Email Marketing for Freelancers
There’s some talk around the Web that email marketing is becoming a thing of the past due to the popularity of social networks. I beg to differ. Consider this: According to a recent Direct Marketing Association study, email marketing’s average return on investment (ROI) is a whopping $45.05 US for every dollar spent. That makes it the highest return of any marketing channel. Even other Internet marketing methods pale with an ROI of $19.94 for every dollar spent.
If an e-newsletter or or other email tool isn’t in your marketing toolbox, the above fact alone should pique your interest. Here are some other bits of information to excite your inner email marketer.
E-newsletters are dirt cheap to produce
When compared to postal mailings, email wins, hands down. Producing a postcard, self mailer or other mailing piece requires a few basic things. You’ll need to have it printed, you’ll need a list and you’ll need to buy postage. Sure, you can print it on demand with an inkjet printer, but the results will likely be somewhat less than professional. Plus, you risk poor positioning in the recipient’s mind when they think, “Hmmm … must not be doing very well if they can’t afford to print a simple mailer.”
Beyond this, you may need to rent or purchase a mailing list, usually from a list broker. Typical mailing list pricing is based on a cost per thousand (CPM) and typical B2B lists average around 16-30 cents per name. Plus, many list brokers have a minimum fee of $500, regardless of the size of the list.
Postage for a 5” X 3-1/2” to a 6” X 4-1/4” will set you back 28 cents in the US. That’s $250 for a mailing of 1000. Even with a bulk permit, it gets pricey pretty quick. Add a mailing house into the mix and you’ll be digging even deeper into your pockets.
E-newsletter services, on the other hand, charge either by the number of emails sent or by the size of your subscriber list. Typical starting fees for top-rated email marketing services range from $9.95 US to $15.00 US per month. Plus, most offer a free trial. I doubt the Post Office will give you one of those.
Email Marketing Services Pack On Loads of Features
Typical feature sets from most services include:
- Generating sign up form code to add to your website
- Opt-in/out management
- Autoresponders
- Easy to use templates (no coding necessary)
- Ability to use your own design & code
- Email preview
- Imports contacts from CSV, TXT, manual entry, cut & paste
- Contacts management
- Contact list segmentation (multiple lists for this and that)
- Automatic removal of unsubscribes & opt-outs
- Email campaign statistics – Sent, Bounces, Spam Reports, Opt-outs, Opens, Clicks & Forwards
- Exportable reports
- Phone, live chat & email support
- FAQ & help sections
Response cycles for email are pretty darn quick
When you send a marketing piece by mail, it will take at least several days before you get any response. Recipients of your emails can immediately click a link, contact you or take other action. Plus, you can begin to track your email statistics within minutes of delivery.
Email is an effective method to drive visitors to your Website
Email is an online tool, the same as your site. Subscribers can open your message, click on a link and be instantly whisked away to your site or a special landing page about an offer in the message. Snail mail requires the recipient to see, and hopefully read, your poignant promotion. Then they’ve got to take the long walk to their computer and type in your site address. Considering that your prospects are busy, that’s a lot to ask. A phone call or other interruption and easily sidetrack them. They may come back and visit your site … or not.
Email is highly trackable
You can track who open your email, when they opened it, what links were clicked and more. That’s great information to learn what’s important to your audience. If you require a name during the sign up process, you can track opens by name. That’s pretty handy.
Emails are forwardable
When was the last time you received a marketing piece in the mail and was so taken by it that you popped a label and stamp on it, ran to the mailbox and sent it to a friend or associate?
Email marketing isn’t all that tough. A large part is coming up with a topic that will resonate with your audience. If it doesn’t, folks will opt-out after just an edition or two. Your email marketing efforts should be more than simply showing off your work. Your topic might be solutions to common audience problems, tips and how-tos, case studies or a combination.
One of the biggest problems with email marketing is running out of ideas to write about. Bookmark blogs, links, articles, etc. that you can use for content research down the road. Take some time to draft a list of potential message topics. Conducting an online survey is also a good idea. Simply ask your subscribers what type of content would be of value to them.
Another big e-newsletter killer is getting busy and not having time to prepare your newsletters. Forget a couple and you’ll lose subscribers faster than a jackrabbit after a triple espresso. It’s a good idea to prepare a few in advance. Most email marketing service will allow you to create messages and schedule them for later delivery.
You’ll also want to give some thought to frequency. Will you be sending out emails once or twice per month? Perhaps weekly is better for you? A large part depends on how much quality content you can put together. Your email marketing service is also a factor. As previously mentioned, some charge by the message, others by the size of your list. Keep this under consideration when deciding on how often you’ll send.
Building Your List
After you’ve found a great topic, set up an account with an email marketing service and decided on how often you’ll send emails, the big challenge rears its head – getting subscribers and building your list.
List building, at least initially, is a stumbling point for many a marketer. With a little planning, it need not be. Start with your friends, clients and colleagues in your address book. Send out an email announcing your newsletter, why it’s the bee’s knees and what benefits they’ll get by subscribing. Be sure to include a line asking them to forward the announcement to their friends and associates.
Don’t forget to promote your newsletter with various social networking channels such as the big three – Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. A retweet here and there can go a long way toward jump starting your list.
Crafting Your E-News
When it comes time to putting your email together, here are few things to keep in mind:
- Subject lines are important
Some email marketers spend as much time on the subject line as they do on the message content. Email marketing service, MailerMailer, did a study and found the best length is 35 characters or less. In fact, that length resulted in an average of 5.1% higher open rates.
- Avoid using all caps in the subject line. They’re perceived as shouting.
- Avoid common spam word such as “free,” “discount” and “save.” Also avoid multiple dollar signs ($$$$), especially with exclamation points ($$$!!!!!!).
- Test various subject lines and test some more.
- Test sending on different days.
Finally, check your email tracking statistics. Over the course of time, you’ll learn what’s important to your readers by seeing what links they click on. Checking your open rates will aid you in drafting better subject lines. Don’t forget to check the days and times subscribers open your emails to learn the best day and time for delivering your news.
Email marketing, when done consistently with great content, is an easily affordable and potentially far reaching tool for savvy freelancers. By providing true value, you’ll soon find yourself converting subscribers into clients and maybe even evangelist for your business.
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Some great tips here, Neil! Another very effective way to use email is to use it for staying in touch with prospects who may not be ready to hire you today. An occasional personal (one-to-one vs. email blast) email with a link to an article of interest, a success story about one of your clients or a quick note about a new service you’re now offering can go a long way. It can help ensure that you’re the first person that prospect calls when he/she needs a freelancer in your field.
Thanks for a great article! I find with e-newsletters the hardest part is building a list… Once you have that list you’ll be fine and dandy. The best part, though, is that you usually get past clients coming back, especially when you send out e-mails wishing them Seasons’ Greetings, etc.
Cheers!
Thanks, Ed.
Also, thanks for sharing some great ideas on other ways to use email to keep on your prospects’ radar screens. Using personal emails with links and info, as you suggest, is an excellent way to help position yourself as a valuable resource.
Great article,
I’ve been using email marketing for a year now. Free services at Mail Chimp allowed me to send 100 emails for free.
I’ve also hired a writer to help me deliver my message to my clients. The emails are informative and let my clients know that I’m there. I’ve also announced new services and pricing. http://bit.ly/8gfxHn
As for ROI, it is definitely worth it. Although I haven’t stopped sending out thank you cards and holiday cards the traditional way.
I am SMO expert. from my field and my quick learning nature i learnt SEO by my self. Link building is most important factor in SEO. for link building i was sending mail to webmasters of similar websites.
Once i was think about this mailing and i got idea for email marketing then i was search and read about email marketing and i learnt it. i got nice template for email marketing from a free email marketing templates site.
i sent many email and i got nice result. So i think email marketing is too good for small business.
I appreciate your article and the whole site.
I was wondering if you could recommend a email service that offers all the features you mention in your article.
Thanks!
I use http://www.verticalresponse.com – been using them for 2 years now – I use the PAYG option
What a great, comprehensive post. I’ve actually had some excellent results (definitely worth the cost) with snail mail, but have considered the e-newsletter route as well. You touched on one thing stopping me: capacity to create and deliver content – especially as I’m working on getting a blog up and running. Any tips on balancing content generation when you have both a blog and an e-newsletter?
Ed – thanks for your additional point about staying in touch with prospects as well. One of my marketing priorities this year is courting a group of top 100 ideal prospects, and I’ll be sure to include e-mail in the mix.
Hi Reza,
Happy to hear the system’s working for you!
When I was researching the article I was surprised to learn that MailChimp is one of the top services. Although I had heard of them, I wasn’t too familiar with them and I haven’t had the chance to use them yet. Perhaps down the road for one of my clients.
Keep up the good work!
Thanks Neil,
It’s a great service, there is a limit of 100 contacts, but it gets accumulated. This applies to how many emails you send also. I really like it because you can track your emails, as well as the interface. I’m sure most of the other services offer the same services. After using it for a year, I have to say that I don’t have any complains.
Thanks, Marlene.
After the initial push, keeping up with content and generating ideas to write about is often a stumbling block. You might consider picking a topic that’s important to your target audience and then setting up StumbleUpon.com with keywords relevant to your topic. Stumble up some sites to get some writing ideas. Or, you can take the easy way out and simply write brief reviews of various sites and resources with a link.
It’s a good idea to set up several emails in advance and schedule them to go out a various dates down the road. That way you’re covered when you get busy and time is at a premium.
Blogs and e-newsletter can, and likely should, work in concert. They’re different audience touch points that can be used to cross-promote your blog and e-newsletter. Pop Twitter into the mix and you’re good to go.
I’ve found that my monthly e-mail newsletter has been a wonderful way to build traffic to my blog. Every issue has a “Best o’ the Blog” section where I feature posts from the previous month. With few exceptions, the blog posts are the most-clicked-on links from the newsletter.
Me again.
Before you launch your newsletter, be sure to test it in a wide variety of e-mail clients. You don’t want to land in the mud puddle that I just did with mine. It looked great in Mozilla Thunderbird (my client) but not so hot in Gmail and Yahoo! e-mail.
I’m currently working on a redesign, and, yes, this time I’m going to test it.
Lesson learned.
Great article to help start off the New Year with. After a weel-earned Christmas break always good to come back refreshed with ideas to win new graphic design clients!
I think this post shows that most people who use the internet don’t understand social media yet. They understand email because it’s a more mainstream communication tool. Each of the plus points of email marketing are tens time better on social networks!!!
The only benefit I would say email marketing has is personalization for the recipient!
Josh makes a good point about social media.
However, there are lots and lots of people out there who just don’t have the time to do the Twittering, Facebooking, and this-and-that-ing that social media requires. Or they’re not interested.
And, wouldn’t ya know it, more than a few of them are our clients. Or our potential clients. So, we need to fish where the fish are. Hence, good old e-mail. The dinosaur that just won’t die.
As for the content of an e-mail newsletter, I’ve found that it’s easiest to break it up into departments. For example, I have a Works in Progress department where I talk about what I’m working on for clients. I’ve mentioned my Best o’ the Blog department in an earlier comment — scroll up for it.
So, with recurring things to write about (the departments), I can get my newsletter done much faster.
Now, a note about the actual mailing list. I don’t have a subscribe box on my website. Why not? Because I want a qualified list. I’ve found that people who drop their e-mail addresses into a signup box aren’t the folks who fit my Ideal Client Profile. Which means that I’m wasting money sending my newsletter to them.
I could go on at great length about who I consider to be qualified enough to put on my newsletter list, but ya know what? I feel a Freelance Switch article coming on.
Great Article! I’ve recently added a “newsletter” box to my website and I was surprised by the amount of subscribers I had coming through… some existing clients, some potential new clients… then the reality of it all set in: I have to send this thing out now!
You brought up a lot of great points… very thorough!
Thanks!
Beware the pitfalls of over-tracking your email recipients.
For one thing – tracking who opened the email and when they opened it is hit-or-miss at best – services like gmail and yahoo usually block that functionality as does the thunderbird email client. For another thing, if any of your potential clients are privacy conscious, chances are they will note the tracking mechanisms (they are impossible to disguise effectively) and may feel that someone willing to invade their privacy simply for marketing purposes is an untrustworthy business partner. This is standard “respect your customer” stuff.
Furthermore, beware whom you employ to provide these email marketing services. Do you trust them with your client list? A close friend of mine witnessed E*Trade get burned with outsourced marketing – he had an email account that was dedicated to E*Trade and E*Trade alone. He started getting marketing email from E*Trade promoting extra services they wanted him to sign up for, but E*Trade was using one of these 3rd party marketing companies to send the email. A year goes by and he starts getting marketing email for TD Ameritrade – at his E*Trade-only email account. Turned out TD Ameritrade was using the same 3rd party marketing company to send the email as E*Trade had been using – obviously these guys kept a copy of E*Trade’s client list and “rented” it to Ameritrade.
This is an excellent step-by-step. I’ve thought about creating a newsletter or using email marketing to promote my business. This makes it sound pretty easy. Now I just need to figure out which service to use. I hear good things about Aweber.
When it comes to finding content for email newsletters, I find the easiest and most effective method is to simply ask your readers to send in tips relating to your niche.
From your point of view, you get:
a) Content created for you (which you just have to reformat)
b) Show social proof to your readers that other people read your newsletter too
From your readers’ point of view, they get:
a) Genuinely useful content
b) The feeling they’re part of a community
On a newsletter I created for a client over 2 years ago, the readers’ tips section (which only had 5 tips per month) has consistently been the most clicked-through item.
If you’ve not tried it, I suggest you give it a go…
Any recommendations for Email Marketing Services?
@Reza says Mail Chimp. Are there any others? And their costs?
Duncan,
I use Constant Contact for mine. I have some associates who swear by Emma, AWebber or others. The feature sets are all pretty similar as is the pricing. I think it’s a matter of trying them out and see what interface and feature set works best for you. Check out my blog on neiltortorella.com. I’m doing an email marketing series and one of the posts addresses how to choose an email service.
Josh,
Social media is important, but I believe it’s one of [hopefully] several audience touchpoints. Twitter, Facebook, LinedIn and the likes should work in concert with one’s email marketing efforts. Together they all create a sort of marketing synergy.
Excellent article, Neil, and we’ll link to it from the http://www.MarketingMixBlog.com today.
We love Emma so much we have a partnership with them so anyone who mentions “Marketing Mentor” gets 20% off.
And I swear by email marketing, even though people’s inboxes are overflowing. It’s still the best way to directly reach the people you want to reach.
Campaign Monitor is the tops for me. Easiest to use, most control. I love it. I tried Mail Chimp and it never “clicked.”
Hi Ilise.
Thanks for the kinds words about the article. And thanks for the link.
Wasn’t Emma started by a group of designers?
Fantastic resource here. I haven’t dabbled much into email marketing, for my blog or my freelancing yet, although I definitely get the benefits. It’s definitely one of my top goals for this next year–to learn more about it’s strategies and to actually get a list going.
One of my clients is really struggling to find a sender that will allow his business to send emails. He runs a poker website and it seems that most email senders think that EVERY poker website is sending spam email to every email address they can get their hands on.
I have tried 10+ different options but nobody will touch him. Does anyone know of a sender that allows poker/gambling related businesses to send to agreed lists?
http://myemma.com/
I have no affiliation with them, but my wife has used their service for e-mail newsletters for almost two years. She is completely tech-phobic and couldn’t code a thing if she tried.
Their service, response, tracking, templates, and overall packages are an incredible value. If you want great service, check them out.
gr8 mailChimp addvert in comments :/
Neil, good article, especially for those who are new to e-newsletters or more comfortable with social network marketing. There’s no reason you can’t integrate an e-newsletter into your marketing plan, as long as both are well-thought-out. For two years I’ve been producing the LunarLetter (ties in to my company name, A Blue Moon Arts). And while it’s far from perfect, I believe it’s helped my company come through the recent tough economic times.
Hi Chris,
That’s going to be a tough one. Most email marketing services are pretty rigorous about avoiding gambling sites. Given that email marketing is their business, any potential, or even perceived, spam or spam-aiding could be a big headache for them so I imagine they simply won’t take the risk.
You may need to consider an offline option. I found this link to reviews of some offline, standalone email marketing software:
http://email-marketing-software-review.toptenreviews.com/
I hope this helps you out.
Thanks everyone, for your responses to my question and your advice in general. I’m bookmarking this post for sure!
Hi Neil,
Great article.
Email marketing is so often overlooked but, if its done well, it can be a very valuable addition.
I use campaignmonitor.com as it’s absolutely brilliant and designed specifically for designers to resell. It is hand’s down one of the best web-apps I have ever seen.
I’ve used it with many clients for my freelancing business and have, just a few days ago, setup a stand-alone website called: http://www.mailcall.co.nz to target potential new clients.
I haven’t tried Mail Chimp but, to my knowledge, they don’t appear to offer a reseller type service.
I encourage anyone who wants to provide this sort of service to their customers to check out http://www.campaignmonitor.com … you can’t lose with it.
Cheers
Mark
This article is right on. We’ve been sending 2,000,000 emails a month for the last couple of years for our larger clients gravitating away from the old postcard. Email IS the best bulk option.
Always do a ‘pay-as-you-go’ option. CampaignMonitor.com is a great first option for people just getting started, but their pricing is too high for lists over 10,000. Avoid monthly subscription services like ConstantContact.com. They make their money from people who pay monthly, but don’t send monthly.
Also try to get a service that doesn’t add their brand at the bottom of your emails. Very tacky abuse of your email databases.
Finally, remember “KISS”. Keep your emails short and sweet with a very visible “Buy Now” or “Click Here” button.
Enjoy,
Tim D
I’ve recently set up a mailing list using an already mentioned service, to get the contacts of people interested in a e-learning course, which I’m going to launch in a few days.
I must say I’m impressed by the amount of people that have signed-up for the newsletter, almost 1 on 5 web page visitors, a number I’d have never suspected.
Very interesting. This is good information. Our website can use this. Thanks.
Thanks Neil,
There seems to be some good options via that link, I hadn’t considered an offline option. The most suitable option seems to be around $400 which seems to be good value. We all use Macs here though, and I’m not sure if I can use many of those apps on Mac OS X.
I’m going to have a more in depth look this afternoon, make a purchase, and start sending those emails. Thanks again.
Chris.
Hi Chris,
Happy to help out. If you find they’re all Windows apps, you might consider a Windows emulator for Mac. I’m not really up on this stuff, but if you’re on pre-Intel, Virtual PC might work. If you’re on an Intel Mac, here’s a link with some info:
http://www.macwindows.com/winintelmac.html
Nice article. A few missing bits: data protection is a vital consideration – a single contravention can mean hefty fines and/or jail time in parts of the EU (Germany and Spain in particular – the UK is about the loosest implementation). For any service that involves moving data out of the EU, you need to get explicit permission from your users to do so (on top of explicit opt-in). This applies even if you don’t send email.
I’d steer clear of desktop apps for anything more than a couple of hundred subscribers. It’s more or less impossible to run a reliable service that way – you need to be really intimate with your mail server to do it properly.
Subject lines are the subject of far too much scrutiny – some people get really hung up on them. We had a client accidentally sent out a mailing to 200k people with ‘test’ as the subject. They were furious until we pointed out that opens and clicks were up 300% relative to their previous carefully crafted subjects… You just never can tell!
Another vital component these days is DKIM support: if you don’t have it and use it, you’ll find delivery to yahoo domains in particular (which includes btinternet in the UK) in any quantity mostly won’t work.
Please excuse a little trumpet blowing – We run a UK-based email marketing service (http://www.smartmessages.net/) which does pretty much everything listed in here, though our primary focus is on large scale integrations via our API. Our basic service is £30/month to mail up to 5k people as much as you like. While it is a subscription service, you can hop on and off easily. We can offer reseller type arrangements on request. Endless help and advce to go with it of course…
Thanks for shedding some light on DKIM support. I had been puzzled for quite some time over why emails were not appearing in my yahoo test account during testing!
I’d first like to thank you for shedding light on this new channel of marketing! Not a lot of companies know how to use emails effectively to get their brand out there and I’ve seen many companies crash and burn and a few succeed. I’ve been producing emails for a company in Portland, OR for around 4 years and I must say this is the most cost effective median out there!
Hazzah for email marketing!
good points! Thank you Neil.