This is the fourth part of the 5-part series on Planning Your Website Structure
“How is growing a mailing list helpful to my business?”
Do you need e-mail?
In an age when we all connect on social media, email feels ancient. Yet, email is still a potent and profitable tool for business. Because it is a one-to-one medium, not one-to-many.
Simply put, in almost every line of business, if you have a list of emails of potential customers, you are in a strong marketing position. Depending on if your business is teaching (video course, pdf course, one-on-one classes), design (interior, graphic, landscaping), consultancy (business, marketing, life coach), professional service (financial, legal, medical) or something else, you will need a consistent method to bring in new clients.
A simple list of emails that you can grow and nurture is a good start. There are many email marketing services out there: MailChimp, CovnvertKit, Aweber, Send in Blue, MailerLite and a whole host more.
You need a yearly subscription with one of these (about $300 per year) because the details are too tricky to manually manage on
your own. Some services like MailerLite offer a free service till you cross a certain number of subscribers on your list (1,000 at the time of writing.)
Why do you need an email marketing service?
Once signed up, the service will help you create your list from scratch (through ’subscribe’ forms on your site), maintain various lists and help create/send newsletters and other promotional emails to them.
All sorts of automated email sends are possible. If you’re serious about marketing your service online, it’s difficult to ignore email marketing. If you’re new to the subject, this article gives a quick introduction to email marketing basics. (It makes use of MailChimp as the service provider, but the process is more or less the same with any other service.)
Web builder’s charges
To integrate the chosen email marketing service with your WordPress site, a web builder will have a standard charge at the time of quoting. It is likely to be around $300 although you may see prices many times higher than that!
Once the integration is done at the time of the site build, it is permanent. You will be dealing with the provider’s services from then on. The only other cost you will have is if you take on a professional writer from Fiverr, Upwork, etc. to help you out with writing periodic newsletters (if you choose to send them.)
Email marketing is a time-consuming, attention-demanding activity. For some businesses, it can be very rewarding in building and persuading new customers as part of a constant and systematic process.
COMING UP: Should you hire a copywriter? (If you have other options, don’t.)