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Hello, Guys today I am going to share with you my Email Marketing Technical Guide in 2021 In this guide, I will go through all the concepts and topics that you need to understand well before entering the world of email marketing.
a) Email Marketing Technical Guide Overview:
What is Email Marketing?
Actually, email marketing is a kind of digital marketing, wherein you collect emails from people in a particular niche.
then you send emails to those people promoting a service, product, blog, or whatever so that you can increase your revenue & website visitors.
Benefits of Email Marketing :
the main benefit of email marketing, when compared to other digital marketing strategies, is especially matters:
- price: Do you know that you could send up to 100K emails for 10$!
I will give an explanation later on how you can save a lot of money with e-mail marketing, especially if you use your own e-mail marketing system.
- Simplicity: With e-mail marketing Automation, It’s easy!
nowadays, we have a lot of email marketing services like MailChimp, Aweber, GetResponse, and other companies where they make everything easy for you when you need to manage your email marketing campaigns, email lists, and everything else.
Is Email Marketing Still relevant?
Of course, yes!
- 94% of internet users today use email, even as only 61% use social media.
- 75% of online users say that email marketing is their desired marketing method.
- the “opt-in” function of e-mail allows marketing through consent, which means that people are subscribing to your list and will allow you to market and send them messages.
- You can target a particular audience while you build your lists properly, so you can target by using location, demographics, or interests, or without a doubt people that love your content.
- email messages have a much more significant variety of formatting opportunities than social media messages. We are able to speak about email templates later in the last section.
- email offers more reporting and analytics capability, along with click-through rates, open rates, bounce rates, and conversions.
So email marketing can significantly increase your earnings if you do it successfully, i will show and guide you on how to start successfully and how to observe the best practices, so Don’t worry about anything.
Varieties of email marketers,
Basically, email marketers are two types,
the primary type, we call them “bulk mailers.”
and the second type is “straight marketers.”
But, I created these terms to make it easier with a purpose to recognize; it’s not scientific.
Bulk mailers: are those people who gather, scrape, or buy people’s emails and start sending them promotional emails to promote their service or maybe share an affiliate link to earn a few commissions. They are considered as spammers.
Why spammers?
due to the fact, they are sending emails to those who didn’t allow them to do so, and they don’t know them.
Straight marketers: The “legal” form of email marketing, wherein websites and business owners send emails to only people who subscribed to their lists promoting their services, and sending updates and newsletters.
Email Marketing Structure :
How to start?
To make things super easy, when you want to work with email marketing, you need to understand the email marketing system structure.
especially any email marketing system consists of elements:
The sender: (SMTP service) this is the technical element. It allows you to send emails over the internet.
The management application, where you can configure and manage your email Lists, marketing Campaigns, monitor and analyze outcomes, manage your sending servers, and so on.
So we connect both together to get an email marketing system.
Now we have two choices:
1- we are able to go together with an email marketing company where it provides both parts together in one platform like MailChimp, Aweber, Getresponse, or other companies.
2- Or you may build your personal email marketing system by building or Subscribing to a Sending service(SMTP) like AWS SES, Mailgun, Mandrill…
And installing an email marketing application Like Mailwizz, Mailster, Mamura, Interspire, or other applications.
then you connect both and have your personal system.
the use of your personal system has only one tiny disadvantage, that is building the system manually for the first time, which can take around 2-3 days to set up things correctly. however, then you will be able to send a 10x amount of emails for lower costs.
As an example, you can send up to 100K emails for only 10$, and Yes! it's true.
b) Deeply Analyse Email Marketing :
What is SMTP?
I stated that the first part of an email marketing system is the SMTP service, so what is SMTP?
SMTP or Simple Mail Transfer Protocol is a technical term, and it’s simply a network protocol that is liable for sending emails over the internet.
Click here to learn more about SMTP.
What is an email marketing application?
Now we have an SMTP server that can send emails, however, the important question now is how i can send emails? How am I able to save my email lists and create email marketing campaigns? How can I monitor my campaigns and automate email messages?
simply, we connect an email marketing application to the SMTP service, and then we can control and manage the whole thing, and the app will send emails using the SMTP.
Email marketing services.
The alternative option is to join an email marketing service with the intention to give you each part (SMTP and the application) combined in one easy, simple platform, without worrying about any technical stuff.
Which email marketing service is the best?
whilst you want to choose any service, you need to consider the following four factors:
price
features
Simplicity
Support
1. Pricing: I will make a small comparison between the top 5 email marketing companies.
let’s say we have a list of 5000 contacts(emails).
And we want to send an unlimited number of emails monthly to those contacts.
All companies will start with at least 49$ per month
MailChimp: 74.99$
CampaignMonitor: 49$
GetResponse: 79$
AWeber: 49$
ConvertKit: 79$
So you can see all services start with 49$ with 5000 contacts, if you move further, you may pay up to 400$ for 75000 contacts and so on.
2. features: when we compare features, we see that most of the services have almost the same features.
yes, a few may have funnel builders, like GetResponse, and others can also give you some image hosting capabilities like AWeber and so on.
but when we talk about the core email marketing features, that is list building and management, campaign management and monitor, forms builder, and integrations.
all these tools have identical powerful features.
3. Simplicity: these kinds of top companies have simple platforms, and everybody can learn how to work with, in one day.
4. Support: In general, all have awesome support and response.
So What to choose?
To make things simple for you, when you have just started your online business and you don’t have that huge list, and you only need the core email marketing features, just go to the pricing page and get the cheapest service, or even you can go with the free plan.
if you feel that you need more features, you can then check each one and the particular features that are provided by everyone, and you can select the best that fits your business.
but if your business is growing and you are planning for big email marketing campaigns, then if you can’t afford the recurring prices of these companies, you can go and build your email marketing system.
with your system, you can send 100K only for 10$ with an unlimited number of subscribers.
building Your device
ok, to develop your email marketing system, you need to configure and setup two things:
1- The SMTP Server (the sender)
2- the email marketing application.
you may say: “I don’t have any IT skills, and I don’t want to bother my head with this stuff!”
I am right here to help you accomplish what you think is difficult and make it a piece of cake. yes!
1- building an SMTP Server with 10/10 as a “Sending score”
So the first step is to build the sender server or what we call the SMTP server.
we are able to build this server using several methods and applications:
PowerMTA
Postfix server
Exim
Sendmail
or other services.
Don’t worry about those terms now if you are not familiar with it.
Or you can build using an SMTP service like AWS SES, Mailgun, Mandrill.
and then install an email marketing application Like Mailwizz, Mailster, or other applications. then you definitely connect both and have your system as if you are subscribed to MailChimp or other services.
How does this work?
You need to configure an SMTP service like Amazon SES, which is the cheapest SMTP service compared to all other SMTP companies and has high performance sending rates with an excellent delivery score.
in case you are interested in learning about Amazon SES and how to configure, Click here to learn more about Amazon SES Tutorial
Or if you need to learn how to build your personal SMTP server, you can Check this Tutorial to SET your personal SMTP Server.
Then the next step is to set up a Mailing application. you can use several apps.
you can check the link below to learn how to install Mailwizz and Mailster, which you can get for only a 50$ one-time fee.
Get Mailwizz here
Mailwizz Configuration and Setup
Mailster Configuration and Setup
Click here to Get My free email Sender software.
That’s it! if you want any help, or if you have questions, Just Comment here or mail me personally.
c) Building Email Lists.
What is Email list building?
when we understood the email marketing system, so where to start?
The primary factor you need is to plan a strategy for your business and think about how you'll gather leads (emails) and build your email lists.
So list building is the act of gathering emails into organized Lists.
so you can send them emails… I think it’s apparent.
What is a Lead Magnet?
The perfect and the most common way used to build email Lists properly is by using a Lead Magnet.
simply, a lead magnet is giving something free to people in exchange for their email addresses.
it may be a free ebook, free course, software, or whatever. but it’s preferred to be associated with your service and people’s interest so you can build a focused email list.
additionally, it’s essential to give a high-quality Lead magnet, so people will trust you and will love perhaps to get your premium paid services later when you promote via emails.
Also, there are a lot of different methods and strategies you can use to build a targeted email list. you can check this video here if you need more information:
it is the concept of list building in general, we could now discuss some more details and other techniques to build and grow your email lists and go somehow practically.
1- Newsletter Subscription
It is the basic approach of collecting emails. In case you visit almost any website, you may see a box somewhere on the page asking you if you would like to join the e-newsletter and get updates.
So if you are interested in that website's content, you'll subscribe to get their updates.
Now Most Common Question is How to add subscription forms?
it is easy nowadays because everybody is using WordPress, Blogger, Joomla, or even an already made Website that includes such varieties of forms by default.
What you need to do is simply to connect those forms with your email marketing systems like MailChimp, Aweber, or your own application like Mailwizz or Mailster.
2- Using Popup or slide in Option boxes
you could use timed popups for your website that will appear in your website while someone is reading an article or so.
Best practices and suggestions:
To increase your email lists, you might want to try injecting a few personalities into your call to actions, like this one from Option,
Give value within the call to action: for example, use the following keywords: “download,” “Featured,” “exclusive,” “access,” instead of “sign up” and such conventional phrases.
let people feel about the value or what they will get when they subscribe.
Use Timing: psychologically, you will get more people to subscribe in case you set the offer for a limited time, you could show a countdown timer to stimulate people to get your offer before it ends.
3- Inject your newsletter on social media, the forum’s profile, and email signatures.
if you have a following on Twitter, LinkedIn, a fan base on Facebook, Pinterest, Quora, or whatever Social network or discussion forums, try to inject your newsletter in those places to get new subscribers.
4- Using Paid advertisements :
you can use Facebook / Google advertisements to run a campaign and set the target to collect leads, so then people may be able to sign up directly from within Facebook or Google. Then you could export the email list on your email marketing application from Facebook or Google.
There are a lot of other tips and strategies that you could follow in building email lists, but this was a highlight on the most popular techniques that marketers use.
ok, now we have our Lists and also Our system, so let’s market!
So now, after we built our email marketing system and built our email list, you may start sending emails and market our services.
but before you click on send, there are a few crucial terminologies and concepts that you need to know.
d) Crucial Terminologies.
Open rate and click rates:
When you send an email marketing campaign, as an example, you sent a message to 1000 People. obviously, not everyone will open the message.
So the percentage of people who open the message is the open rate of this campaign. I assume the idea is easy.
for example, if 300 people opened the message, then the open rate is 30%.
The same for click rate, it is the percentage of people who clicked in any click inside the message,
It’s essential to monitor both open and click rates and analyze the outcomes to see how much your campaigns are successful.
How to monitor Open or Click rate?
Usually, all email marketing applications have this built-in capability.
So whether you've got your own email marketing system, or if you are subscribed to an email marketing service (as we explained before), you'll be able to monitor these metrics very easily.
What you need to know also that you can do a split test. You split your campaign into campaigns, and you can change the subject line and the content, or use different SMTP servers,
and then you compare and see which campaign performed better.
Junk mail and Inbox:
it is too annoying for email marketers! I am getting always lots of questions:
“How can I reach the inbox?”
“My emails are going to spam. Please help!”
“How to avoid spam filters?”
and similar questions.
when you send an email to anyone, your email may be labeled as spam or junk email, and it will no longer reach the inbox.
So the recipient will not be notified about the message, and this decreases your open and clicks rates, which will make your email marketing campaigns fail.
Why are Emails marked as junk mail?
especially, we have 3 main elements that may filter your emails as junk mail.
1. Spammy keywords: there is a list of keywords and words which might be labeled as spam keywords, so if your message or subject contains one of these keywords, your message might be probably marked as junk mail.
2. DNS records and message signing: (DKIM, RDNS, SPF):
SPF (Sender Policy Framework):
An SPF record is a TXT record that is added to your domain DNS zone and allows you to set the mail servers that are allowed to send emails from your domain.
Messages sent from a server that isn’t included within the SPF record will be marked as spam or rejected.
As an example, you can’t send an email from your own server and set your sending email as “mail@google.com,” you can’t use google’s domain. It shows that you are trying to spam.
In the same way, you can configure SPF and prevent anyone from using your domain to send emails, So setting SPF is very crucial when it comes to making your domain trusted via other mailing providers.
To install SPF. Open your DNS zone in and add the following TXT record:
“v=spf1 a ip4:XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX ~all”
*Note: replace “xxx” with your server IP.
Now only your server can send emails from your domain.
DKIM (DomainKeys identified Mail) :
A Dkim record is also a text record in your DNS that holds a public authentication key. This key will be verified using a private key saved privately inside your server.
All emails will be signed, and this will avoid any alterations and protect your email originality, and this is very important for your server to archive high sending scores.
RDNS (Reverse DNS):
The reverse DNS is known as a pointer record and is used to point your IP to your domain, its the inverse of the regular DNS A record.
So when you call the IP, you will get the name. It's also a crucial factor in setting up your mail server and increasing your sending score and reputation.
3. Email list health:
keeping your email lists healthy and clean could be very important to keep your Mailing system healthy. To keep your email list healthy, you need to always clean it from any inactive or invalid emails that may cause your bounce rate to increase, and this will harm your reputation.
IP & domain reputation :
when you build an SMTP server or enroll in an SMTP service like Amazon SES and get a dedicated IP for you.
you'll have a rating for your IP and your domain. This score determines if your server will send it to the inbox or not.
So higher score means a good reputation, which means higher delivery to the inbox.
Email Bouncing:
bounce rates and bounce handling is a critical point to take care of if you need to run a professional and successful email marketing campaign.
What is a Bounced email?
Actually, when you send an email to someone, and it’s not delivered for any reason, it will bounce back. So it’s known as a bounced email.
Why do Emails bounce?
the main cause for this is while the target recipient’s email isn't always available or doesn’t exist. sometimes the target email is temporarily down, so you get a soft bounce, and if it doesn’t exist at all, it will be a hard bounce.
The main thing which you must know is that bounce rate could have an enormous impact on your email marketing system, because higher bounce rates may additionally get you blacklisted and make your IP and domain reputation lower. And this may reason your emails to be marked as junk mail.
If you need any help, or if you have questions, Just Comment below.
