers that are so effective and cost-conscious. But if you've never done email previously, the options might seem daunting. In this three-part series, we'll look at the basics of email (including key terminology), how to setup and manage your first email campaign, and how to grow a list through great content.

Why Email?
When you try to acquire customers for your business, you have a lot of different marketing tactics at your disposal -- print advertisements, press releases, events, partnership, social media. The list is virtually endless. But among the tactics you can choose, email marketing might be the one most worth your investment of time and attention.Consider the following:
1) Email sells -- in a recent DMA study (2012), 67% of respondents identified email as providing the best ROI of any tactic (more than twice the response of any other tactic).
2) Email is opt-in -- Building a strong list of subscribers who actually want to receive your offers is a hugely worthy investment in your business you can capitalize on over and over again.
3)Email is targeted -- Craft and serve offers to specific groups and watch your response rate shoot up. Serve irresistable content to targeted groups that really want it and see your list grow.
4)Email is optimizable -- you can create list segments, A/B test offers and subjects, and study your performance each time to improve.

Having an effective and easy-to-use email marketing service is a critical element for nearly every small business website. Incorporating email marketing into your site provides an opportunity to turn website visitors into subscribers and prospects and eventually into customers.

Basic Terminology Of Email Marketing
The "List" - Your "list" is a compilation of email addresses you collect through your email signup form and other methods.
Bounce Rate - the proportion of emails rejected by your lists' recipients' email servers
Whitelist - A whitelist includes IP addresses that have been approved to deliver email to a recipient.
"Permission-based" marketing -- your list receives messages from you because they've asked to be on your list.
The Multipart/Alternative MIME format -- offering recipients a choice of email formats, HTML or plain text.
Email applications -- customers will get your messages in all sorts of different email applications, such as desktop clients like Apple Mail and Outlook, webmail clients like Yahoo and Gmail, and mobile interfaces.
Double Opt-In -- A prospective customer not only signs up on your site but also confirms their interest in your list through a subsequent email. This is the recommended method of building an email list.
Open Rate -- The percentage of emails opened in an email marketing campaign, or the percentage opened of the total number of emails sent.
Conversion Rate -- The percentage of recipients who respond to your call-to-action in an email marketing campaign or promotion. This is one measure of your email campaign's success.
Clicks Per Open -- A percentage measure of the number of clicks divided by the number of opens.
List Segmentation -- Selecting a target audience or group of individuals for whom your email message is relevant. A segmented list means a more targeted and relevant email campaign, thus a higher response rate and less unsubscribes and spam reports.

EMAIL MARKETING VS NEWSLETTER MARKETING

Email marketing is basically a message marketed to a broader audience using email as a medium. It is a wider concept which includes terms like transactional emails, promotional emails, triggered emails, crm emails, newsletter email etc.

Email newsletters are often mistaken for email marketing, but it’s actually a part of an email marketing strategy. Newsletters are based on creating the “right” and most relevant content in order to give your subscribers additional value and build the foundation for the long lasting relationship based on trust.

IMPORTANCE OF EMAIL MARKETING AND NEWSLETTERS

There are many market researches which confirm the importance of email marketing and newsletters. One such example is the research from Econsultancy which reveals that marketers still rate email as one of the best channel for return on investment with 66% of respondents rating email as “excellent” or “good”. Generally, most researches and studies find that email marketing is an important part of marketing strategies which has a positive impact on sales, ROI (return on investment) and ROMI (return on marketing investment).

To sum it up, email marketing and email newsletters are important because they provide:

1) Excellent ROI
2) Increase in income and sales
3) And all that at a low cost.

Emails provide great return of investment because you are communicating the right message at the right time which leads to new customer aquisitions, increased sales and income through cross-selling and/or up-selling. They also help to maximize customer lifetime value, drive offline sales and lead to repeated purchases.

Email is less time consuming than traditional direct marketing, and most important – more than 60% of users prefer to receive promotional content and messages through email. Of course, keep in mind that every campaign differs in approach and results so use this as a guideline and adjust to your specific situation. That’s why you always have to TEST, TEST and TEST your marketing activities and tactics.

Additional to that, users love email, especially on their mobile devices. Even though users use email across various devices, most of them use the same email address on desktop and mobile. While desktop usage is important, most exciting prospect of email definitely happens on mobile.

HOW TO GET EMAIL SUBSCRIBERS?

Wondering how to get new email subscribers for your newsletter campaigns? Well, there are lots of ways to get email subscribers, just get creative. While some tactics are easier to implement or are more cost effective than others, you should definitely start from your website.

WEBSITE
In most cases, your website will be the starting point for collecting your user emails through a form ideally placed strategically across your site. The form can also act as an autoresponder (gist for another day) and help help you retain the contact information for your website visitors for further contact.

FORM
You can embed a form on a dedicated landing page as a part of the sidebar or a blog post, inside a pop-up or a “side-bar pop-up”. If you have a blog on WordPress, you can consider implementing list builder plugins, but be careful with these tools so you won’t annoy your audience and potential prospects. You can also motivate your fans and non-fans on Facebook and get them to jump on your email list through a form on a tab as part of your Facebook page.

APPLICATION
Third party applications can also be use to source for email subscribers. You can embed a sign up form inside a Facebook application canvas. The best way to do this is to put a sign up form when the user enters the contest. You can usually put a box which invites the user to start receiving the newsletter. This is a common practice in various online contests.

INCENTIVE
You can include a call to action for email sign-up almost everywhere in order to increase your email sign-up conversion rates. Call to action can be effective, but it works best if you have some incentive to motivate users to join your list via interesting and useful content like ebook, white papers, discount or information which provide your customers with additional value. Of course, it’s best to offer highly relevant incentive connected to the company or brand so you don’t end up with low quality subscribers on your list. You want to reach relevant users and potential buyers, not “prize hunters”.


Offline methods

Not all people are aware that offline can also play a big part in collecting subscribers. Some examples of offline sources for collecting new subscribers inside your stores or shops or office, offline events, trade fairs, seminars, loyalty programs
Offline sources can be a great addition for getting new subscribers. Be sure to include them as an addition to your online efforts in order to boost the growth of email subscribers.

****IMPORTANT NOTE****
ASK FOR PERMISSION
It’s important to understand that you need to ask your subscribers for permission to receive newsletters. If you skip this step, there’s a risk of getting bad reputation for your email marketing. If you buy or sell emails, you can get into serious trouble with the legislation and worldwide spam systems( i know my naija boiz are happy this does not apply here). You can also reduce spam complaints by providing users with an easy way to unsubscribe from your list if they lose interest for your service or product.

It’s easy to get bogged down in the details. This especially holds true in the world of marketing. All of the changes, advice, and information out there can be overwhelming. But marketing doesn’t have to be so complicated. Take email marketing for example—it’s effective, affordable, and time efficient. Let’s take a step back to understand the fundamentals to achieve great results with your email marketing efforts.



1. Always market with permission

People open email from people they know, and they delete or mark as spam email from people they don’t recognize. This is why it’s critical that you always ask for permission before adding a new contact to your email list. Permission-based email marketing is the best route to developing long-lasting customer relationships that drive repeat sales and valuable word-of-mouth for your business. These practices also keep you in compliance with legislation such the Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act (CAN-Spam) and the Canadian Anti-Spam Legislation (CASL).

2. Set expectations

When someone signs up to receive your email communications, they do so with the expectation of receiving something of value. If you don’t communicate clearly what that value is, your audience might lose interest quickly. The best way to set expectations for your audience is to use your email sign-up page. Make sure your audience understands the value of signing up right from the start. What can they expect to receive? How often will they hear from you? What have other people enjoyed about receiving your emails? You can customize your sign-up form to demonstrate the value of joining your list.

3. Build relationships the right way

When someone joins your email list, they are opting-in to learn more about your business. Some of these people will be completely new to your business and want to learn more about what you have to offer. Others may be repeat customers who joined your list to make sure they’re staying up-to-date with everything you have going on. Don’t miss the opportunity to build these relationships the right way. For new customers, you could send emails with additional information about your business and the different products and services you have to offer. For long-time customers, you can focus on generating repeat sales and reward them with a special offer.


4. Send relevant and valuable content

Remember that email marketing isn’t just about getting your information in front of current and potential customers. It’s also about listening to what your audience is interested in and providing an experience that’s relevant and valuable to them. When you provide content that’s helpful to your readers, you’ll have more people opening and acting on the content you send out. One of the easiest ways to tell what type of content your audience is interested in is to look at your email reports. Within your email reports, you can see how many people are opening your emails and which pieces of content are generating the most clicks. You can also use a tool like an online survey to collect feedback from your audience and see what they want to hear about.

5. Engage your audience

Once you’ve figured out what your email contacts are looking for in your email marketing, you need to create content that they will find engaging. Creating great content can be challenging, but it doesn’t have to become a full-time job. Great content starts with having a well thought-out content plan, a list of reliable content sources, and a commitment to knowing your audience. When creating a plan, it’s helpful to look at the calendar and think about the different activities you have going on and the ways you can help your customers throughout the year. Your customers will be your best source for content ideas. Pay attention to what they are saying and the questions they are asking in-person and online.

6. Maximize your delivery rate

There are steps you can take to maximize your email delivery and make sure your emails get to where they need to go. One of the best ways to tell if your emails are getting delivered is to look at your bounce reports. Emails can bounce for a number of reasons, including invalid email addresses, a full inbox, or out of office statuses. Keeping an eye on your bounces will help you to remove any addresses with ongoing issues and maintain high deliverability rates. In addition to bounces, you can also look at your spam reports. If an individual on your email list reports your email as unwanted or unsolicited, it will be marked as spam. If you consistently have a high number of spam reports it may be time to review the content you’re sending.

7. Respect privacy: Never share a list

If you’re a business that respects the trust and privacy of your customers, you should never share your email list. Sharing your list could damage your reputation, hurt customer relationships, and ruin the trust you’ve worked hard to build. You should also avoid purchasing a list from a third-party vendor. These lists are full of people who don’t know your business, didn’t sign up to receive updates from you, and will likely ignore your emails or mark them as spam when they show up in their inbox. Rather than sharing or buying lists, look for ways to partner with other local businesses or organizations to extend your reach. You can ask a non-competitive business to help you promote an upcoming sale or event, and in exchange, you can feature them in a future email campaign. Look to partner with trusted businesses that can provide additional value to your customer base.

8. Make use of metrics

Your open and click-through rates will be the most effective metrics to determine how your emails are performing. These metrics can be influenced by the content you include, the frequency that you send, and whether or not people recognize your emails in their inbox.

Along with opens and clicks, you should also pay attention to metrics like bounces and unsubscribes. These metrics allow you to determine potential problem areas. If you’re consistently seeing a large number of people unsubscribe each time you send (it’s normal to see some unsubscribes as your subscribers’ interests change), you may need to revisit your email marketing strategy and look for ways to make improvements. Beyond your basic email metrics, you should also pay attention to other business results including traffic to your website, sales, foot traffic, event registrations, coupon redemptions, donations, and more.

9. Integrate email with other marketing channels

You’re likely already using a number of other channels to market your small business. Email marketing works best when it’s integrated with these other communication channels. Use sites like Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and LinkedIn to reach new customers and extend those relationships by encouraging them to join your email list. You can also use email to drive traffic to different social media platforms and generate engagement on these sites. It’s a great idea to add social media buttons in your emails so that people can connect with your social media pages.

I guess people are not interested in this thread.

I'm xo interesting, It helpful for me Nice write up..

This link below will show you the best e-mail marketing tool. Enjoy it:
http://tectono..com/2014/08/tectono-ventures-ltd-presents-17000.html

Email Marketing is the use of email communication to build customer loyalty and brand awareness. This method of marketing is highly effective for communication with both existing and potential customers as it helps you reach the bulk of your target audience without the need to spend so much from your marketing budget. A great way to use email marketing is to create segmented and personalized emails to specific people on your email list. You could create these emails based on determining factors like customer demographics (likes, age), spending habits, etc. Another reason why this strategy should be a part of for your digital marketing strategies is because of how easy it is to use email marketing.

Keep reading for the top 10 reasons email marketing is important, complete with mind-blowing email marketing statistics that should clear any doubts you may have.

https://odigital.ng/reasons-email-marketing-should-be-part-of-your-mar/

With the help of internet, digital marketing have become more ubiquitous and easy for transactions which engage and attract customer's.