Simplified Email Marketing Tips for Small Businesses

Did you know that one of the best ways to build and establish relationship, trust and credibility with your target audience is by integrating email marketing strategy into your digital marketing mix? Besides this, it is also an online marketing system which will provide you with ample opportunities to demonstrate your expertise in a specific subject matter and ultimately make it easy to recommend and sell products and services to your subscribers.

 

I must tell you that you’ll be making a grievous mistake in your small business if you’re not building a mailing list of subscribers either as a webmaster, blogger, internet marketer, ebook author, online business owner or digital marketer.

 

So, in this guide on email marketing tips for small businesses, you’ll discover how to set up a successful campaign and have higher ROI (return on investment) more than what you should have gained using any other digital marketing strategies.

 

But first, you need to have a website of your own to be able to effectively build an email list of subscribers from scratch and have control over your list members. And with WordPress CMS blog platform, it’s now a breeze to build a website and integrate a sign up form on it to collect names and email addresses of your prospects.

 

Creating a blog on self-hosted WordPress blog is free but you’ve to buy web hosting from a company that supports WordPress hosting. If you’ve not gotten a web host yet, you can purchase website hosting services from HostGator because they are relatively cheap and reliable compared to other web hosting providers.

 

The best part is that you’ll get a free domain name registration offer from HostGator hosting company if you sign up with them as a first time customer from this link.   

 

Our next online marketing tool which you should have in your arsenal is an ESP (email service provider). ESP is the company that will provide you with an email marketing software or autoresponder to set up your web form and seamlessly organize your list building campaigns as you like it. ESPs are a dime a dozen on the World Wide Web but you’ve to be careful with the reputation of the company you sign up with.

 

However, in this tutorial, I’ll recommend GetResponse autoresponder because they are reliable, cheap and have excellent customer support. In addition, GetResponse 30-day free trial will allow you to learn the ropes of email marketing before you dive in with both feet.

 

GetResponse pricing is quite affordable and user friendly for any beginner or small business owner to get started and make money online. With as low as $15 per month, you can start email marketing campaigns in any niche market and be rest assured that you’re on the path of business growth.

 

Click here to learn about GetResponse pricing from their official website

 

Thirdly, you need a valuable lead magnet to entice your prospects and blog readers who will give you their email IDs in exchange for your free gift offer. You can create any type of content and give it away for free in the form of PDF ebook, audio, video, podcast, webinar, infographic, etc.

 

But you’ve to make sure it’s a valuable content that your subscribers are frantically seeking for and cannot be found elsewhere gratis. And the best way to create relevant content is to simply answer some of the questions your target audience is asking. You can make use of good keyword research tool and question and answer sites like Quora.com or AnswerThePublic.com to discover these questions to answer for your potential readers.

 

Don’t forget that you’ve to create series of email messages for every specific campaign you’re working on. This will include welcome email message and series of autoresponder content which will be delivered on predefined days to your subscribers at a date set apart by you.

 

Depending on your email marketing strategy and promotional tactics, your content should always be a mix of transactional, navigational and informational materials. Promotional emails have to tie in with the type of content you’ve delivered. But you should not send blatant promotions to your subscribers simply because you want to sell and make money at all cost.

 

Fourthly, create a blog, optimize your blog, publish blog posts regularly that target keyword phrases and set up opt-in mailing list form on a page on your blog.

 

With that said, let’s dive into my top 20 email marketing tips for small business to get you started right away.

 

Tip #1: Be an Avid Reader and Learner

 

As an email marketer and online business owner, constantly creating value in the marketplace is non-negotiable if you don’t want to continually record high unsubscribe rate from your mailing list. But even as an expert, you can never know enough. And for you to become a guru or thought leader in your industry, you’ve to continuously be a student of learning. As the saying goes, “Learning never ends.”

 

Personally, I’ve come to discover that the more you read and learn from others, the more you realize the little you know even when you think you’re an expert.

 

So, connecting and networking with who’s who in your industry will be a great asset to you in the long run and it will also allow you to gain insights on better ways and means to run and grow your online business by leaps and bounds.

 

You can sign up for email newsletters of some of these subject matter experts (SMEs) in your industry and observe how they professionally pre-sell, promote and close sales for their products or affiliate products.

 

Tip #2: Become an Expert or Thought Leader

 

Majority of aspiring internet entrepreneurs misses the mark when it comes to how to make money online. To be honest with you, online shoppers, information seekers or web surfers are very wary and they’re not comfortable at all when dealing with a mediocre in any niche market with regard to his product recommendation or content published on his blog.

 

Even if you’re not a subject matter expert at the beginning, you’ve to strive by all means to become one sooner or later. The fastest way to do this is to pick the brains of others as you grow your business as I explained in tip number one above. It will help you to build a mailing list fast and sell more products and services that you decide to promote to your subscribers.

 

A thought leader should have more than the basic business or job experience to solve problems and pain points of his target market. He must have sharp presence of mind and adaptable.  You’ve to be abreast of industry news, technologies, emerging trends, and the like.

 

Starting a blog on Blogger was an idea I picked up from an expert who built a blog on Blogspot and later sold it for thousands of dollars. And as digital marketing coach and trainer, I decided to use his strategy to start a free blog on Blogger with a custom domain name.

 

If I’m able to manage and grow this blog to make $1,000 per month online, it will become a case study to teach my coaching students who are on a tight budget but have at least $10 to buy a domain name to start a business. This is how to read, study, learn and possibly become a maven in your focus market.  

 

Tip #3: Hone Email Copywriting Skills

 

If you ask me, starting a successful email marketing campaign is a Herculean task and not just a child’s play. It involves a lot of steep learning curve, work load upfront, digital skills, subject matter expertise and consistency. Little wonder why a lot of online marketers fall by the way side and give up completely with email marketing systems.  

 

The best thing to do is to hone email copy writing skills to navigate and succeed with your list building campaigns. You should carefully craft every copy that delivers the goods without being overly sounding “salesy” or promotional.

 

Your landing pages and lead magnet page must emphasize on benefits over features with bullet points, clear CTA (call to action), money back guarantee, and so forth. There is a lot to learn when it comes to copywriting but you can hire a freelance copywriter if you like.

 

By simply following industry experts via their email newsletters, you can learn how to write great subject lines and preview text to get high open rates. Using text and images in your email copy with brevity can be of immense value as well.

 

Tip #4: Include Social Share Buttons on Your Blog

 

As a small business owner, email marketing is crucial to your growth. The fastest way to reach out to your target audience is through social media marketing. And if you own a blog especially WordPress blog, there is social media plugins you can install and activate to get social shares.

 

Using social share buttons on your blog is one of the best email marketing tips for small businesses which I’ve received during my blogging career. The other side of the equation is creating high quality content that will resonate with your target audience. I call these pieces as content worth sharing and linking to.

 

Tip #5: Use Storytelling to Build Your Mailing List

 

If you want to excel in your email marketing campaigns, the best antidote is to create high-impact content that tells your own stories and experiences as well as that of your customers. It doesn’t have to be a palatable story anyway. It could be mistakes you’ve made, sacrifices you made, lessons you learned, and so on.

 

Telling stories about your business move the potential customer through the buyer’s journey with conviction. I’ve used stories to sell products and services of every description. For example, I use HostGator website hosting to get online, build websites and create blogs.

 

What I did was to take my readers and digital marketing training students through my sign up process and show them my HostGator billing dashboard.

 

 

This singular action tripled the number of subscribers signing up for my list. All in all, email marketing tips for small businesses is really about being creative with ideas that will benefit you and your customers. What can you do differently that is unique and acceptable to your ideal audience?

 

 

How to Optimize Your Blog

You can read my previous blog posts on how to start a blog and make money part one and part two. In today’s guide, I’ll focus on WordPress blog customization and optimization.

 

First, you’ve to start off by logging into your WordPress dashboard and tweak 2 or more settings in your account.

 

Go to the domain URL you registered and log in. in the example below, you've to replace "YourDomainName" with the actual domain name you bought and the "TLD" with the extension or top level domain i.e. .com, .net, .org, .xyz, .co, etc.

 

http://YourDomainName.TLD/wp-admin

 

For example, I'll replace YourDomainName.TLD with my actual domain followed by its extension e.g.

 

https://hustlevim.com/wp-admin

 

This will take you to your WordPress (WP) blog account dashboard which is basically the backend of your blog website. You’ll be working from this environment a lot. So, you’ve to take note of a lot of details as we go along and optimize your blog.

 

After you’ve successfully signed in, the first task is to change and update your password if it was auto-generated when you installed WP on your domain name except you manually imputed the password yourself.

 

For you to do this, take a look at the left hand side of your dashboard and locate “Users” icon as shown in the image below.

 

Click on the “Users” icon in order to see its sub menu. Now, click on “Profile” sub menu and scroll to the bottom of the web page where there is “Account Management.”

 

 

While you're there, click on “Generate Password” and overwrite the auto-generated password with the password you can easily remember. After you’ve done that, simply click on the “Hide” button immediately beside it and click on the “Update Profile” button.

 

You may be logged out after you’ve effected this password change. If this is the case, you should log in again with your new password. But remember to keep your new password safe!

 

The next step is to go to your “Settings” menu and click on it.

 

 

The first item on the sub menu is the “General” settings. Click on it and update the “Site Title” and “Tagline.” Essentially, your website title should include your primary keyword while the tagline should include your secondary keyword.

 

 For example, success in life blog, it may be:

 

Site Title: Success in Life Blog (primary keyword: success in life)

Tagline: Personal Development (secondary keyword: personal development)

 

Your primary keyword is the target keyword phrase which you want your blog to be ranked and known for while your secondary keyword is the second best keyword that you are also pursuing to rank for concurrently.

 

You should and must take the time to settle for keyword with low to medium difficulty based on your research.

 

My rule of the thumb is to target a minimum monthly average search volume of one thousand for my primary keyword and secondary keyword respectively.

 

After updating your site title and tagline, go to the bottom of the page to save your changes.

 

Depending on your choice as a blogger, you may prefer your blog website URL to look like either of the two options below:

 •    https://hustlevim.com, or

•    https://www.hustlevim.com

 

If you prefer the former, you don’t have to do anything because that is how WordPress comes by default. But if you prefer the latter, you’ve to go to the section on your general settings tab immediately below the tagline and simply add the “www” to “WordPress Address (URL)” and “Site Address (URL)” without the quotes and save your changes.

 

Always remember to save your changes after making an update. Again, you may be logged out after you’ve done this. Log in back and continue with your customization and optimization tasks.

 

The third step is to click on the “Reading” settings as shown in the screenshot below. What I usually do is to edit some items here from the default setting to my own preference.

 

The default setting is like this:

 

But my blogs reading setting is usually like this:

 

 

I will reduce the number of blog posts to show on my home page to 5 while the syndication feeds to 5 and “Summary” for each post in a feed.

 

I don’t want any of my blog readers or followers to read my blog post in full from his or her feed outside of my blog. If it is set to “Summary,” he has to visit my blog to read the whole blog post. This will boost website traffic in the long run.

 

The fourth step is the “Permalinks” settings. This is where you’ve to optimize your blog the way you want every post or page URL to be indexed and displayed. You’ll see some blog URLs with day, month and year while some will use keyword in the title.

 

For blog SEO purpose, it is advisable to set your permalink to custom settings by making use of keyword URL.

 

To do this, click on “Permalinks” and make sure the radio button beside “Custom structure” is checked. After you’ve done that, simply type the code below and paste it in the field beside “Custom structure.”

 

/%postname%/

 

And you should have a permalinks custom structure like this.

 

This will overwrite the default permalinks after you’ve saved your changes.

 

The fifth step is to go to “Discussion” settings and locate the section that says, “Comment must be manually approved” and tick the check box there and adjust the “Comment moderation” to “1 or more links.”

 

You’ll now have something similar to this:

 

This will make sure bloggers or spammers don’t invade your blog with spam comments and links that will dilute the power of your blog in search engines. Every time a blogger includes a link in the comment section, you’ve to moderate and approve it before it can go live.

 

It will give you modicum of sanity in your blogging career.

 

This is how to optimize your blog on a very basic level. You can use this to start a blog and make money. However, there are other tasks you’ve to complete in respect of search engine optimization (SEO).

 

This includes:

• Meta description for your blog using WordPress SEO plugin like Yoast.
• Making use of category and tags.
• Doing internal linking.
• Using H1, H2 and H3 tags where necessary in headings and sub headings.
• Including “Alt text” in your uploaded images.
• Using responsive WordPress themes
• Mobile optimization
• Etc.

 As I progress with this side hustle website, I’ll explain some of these SEO topics one by one.

How to Start a Blog and Make Money Blogging Online –Part 2

In part one of how to create a blog and make money, I outlined steps to build a blog and also explained blogging basics which I usually follow when starting a blog. I’m starting off today’s blog article with the discussion of methods and strategies to find affiliate products and services to promote and sell on your website without breaking a sweat.

 

But before I dive into the details, you’ve to understand that writing and publishing high quality content consistently is the foundation of building a successful blog. People want to learn from experts and you’ve to strive to be one of them in your intended niche market on a consistent basis and not by fits and starts.

 

This is why you’ve to be an avid reader in your industry in order to be abreast of news and information of your target market. Being the “first to know” is the first criteria of becoming a successful blogger people want to listen to and follow.

 

With that said, let’s dive in!

 

Step #3: How to Find Affiliate Products to Promote and Sell

 

If you really want to make money online for the long haul, creating a blog that provides value in the marketplace is what will matter to you as a blogger in the first place. But if you don’t have your own digital product or service to sell immediately or digital skills to provide and get paid from your blog website, the next best option is to promote affiliate products and earn affiliate commissions when you close sales for vendors.

 

So, I can confidently say that affiliate marketing business is one of the best ways to monetize your blog as a beginner and earn money online without breaking a sweat.

 

Now, how do you get affiliate products or services to promote and sell on your own website?

 

The first step is to sign up with reputable affiliate networks which are related to your industry or niche market.  You can then browse through their marketplaces and use keyword and/or other search parameters via the search function to find specific affiliate products to sign up for.

 

Some of these reliable affiliate network programs are Impact.com, Amazon.com, CJ.com, Clickbank.com, MarketHealth.com, JVZoo.com, etc.

 

The second option is to use Google.com or any other search engine of your choice to research affiliate programs to promote. You can use your “niche keyword” plus “affiliate programs” to find the product you can promote and sell. You can see an example of how to use keyword to find affiliate products using Google.com from the image below.

 

You can use different keywords to replace the word “affiliate” if you are not getting the required results e.g. associate, referral, etc.

 

Thirdly, you can reach out to a merchant, vendor or product creator who has no affiliate program in place on a personal level to discuss how he can create one if possible for you to sign up with. Some merchants don’t know the benefits of having affiliate program until you enlighten them about it.

 

Fourthly, you can follow successful bloggers in your niche market to see what type of affiliate products they promote. Heavyweight bloggers who own sundry digital products on sale still join good affiliate programs that complement their products and services and promote them to earn affiliate commissions.

 

You can sign up for their email newsletters and track links to products, services, software, apps, etc, which they are promoting and are affiliate links. You can then find ways to join the same affiliate network programs if possible. This is the best way to find high-paying affiliate programs to join as quickly as possible and make money on the internet.

 

Step #4: Conduct Keyword Research

 

At this level, you should tentatively have 2 to 3 complementary affiliate products you can promote even if you’ve not signed up with them yet. Your task now is to research and find profitable long tail keyword phrases to target when you write blog posts or optimize your blog for SEO (search engine optimization).

 

You should not forget that majority of online shoppers make use of search engines like Google.com to research information about anything before they take the decision to buy. So, if you’re able to discover these search queries which they type into search engines and write SEO articles about them, you’ll hopefully rank on the SERP (search engine results page) for increased free targeted traffic.

 

There are keyword research tools to quickly use to perform this task and there are free and paid keyword tools on the World Wide Web. Google Keyword Planner tool is free to use but you won’t be able to know keyword difficulty of each of the search terms. Ahrefs.com and Semrush.com are paid keyword research tools which you can use to determine if a keyword is profitable or difficult to pursue or not.

 

Another way you can discover keywords to write about is to go to questions and answers sites like Quora.com and go through questions people in your target niche are asking. You’ll also find answers from experts to these questions to learn from. The interesting thing here is that you’ll discover key word variants which different people type to ask questions and find specific information.

 

As always the case, keyword variations are usually location based because people are familiar and use different search queries. In some climes, web surfers may use “associate” while in another clime, they will use “affiliate.”

 

Yet, another method to find different keywords to work with is to go to AnswerThePublic.com and type your search query there in the search field and hit the return button. You’ll discover different types of questions people are asking which are related to your topic from the returned results.

 

Step #5: Get a Domain Name and Web Hosting

 

This step is the simplest of them all. What you’ve to do here is to register a domain name and get web hosting from reliable company so that you can create a blog for free. You’re going to use self-hosted WordPress to build a website. WordPress.org is built as CMS (content management system) software which makes it easy for blogger like you and I to create a blog website without knowing anything about coding, HTML or CSS. 

 

You can sign up with HostGator web hosting because they support WordPress hosting which makes blog installation a breeze. In addition, they have excellent customer support in case you are stuck with about installing your blog on a domain name. HostGator provides unlimited disk space and bandwidth for your web hosting services in case you’ve enough files or data and avalanche of website visitors to handle.

If you’re concerned with your website security in this age of hacking, malware, etc, you should consider getting reliable website hosting that is cheap and experienced in the business at the same time.

 

 Click here to go to HostGator official website to sign up and get a free domain name

 

Step #6: Install WordPress on Your Domain Name

 

Everything is now set to go if you’re able to purchase web hosting from HostGator or any other website hosting company that supports WordPress hosting. You can use the Softaculous app to install WordPress on your domain name by following their on-screen instructions and prompts.  

 

If you’ve successfully installed your blog, you’ll receive a message to that effect. There is no problem if you’re not installed WordPress before or you’re not confident that you can install WordPress on your domain name. I’ve written a mini blogging guide to teach you how to install WordPress blog using Softaculous app for free. Click here to download the ebook and use it to complete the task in a minute.

 

In my next blogging tutorial, I’ll teach you how to optimize your blog for maximum impact when you want to rank for money keywords on the SERP. This step will make or break your online marketing campaigns if not done right. I encourage you to bookmark this website and make comments below to ignite the discussion.