Interesting 

Make a mass mailing by e-mail. Bulk Email

Sending email is enough effective method interaction with potential audience. It remains an indispensable tool for Internet marketing even with the active spread of social networks. But how do you send out emails?

Statements that a good budget will be required at least for the purchase of a database of email addresses and payment for services that allow you to automate the process are partly true. But even the longest journey starts with one step. At first, the answer to the question of how to make a mass mailing by email is simple - do it yourself. But when the tool begins to bear fruit in the form of an increase in conversion - the ratio of the number of customers who completed the target action (subscribed to the newsletter, bought a product, called, registered) to users who visited the site or read the letter - you can think about automating the work.

What do you need to know to send a newsletter?

How to make an email newsletter yourself? Before you start creating a mailing list and directly send letters, you should study not only the technical aspects, but also determine the target audience, interests and needs of subscribers. Only knowing your client “in person”, you can successfully sell the product more than once. So, the first step is to at least superficially familiarize yourself with the basic provisions of successful Internet marketing.

Which path to choose: educational, informational content or direct sales

So, the technical knowledge of how to make an email newsletter is not enough for the success of using the tool in Internet marketing. The distribution must be well-structured. You can’t persistently offer a potential client to buy something in every email, as this will make the message chain look like spam. Such mailings are blocked automatic services and added to the blacklist.

There are three most common ways to turn an ordinary subscriber into a satisfied customer.

Educational (cognitive) content - information in the form of text, images, videos, infographics, and so on. Letters with such a strategy should be useful and informative. An online clothing store, for example, can teach girls how to create their own individual style.

Sales directly. Direct sales are recognized as the most inefficient method of building audience loyalty. These emails are more likely to end up in spam. At the same time, the conversion part should complement the previous strategies with educational and entertaining content.

First step. Determine the scope of work

Preparatory stage: you should determine the target audience and its needs, think over a content plan and sales strategy, collect a database of email addresses.

Technical points: you need to create a letter template, develop materials for mailing (write texts, find or make pictures, videos), set up sending letters.

    9:00-10:00 - suitable for any topic;

    15:00-17:00 — good time to send promotional messages (from Monday to Thursday);

    17:00-19:00 - it is best to do a mailing list advertising entertainment events;

    19:00-22:00 - the most active time for shopping in online stores;

    Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday - better days for mailing any subject.

Conversion Tracking: Be sure to keep an eye on the statistics and take action if the conversion is not enough.

Definition of the target audience

How to send out emails to unknown subscribers? Starting to create a mailing list, you should determine who the potential customer is. The main task is to succinctly describe the characteristics of a person in a living language. Next, it is important to understand where you can find the target audience, this will be required to collect the email database. If you need to sell a product that is in seasonal demand (winter tires, swimwear, sleds, sunscreen), you should actively remind yourself of yourself during the period of traditional sales activation.

How to make an email newsletter for those who feel like fish in water in Internet marketing? An option for advanced users: start promoting the product competently so that by the time the client needs to purchase it, the person would already be aware of where to purchase a particular product. For example, stretch ceilings are sold. The design is installed at the end of the repair, so you can start promoting the product at the stage of repair planning and its further implementation.

Drawing up a content plan

Required:

  • a letter confirming your subscription to the newsletter (this is one of the rules of courtesy in Internet marketing);
  • welcome letter (the first after confirmation of the subscription, preferably in in general terms inform the user about when and with what information letters will be sent);
  • farewell letter (for unsubscribed users);
  • gratitude for the completed conversion action (registration, purchase, etc.);
  • "resurrect" letter (sent to potential customers who are not active long time: do not read letters, do not follow links).

You should also develop a chain of letters. They can either be interconnected or be separate “tiles” of information.

Building a database of email addresses

How to make a mailing list based on email? First of all, decide on this database of email addresses. For a successful mailing, only a high-quality email database is needed. Each user must express their consent to receive emails. It is better to abandon shadow methods: buying an email database, collecting addresses fraudulently, and other not entirely honest ways to get a potential client.

But how do you find your potential customers? You can make a one-page site (stub) with an offer to subscribe to the newsletter, offer the user useful content for a subscription (a small e-book on the topic, an interesting checklist or video manual), collect addresses directly from the feed into in social networks, offer a discount for subscribing to the newsletter, use social proof (for example, reviews about the informativeness of the newsletter).

Create a letter template

You will also need an html template for the letter. You can make an email newsletter template from scratch, i.e. write the html code yourself, or use ready-made solutions. In any case, you need to learn the basics of html. You can draw inspiration from great examples of letters.

What else you need to consider when creating a template:

    take care of how the letter will look in mobile version postal service;

    use responsive design — adapt letters, including for widescreen monitors;

    pay attention to typography - do not choose a pretentious font, as well as too small or very large;

    Highlight a call to action - it can be a button "Order", "Register" and so on, but the main thing is that the call to action should attract attention;

    do not complicate - the text should be concise, but informative, there is no need to oversaturate emails with images or videos.

Choosing a service for organizing mailing

How to make your own email newsletter? It is worth taking care of automation and turning to email mailing services. Such tools can be both free and paid. Flat fee services tend to provide more options. At the service of the webmaster here are full statistics, and differentiation of the base by any sign (gender, age, etc.), and other useful things. But it’s better to start with free tools: they are easier and will help a beginner to get used to the difficult task of Internet marketing.

Free (more precisely, conditionally free) services include the following tools:

    SendPulse. You can send 3000 letters per month for free, the maximum number of subscribers is 200. The service provides a large number of ready-made templates for letters.

    Smart Responder. No more than a thousand addresses and 50 thousand letters, 10 MB of disk space is also provided.

    UniSender. Up to 1500 messages per month and no more than 100 subscribers.

    Cogasystem. Up to a hundred addresses in the database and up to 500 letters per month.

    mailchimp. The English-language service allows you to send up to 12 thousand letters per month to no more than 2 thousand subscribers.

    MadMimi. Unlimited number of letters, no more than 100 addresses. Service in English.

Some services are more functional, but all of them contain the minimum necessary set of tools for conducting email newsletters.

Increasing sales is the main task of marketing. Can email marketing be the secret to successful online sales? Of course. The portal says statistical studies Statista: At the beginning of 2015, 20% of US consumers made their purchases online under the influence of an email campaign. Also, users made an order by phone or made a purchase in the store after they read the newsletter:

How to get into this percentage with your email campaign and set up a selling email marketing mechanism? Read our article.

be guided the following rules when creating a sales email newsletter:

  • The benefits are clear. Formulate your advantages in email. When making a purchase, the user compares your offer with the offers of other companies. Having a trump card in your hands, know how to use it. Tell us about the materials from which the goods are made, about technologies, about unique characteristics. The subscriber needs proof that you are better than others.
  • Benefits are obvious. For a second, imagine yourself in the place of the subscriber. He is interested in what exactly the product or service offered in email can help, how they can solve his problems. Tell us what is the usefulness and relevance of your proposal for him. Discounts and promotions are the first helpers in this.
  • The call to action is clear. The letter should have a clear call to action. Direct the attention of your subscriber, tell him what he needs to do after reading the letter: “Buy”, “Purchase”, “Get a discount”, and so on.

Let's see how these three rules apply at the stages of creating a sales letter.

For example, a marketer. This will attract the attention of subscribers and thereby increase the number of discoveries.

At the same time, indicate in the footer all your contacts: number mobile phone employee, Skype login, email, you can add links to social networks, etc.

In order for the content to be sent to be relevant, you need to divide subscribers into groups according to their gender, geographic location, interests, etc.
To send promotional offers, for example, you can offer the user to choose the promotions and discounts from which brands he wants to receive.

Around 205 billion emails are sent every day. This means that 2,400,000 emails are sent every second. There are 74 trillion emails per year. What can you do to increase your email open rate? Pay attention to the subject of the letter. The Open Rate of the email newsletter depends on how bright and catchy it will be. Make sure that the title is not misleading, but accurately conveys the essence of your email offer and inspires a purchase. If you promise a discount, keep your word.

Here are some ideas for selling email subject lines:

  • Ask questions: "Do you like shopping?" “Color educational program: do you have vermilion or incarnate in your wardrobe?”
  • Intrigue: "Shh ... we have a gift for you!"
  • Surprise with the news: "Happened: a new collection ... is already waiting for you";
  • Tell about the benefits using numbers: “7 reasons why you should buy…”;
  • Specify month or year: "Bestsellers of 2016"
  • Guarantee: “We will refund your money if…”.

What is better NOT to do in order not to turn a sales letter into a complete failure:

  • A line of exclamation points is more like a tantrum and won't work in favor of a high email open rate. Use better symbols as attention grabbing. It can be a heart, an asterisk, a sun, and so on.

Again, you need to understand that your theme is at risk of being displayed incorrectly in some email services. For example, in outlook, the heart symbol is not displayed at all. So the subject line of a Carter's sale email looks like this:

  • Recipients are scared away following words in the subject: "Confirm", "Report", "Join".
  • Abbreviations should not be used.
  • What certainly should not be done in a sales mailing list is to upset with the words: "Last chance ...", "Everything is lost ...".

4. We write a selling text

The fact that the main thing in sales is the relationship with the buyer, says Jack Mitchell, author of the book "Hug Your Customers". “Hugs” refers to a sincere desire to make your customer happy. This also applies to email sales. It is necessary to provide the subscriber with all the conditions so that he feels that he is the only one, it is important that his user experience is good. Content must convey this attitude. What will help with this?

1. Personalization

There is a prejudice that addressing by name puts subscribers on guard. But still, statistics confirm the opposite: 80% of subscribers want to make purchases from brands that send personalized emails.

2. The tone of the letter should be credible.

Everything you write should not cause rejection and laughter. "People don't buy from clowns!" - Leo Burnett once said about sales methods. It is important that the text is small but intriguing.

3. Use the well-known AIDA and QUEST sales text formulas:

AIDA: Attention, Interest, Desire, Action

According to this formula, the task of the test is primarily to attract attention, bright and large headlines and first sentences will help in this. Next, we kindle the desire of the subscriber to purchase a product or order a service. Slogans, your advantages, as well as interesting descriptions what you are selling. This chain is concluded by an action that follows the previous three components. Add a call to action button to make it clear to the subscriber what they need to do next.

QUEST: Understand (Understand), Educate (We train), Stimulate (We stimulate), Transition (We encourage action)

These components of the formula describe the tasks of the text in the email:

  • Qualify (We qualify). That is, conditions are created in which the text falls into the zone of interest of those subscribers who are your target audience. In fact, the first paragraph of this formula can be skipped, since this is the task performed in email marketing by segmentation of the mailing list.
  • Understand (We understand). The task of the text is to show the subscriber. How close are his problems to you? With this approach, it is important to show your care and empathy.
  • Educate (We train). At this stage, you show the way to solve the problem.
  • Stimulate (We stimulate). Stimulate the subscriber to action, prove that your offer is the best.
  • Transition (Action). In email, it is expressed in your calls to action.

In the letter in the example below, the principle of writing text according to the QUEST formula is observed.

Finally, share your thoughts! If you have something to say - say it! Don't be afraid to share your opinions, tips or examples from personal experience with your followers. This will pleasantly surprise them and inspire a sense of confidence.

5. Pay attention to details (images)

What will help make your email offer unique? After all, it’s not enough just to make a bright call-to-action button or talk about your benefits. The answer is simple: images good quality. Create a sense of presence with bright, detailed photos of your product. It is the details that will help to make a competitive and unique email offer. When you look at such photos, there is a desire to touch, see live, perhaps try on and, of course, buy.

In the screenshot below, in their email, Burberry pays attention to all the details of the trench coat: buttons on the two sides, stitching on the waistband, water-repellent fabric, shoulder straps.

6. Calls to action

Your letter has a specific purpose, which means there should be a clear call to action. For example, "Order", "Leave a review", "Use a discount", "Go to the site".

8. Adapt email for all devices

Users are increasingly shopping online. According to Data Insight, orders from mobile devices accounts for about 15% of all purchases of Russians. Therefore, it is very important to make all letters adaptive and use as little text as possible in emails, since not everyone is comfortable reading huge canvases from a smartphone. large quantity signs.

9. Create email series

Not all subscribers read every email. If a subscriber receives three, four or five emails, they will read one of them for sure and go to the site to make purchases.

Automation in this case is a great helper, as you can set up a schedule for sending all emails in a series in advance.

The example below shows an online clothing store that sends a series of emails to its subscribers about spring sales:

The first letter is a bright start with the mention of the brands SK-house, Miss Sixty in the subject line, while the second is a reminder of the promotion. To interest, additional brand names are used in the email header.

Instead of a conclusion

There is a marketing concept of "4 P's" regarding successful sales. Sales efficiency will be high if the conditions for the four components are harmoniously observed: product (product), place (place), price (price), promotion (promotion).

Email marketing is an integral part of promotion. We hope that our tips will help you increase initial and repeat sales. But also do not forget to constantly develop and improve the conditions for the other components of the 4P concept.

I am still amazed at how much companies lose by not using email marketing. But even sadder is that a certain group of entrepreneurs perceive email marketing as spam. But email is the fastest and cheapest channel of communication with the client base!

With email marketing, you can:

  • automate the warming up of potential customers,
  • collect information from the market,
  • attract targeted traffic to the site,
  • sell.

Most importantly, these processes can be automated. This means that email marketing is one of the most effective marketing tools!

In confirmation, here are a few figures from Hubspot that should finally convince you of the benefits and necessity of email marketing:

1. 91% of subscribers check their email daily

2. 74% of consumers prefer to receive commercial communications via e-mail

3. 66% of subscribers made an online purchase after receiving a promotional message

4. Email marketing demonstrates a ROI of 4300%

And how many companies do we use email marketing? How many good specialists are there on the market?

I decided to help you a little to take the first step towards implementing email marketing and tell you how to create an email newsletter.

In the article I will tell:

      • Pros and cons of mailing services that I used
      • How to create an email newsletter step by step in the MailerLite service
      • How to segment subscribers
      • How to create subscription forms
      • What mailing options can be sent
      • How to integrate MailerLite with other marketing tools
      • How to create an automatic email thread

Sections of the article

Except step by step instructions, at the end of the article you can find a video tutorial in which I show in detail how to create an email newsletter in MailerLite.

Why Mailer Lite

This is the question that is probably spinning in your head. Why did I choose MailerLite over a dozen other more popular mailing services?

Two reasons - the price / quality ratio and the lack of doubling subscribers.

Price

Previously, I used MailChimp, one of the most popular mailing services. Mailchimp has excellent conditions for companies that implement email marketing: up to 2,000 subscribers, you can use the service absolutely free, but at the same time have limits on sending emails - up to 12,000 emails per month.

In addition, you need to think about the fact that your subscriber base will grow and you will need to factor in the cost of the mailing service. For me, this was an important factor.

For example, for a plan of 15,000-20,000 subscribers, MailerLite charges only $40 per month, while MailChimp charges $150 per month. The price is almost 4 times higher.

Overview of tools in MailerLite

drag and drop

Drag-and-drop is a popular email builder that MailChimp also has.

This means that there are blocks available from which you construct your letter:

  • title,
  • text,
  • button,
  • separator,
  • picture,
  • text and picture,
  • picture gallery,
  • automatic video embedding.

And you can immediately see how it looks in the mobile version.

Thus, the letter is constructed very quickly and simply. There is a built-in photo editor: if you need to crop, edit a photo, add text to it - you can do it right in the service.

Tracking the results of mailings

In MailerLite, you can always see the statistics:

  • types of email clients
  • opening letters,
  • link clicks,
  • replies,
  • spam complaints.

There are all the necessary statistics that an email marketer needs.

Subscription forms for the site

In MailerLite, creating subscription forms is much easier and more convenient than in MailChimp.

You can write absolutely any text on the form, you can immediately assign a signature sheet, where the subscriber should go, you can assign two signature sheets at the same time, which is very convenient.

For example, I segment all new subscribers and at the same time add them to the main database so that they receive not only offers related to their segment, but also a general mailing list.

Automatic email chains

A special advantage of MailerLite is that you can use all the functionality immediately - without switching to a paid mode. By creating a free account, you get all the functionality up to the first thousand subscribers.

In the same MailChimp, you will not be able to use autoresponders in a free account.

MailerLite account overview

Let's go through the registration process together.

We may include the name of a company or organization. If you want, you can put the received bills for paying for the service to your expenses. Specify the name of your company, your phone number, email, password. Click "Create an account".

We get confirmation:

- Thank you for registering, as soon as you start creating emails, the "Draft" and "Sent" sections will appear on this page.

Let's see what is in the personal account.

Letters- empty.

Subscribers- 1 (that is, myself as the author).

Forms- Nothing has been created.

Automation- not created. We can change the information in the settings, let's see. Upload your photo. We can add our first and last name, so that later this information is automatically pulled up in the field of the author of sent letters.

Users. If you have someone else on the team - someone who will be in charge of email marketing - you can add a new user: enter an email address and choose access (User or Administrator).

account settings. Time zone: be sure to set the one time zone that is relevant to the bulk of your customers. This means that if most of your subscribers are in Moscow, then you need to find the Moscow time zone and set it. To send not at a convenient time for yourself, but at a convenient time for your subscribers. Therefore, my default is Moscow-St. Petersburg-Volgograd - this time zone.

MailerLite logo in letters - hide it, leave it if you want.

Integration. You see the services that MailerLite is already integrated with.

You can select Facebook, connect it to the page. Accordingly, users who will click on your page with a call to action may end up in an automatic subscription list.

SumoMe

SumoMe is one of my favorite services that allows you to create popups, various conversion tools. You can integrate with it - and all subscribers who will pass through these tools will immediately fall into your database.

WordPress

Integration with WordPress is the main thing you need if your site is powered by this engine. You can integrate, then download the plugin from MailerLite, install it - and easily install subscription forms on your site in one click, which are created according to the WordPress form.

Read also Subscriber Base: 4 Simple and Quick Strategies to Get Email Subscribers Without a Budget

Next, you see the rest of the services that MailerLite is already integrated with: Developer API, CreateForm, Privy, OptinMonster.

What else you might be interested in here is unsubscribe page.

You can design and write any text you want for people who unsubscribe from your mailing list. You can make some additional offer for them. You can send or redirect them to some page of your site.

For example, for those people who unsubscribe from the mailing list, I suggest reading my best articles and page with book reviews:

People at least come back to my site, some of them then re-subscribe.

Help. If you have any questions, there is a knowledge base, contact email and phone numbers. And there is an online chat.

MailerLite functionality

Let's get straight to the functionality.

Subscriber functionality

Let's start with subscribers.

At the beginning we have one subscription list. If we want to create new group- click on the "Add a new group" button. Next - "enter the name of the group."

Here it could be, for example: "Clients from Moscow"(any variant of the name, you define it yourself) - button "Create", we see - zero subscribers.

The main sheet is named after your company name.

In order to rename it, click on the gear, select "Change group name" and enter the name of the signature sheet. For example, Main List. Contacts of all clients will be stored here, and these clients will receive from us some kind of information letters, newsletters with useful content.

If we need to export the entire database (the email addresses of our subscribers), we can click the appropriate button and our database will be uploaded.

Subscriber stats

  • average open rate,
  • average click through rate,
  • average subscription rate,
  • average unsubscribe rate,
  • subscriber growth,
  • subscriber engagement (read often, sometimes, never read - you will see how active your subscribers are),
  • type of mail client(where people most often open your emails - email services, services, etc.) and the main domains.

Segments

If your subscription list is segmented, then here you will see statistics on segments. So far, we can see “all subscribers” and those who “never opened” here.

You can easily add a new segment according to the specified parameters, for example, "Moskvich". To do this, select the field - City, then "equal" and "Moscow". After that, you save the received segment and can send letters only to subscribers from Moscow.

Custom fields

These are fields that can be added to the subscription form. Place of residence, telephone and so on. If you need to add another field (for example, a company website) - click "Add", then enter a title for the field and a format (text, number or date) - and save.

This is how the basic setup takes place.

How to add subscribers to the database

Adding one subscriber

Now let's go back to our subscription lists.

When we start from scratch, some people can be added right away - for example, some colleagues or clients will want to receive mailings from you. To do this, you need to upload their email to the database.

To add one address, you need to click on the green button with the image of a little man (the tooltip "Add new subscribers" will appear). The fields here are optional. Most importantly, check "this person has given me permission to add them to my list."

Adding a Subscriber Group

The next option to add to the subscription list - "Copy/Paste from Excel"(in order to see the function, open the subscription list by clicking on its name - and then "Add new subscribers"). Paste it into the input field - and the service will automatically pull up this data.

Second option - "Import from a CSV or TXT file."

Usually all email services export the list of subscribers in CSV (including programs like Outlook, etc.) You will need to do this export: click "No file selected" (to select), select the directory and the desired file where you uploaded contact details, pull up the file in this way - and the subscriber base will be loaded to you.

If in the future you need to delete the subscription list, you need to select the subscription list and click on the "Delete" button.

Subscription forms

Now I will show how quickly the subscription form is made. To do this, click on the Add new form».

How to quickly create a new subscription form

In the beginning, we will need to come up with a name for the subscription form. For example, "Newsletter Subscription". Choose the desired form format - add to your site or get a subscription button.

We chose the first one and proceed to the selection of recipients: which sheet the subscribers who subscribe through this form will fall into (if you have several sheets, they will be visible in the list, and you can mark as many sheets as you like). Click "Save" and get into the quick form editor:

Here we see a double confirmation screen.

If the mark is ON, the person will receive a notification letter after subscribing (“Hello, confirm the subscription”), if OFF, additional confirmation is canceled (some options immediately disappear from the settings). When ON is selected, you can set confirmation letter(subject, sender, content - by clicking on the Edit button). For example, send an email with the subject: "Please confirm your newsletter subscription".

In field " Sender"- we can specify another email, name, etc. In the content, you can pull up the heading, enter the text we need, add a call to action (for example, a button called “I Confirm”). Such a letter will be sent to the user.

When you're done editing, click the "Finish" button.

Subscription Thank You Page

You can leave the default option that MailerLite already has. And you can create your own version - add your title, company name, logo.

If you want to send a person to some other thank you page (for example, you give something in exchange for a subscription), you can specify a link, and then after clicking the "Confirm" button, the person will be redirected to the page you need.

It is possible to copy and paste the form code on the site where the form should be (anywhere on the page). If you need the full html code, then click "Show HTML" - and in the window that opens, click "Copy to clipboard".

Editing a subscription form

What can be edited in the subscription form:

  • title (newsletter) of the form - for example, "Subscription to the newsletter";
  • body text - for example, "Sign up for our weekly newsletter", give reasons why this is useful;
  • rename the title (name) of the button to "Subscribe";
  • a thank you message or a transition URL - for example, "Thank you, you are subscribed" (if there is a double confirmation function, you can add - "You will receive an email in which you will need to additionally confirm your subscription to the newsletter").

The form is easily customizable and can be edited as much as possible "for yourself" - and this is its big plus, unlike MailChimp.

Signature form customization

Design

Go to tab "Design".

Here you can change the width of the form, background, frame, font color, title color, the design of the “enter data” field (curve radius, colors, etc.), button color and page background (this is a separate advantage) - the background can be just colored , or it can be set with a picture (there is a choice of templates, or you can take your own). You can create a very beautiful shape.

Any newsletter costs money, so only companies do it, and for the sole purpose of selling. Only now they achieve this goal different ways. I single out three types of mailings for myself: playful, useful and selling.

First, gaming. In this case, companies create an interesting literary character who tells in letters different stories and shares with readers his opinion about everything in the world. This type of mailing, for example, was used by Aimobilco and Budist. Game mailing lists entertain readers and sell a product at the same time. Game and sales are necessarily separated, as interesting film separated from advertising. Only great masters know how to mix product offers well into an interesting article.

The second type is an informative magazine, for example, about the business that we do in Megaplan. We find, reprint or write ourselves useful, interesting material and bring it to the audience. The ultimate goal of such a mailing list is to form a loyal audience that is more likely to use the services of a company that is familiar from a good mailing list than to choose a completely unfamiliar one. Its main task is to keep readers interested.

The third type - the most ineffective - is mailing lists with direct sales. They make a specific product offer to the reader. Those who do not like it simply click the "Spam" button and permanently remove themselves from the mailing list. Recently, copywriter Dmitry Kot published a book about mailings, in which he says that a correct letter from a company should contain 80% useful information and 20% product advertising. A situation in which both the wolves are fed and the sheep are safe: some react to the offer, and those who are not interested in the product simply read the informative part of the mailing list.

How not to get into spam

Spam is advertising that has proven to be useless. If a person responded to the “cheap viagra” spam, this is not spam for him. Mailing is a very risky thing, because it involves an invasion of a person's personal space. And if it turns out that what you tremulously and lovingly wrote is irrelevant to the reader, then it turns out that you have generated spam. To reduce the number of complaints, you need to strive to ensure that the newsletter is of interest to the widest possible range of your readers.

For example, I understand that most of our audience is not interested in reading about the specifics of Megaplan's work, so I write articles on broader topics related to business issues. Goods and services of the company, special offers and promotions, as a rule, are of no interest to anyone. Another thing is when you write in general about life and the world around. It is much more relevant, and people read about it with great pleasure.

Base formation

Mailing efficiency indicators largely depend on the quality of the base. You need to be prepared for the fact that only 20% of the base are "live" people, and the remaining 80% of users instead of workers left their "dump" addresses or simply never open the mailing list. I once heard this phrase: "A magazine should be such that people want to pay to read it." it key principle. The highest quality base consists of people who subscribe to the newsletter themselves. They clearly understand why they need it, and read it of their own free will.

You MUST enter your personal email address. People love to chat
With real people, and not just leave comments on the company's Facebook page

Building such a database is extremely difficult. This can be done only if you treat the newsletter as a separate product that needs to be sold - to prove to buyers how much they will benefit from it. More often it happens otherwise: the base is collected from the addresses left during registration or written on business cards collected at conferences. As a result, 2/3 of the bases receive mailings that they didn't really want.

Good posting rules

Newsletter is not a magical thing that immediately attracts buyers to your site. It's basically just a letter in a box. However, there are a few rules that help increase its effectiveness. First, everything related to sales of new services and promotions should always go under the trailer after useful content. I never suggest that people buy something from Megaplan before I give them something useful from me. This is how the principle of reciprocity works.

Secondly, I never mix advertising or a commercial offer into a useful article. It's illegal, you can't do that. The reader sees
that you are trying to secretly sell something to him, loses confidence in you and sends the mailing list to spam.

3.6 billion accounts

registered
on the ground

64% of recipients

open the letter because of its title

Monday

most effective day for mailing

In addition, mailing is a conversation between a person and a person. There is a simple rule: never send anything that you have not shown to your mother or wife. I always remember that they will read it, and I will never publish something for which I would be ashamed in front of them. That's why I don't try to sell the product, I try not to be fake, not to use clericalism, not to be familiar. In the design of the newsletter, I do my best to make it easier to read: I break up large pieces of text into paragraphs, add subheadings, sidebars, quotes, and sometimes I dilute the text with pictures. All this together adds up to a good, honest and nicely designed newsletter.

In the general mailing list, I always indicate personal mail: in any letter there should be the possibility of direct communication with the author. People love to connect with real people, not just leave comments on a company's Facebook page. Readers will not write just like that, they need motivation: a specific question, a topic and a reason to talk. If I ask readers about something in the mailing list, I get 40-50 letters in response. For all the time I worked at Megaplan, I received only five or seven aggressive letters from inadequate people. Usually people in letters praise, give advice, criticize, and all this is generally very useful.

Where to begin

The first thing to do is understand why you need it at all. Then it is worth answering the question: does your company have something unique that it could share. It could be personal experience employees and manager, the presence of an expert, a resource that will make your mailing list stand out from the rest. Only in this way can it become an effective promotional tool.

At the preparation stage, you should decide who will be responsible for the mailing and how often it should be done. There is no optimal indicator here, it all depends on your capabilities and the subject of the newsletter. You can experiment with frequency to see when people are unfollowing more. In general, it's easy to overdo it on the Internet, but it's hard to underdo it, so sending out once a month is fine too. The main rule is that it must be released according to a clear schedule. You can’t treat it like something secondary that can wait a day or a week. Irregular mailing simply will not work and will be a waste of money and effort.

A person who is engaged in mailing lists has two main tasks. First, stylistic. He must be able to create intelligible, clear and understandable texts. Second, content. He should have a clear understanding of what is worth writing about. In this sense, he simultaneously takes on the functions of an editor, journalist and analyst. His task is to find material that deserves attention in a huge information flow, transform it, add something from himself and, having written the text, understand whether it is interesting to his readers.

An ordinary PR manager will not cope with this task. Such a specialist should be sought among journalists and philologists, people who have a creative and literary taste and are used to working with text. To assess the adequacy of the candidate, ask him to write a test copy and ask clients if they liked it. A good specialist in response will definitely ask what kind of audience you have, what topics they are interested in, what sites and magazines they read.

It is not worth planning what your newsletter will be like in a year, spending three months on expensive design, selecting authors and topics for the future. I advise you to start small and test everything. Do not build a palace right away, start with a one-story house.

Work with hypotheses that are easy to implement and see what response they evoke in readers. The mailing should be carried out sparingly, otherwise it simply will not have enough time and effort. She doesn't have to be perfect and super cool. First of all, it should just come out and be of acceptable quality.

Estimate in your mind and choose the best Option is not difficult. Let's get together... Sending out the first option, i.e. mailing program from a computer, after a fairly short period of time, your IP will be calculated and added to the spam database. To fix this problem, you need to start using a proxy server. There are a lot of them on the net, and you can find them simply by searching by entering the phrase "free proxy server", only the IPs of free proxies have long been added to the spam database, because you are not the first to come to such a decision. Use paid? Their cost is about $10/month. The IP of which, also after a longer period of time, will be added to the spam database thanks to your mailing list. On average, you will have to change proxies 2 times a month. Those. $20 or 580 rubles, provided that the text of your letter is not in spam databases. And again, to put it mildly, these are problems and time.

Sending from hosting, monetary investments are the same as in the paragraph above. Only you risk the IP address of the entire hosting and the possibility of being blocked. The principle remains the same - either buy a proxy or a dedicated IP - which is the same, not for long. Or buy, in addition to the domain, bulletproof hosting for mailing - but they cost a lot of money, we won’t even consider it.

The last option is to send from web services where there are no problems associated with spam databases, IP changes, etc. The cost of services varies, but in the average version, mass notification of customers will cost 500 rubles. per month. On such services, all issues with spam databases have long been resolved, almost always there is a discount program and multifunctional sending.

Having cast aside bias and looked objectively, it is not difficult to choose the best option mass mailing of e-mail letters to postal addresses. Having understood the above, let's plunge into the tact and conscientiousness of notifying subscribers.


Internet mailing ethics.

Internet ethics is a rather broad concept. When applied specifically to the operation of mass mailings, it is rather tact, responsibility, respect and conscientiousness. Naturally, if you don't follow the etiquette, your mailing service will not live long... There will be a lot of negative reviews and complaints, which will lead to loss of income, a ban, or even worse, blocking your account.

With this question, everything is transparent, the subscriber asked, you listened to him with a kind word, politely answered and fulfilled his wishes. In case of refusal, objectively explaining the whole situation of the impossibility of fulfilling his requests.

For example, they asked you to unsubscribe an e-mail address from your mailing list. In no case do not wait for a negative connotation to appear in the subscriber's requests. Just unsubscribe at the first contact and answer him with an answer about the end of the subscription. For such conscientiousness, they will not only say thank you, some of them, on occasion, will speak positively about your service on the network.

Of the tips, we will show the most obvious ones, for non-compliance with which you can quickly get banned.

  • Do not send letters to addresses that have not voluntarily requested mailing;
  • Unsubscribe at the first request, or by talking to change his desire to unsubscribe;
  • Do not send a lot of letters to the same email address, if the text of the letter is large, it is better to send it as an attachment;
  • No censorship, insults, fraud, etc.;
  • Compose letters from a "kind" heart.

If you ignore the requests, then subscribers will find a way not only to spoil the reputation of your business, but also completely ban it. And email newsletter become a tool for destruction.

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