Email marketing is a valuable method of connecting to your customer base and growing your business. It’s affordable, tends to generate better results than other forms of marketing, increases engagement and retention, and improves brand awareness.
Before you can undertake any email marketing, you need a customer mailing list. However, in New Zealand, you can’t simply collect people’s email addresses and start sending them marketing communications. Doing this is a breach of the Unsolicited Electronic Messages Act 2007 and could earn you a fine of up to $500,000.
To market to your customers via email or text, you need to obtain their consent, which you can do by having them fill in a form or tick a box on a website, or during a face-to-face conversation. Whichever method you use, it’s important to store this information in case you need to prove you’ve obtained your customers’ contact details legitimately. You can find more information about how not to spam on the Department of Internal Affairs website.
You’ll need to decide how you want to manage your list. While you can manually collect and store email addresses and send out emails, as your list grows, it’s much easier to use an email marketing platform like MailChimp, MailerLite, HubSpot, or Constant Contact. They’ll enable you to create and manage your subscriber list and send emails to different audiences. Usually, these platforms have easy-to-use, attractive templates to help you create a professional-looking email newsletter or sales campaign. Many of them have free options for low-volume users, but be sure to check how much you will need to pay once your email list grows.
Here are some ways to ask your customers to sign up to your mailing list:
Create a website pop-up or form
Many of the email marketing platforms have plugins that help you create a subscriber pop-up or form on your website’s home page. When your customer fills in their details, the plugin automatically stores that information in your email database.
In your online checkout
If you sell products online, you can include a sign-up tickbox in both your checkout and your customer account creation pages.
On your contact page
If a customer is filling in your contact form, they clearly would like to hear from you, so it’s a great spot to include a subscriber tickbox.
On your social media channels
Use your Facebook, Twitter, TikTok, or Instagram to drive people to a sign-up page on your website. Be sure to research and follow the marketing rules for each platform, which can differ.
To encourage people to sign up, offer an incentive. It might simply be “sign up to find out about our latest offers and new products”. If you regularly produce helpful blog content, people may want to sign up to be informed whenever you publish a new article. You could also offer a lead magnet, such as a free written guide, template, product sample, or video tutorial.
The quality of your email list will degrade over time as people unsubscribe or stop using the email address they supplied to you. It’s important to grow your database continuously so that you always have a receptive audience for your marketing campaigns.
If you’d like help integrating email marketing into your WordPress website, we can help with that. Get in touch today to find out more.
