Recap: Email Marketing for Blog Success

Our July speaker, Karen Talavera, stepped up to address the room with a t-shirt that read, “The future is (f)email.” That was her first step in making a good impression with an audience of (mostly) female bloggers.

Her second was offering great advice. We heard many tips from Karen, a recognized email consultant and digital marketer, as well as the founder of Synchronicity Marketing.

Here’s her advice on using email marketing for bloggers…

Get started

No matter how little or often you think you’ll email, start building a list. Good platforms include MailChimp, Emma and Aweber.

Use different strategies to grow your list

Your list is marketing gold, so do what you can to get more subscribers…

• Pop-ups are still the #1 generator of email subscribers. Use them wisely.
• Have more than one place to sign up on your website.
• Offer gated or exclusive content (checklists, guides, resources) in exchange for emails.
• Use reminders on social media to drive fans to your email sign up page.

Let subscribers know, like and trust you

Your first few emails should serve as an “orientation” to help them get to know and trust you. You can do this with one email or a series…

• Send a welcome and confirmation email as the first message, then continue with your regular email send outs.
• Create a welcome and onboarding series of emails (2 to 4 messages) to describe the basics of your topic, what you offer, etc.

Look at email engagement

As with anything online, you can see how well you’re doing by checking your numbers. You’re doing well if your open rates are 22% or higher and your click-through rates are in the double digits. But it often varies based on the niche.

To get a true measure of your email engagement, look at open reach, click-through reach and conversions. While an open rate shows how many subscribers opened one email, open reach shows how many opened ANY of your emails over a specific time, like a month or quarter.

For example, your open rate for one email may be 20%, but your open reach over 3 months might be 50%. This means 50% of all subscribers opened at least one email during that time. Read more about this on her post about open rates.

Timing and format

Karen suggests sending emails more than once a month (weekly or every other week) for better results. Otherwise, if a subscriber misses just one email, it’ll be 60 days before they see anything from you again. And by that time, they might forget they signed up in the first place.

Another tip for bloggers… since a click could be considered a “conversion” for blogs, it might be best to email in digest format. This way, readers would have to click to your blog to finish reading the post.

Email marketing resources

For more on email, get the Ultimate Email Marketing Resources Guide and other free resources from Karen’s site at Synchronicity Marketing.

Also, check Really Good Emails, a blog and library of good email marketing messages and designs for inspiration.

Follow Karen on Twitter or Facebook as well.

Our host, Café Collective

A big thank you goes to our host and sponsor, Café Collective. The space was warm and inviting and the coffee was delicious. We’ll be back!