30 Jul Tips on How to Grow Your Blog with Email Marketing

Blogs are meant to be read by others. If people aren’t reading your blog, then what is the point of it? When it comes to growing your blog following, utilizing email marketing is a smart way of increasing engagement and promoting your blog. No matter the blog type or category, the challenges people face in promoting their blogs are the same. What should you do so that readers come back for more content? How do you encourage reader loyalty among your visitors? And, how can you monetize your blog?

If done in the right way, email marketing can prove to be an effective method to grow, promote and improve your blog. Businesses both large and small use email marketing to increase their traffic, conversions and sales.

Consider these facts:

According to the Radicati Group, more than half of the world’s population uses email as of 2019. By 2023, email users worldwide are expected to grow to over 4.3 billion. Additionally, the total number of business and consumer emails sent and received in 2019 every day is expected to cross 293 billion, and the figure is projected to reach beyond 347 billion by 2023.

What is Email Marketing?

Email marketing is a very effective way to directly promote your brand through products, services and relevant content. The end goal of email marketing is to develop, build and nurture relationships with existing and potential customers in order to increase customer loyalty and engagement. A well-rounded digital marketing strategy, in addition to email marketing, should also include optimizing your website, blogs and social media accounts. These elements combined are sure to create a strong and positive brand image.

How to Grow Your Blog With Email Marketing

Simply having a blog does not guarantee that readers will find it on their own. While SEO methods are very important to boosting the ranking of your blog pages so that they will reach more (and more relevant) readers, it’s still tough competition out there in the world of search engine results pages (SERPs). Email marketing provides a more direct option for connecting with potential blog readers, as emails are directly delivered to your customers rather than being lost in a sea of competition online.

If you want to promote your blog, and you have high-quality content for your readers, then consider these tips to grow your blog with email marketing:

Understand Your Audience — Understanding your audience is key to ensuring your email marketing succeeds. Details about your subscribers will help in creating a personalized experience for your customers in your emails, which will increase engagement and blog readership. Something as simple as requiring users to provide their name when they sign up for your emails will allow you to personalized the automated email campaigns they receive. Their IP address can also give insight to subscriber locations for further personalization of email content. 

Only Send Emails with Permission — Sending emails to your blog readers without their permission can earn a poor reputation from your audience. Unsolicited emails are seen as spam and not appropriate. Because of this, it’s best to always employ a permission-based system of users agreeing to receive marketing emails from your brand. This will also improve your reputation as a trusted blog.

Keep Theming Consistent — Consistent, clearly identifiable theming is crucial to blogging and email marketing success. Your brand voice should be apparent in your writing style, as well as repeated design elements—both of which should be similar across both your blog posts and email campaigns. A clear brand image will improve engagement with users who development familiarity with your blog’s unique niche.

Follow Through — One of the surest ways to see your engagement plummet is by not following through on the promises you’ve made and expectations you’ve set for your audience. If users signed up for a monthly or weekly email update on your brand and blog, then be sure to deliver that. Update users if frequency or content types are changing, and be open to user feedback on the frequency of emails and quality of blog content.

Lead Subscribers to Your Blog Site — While you want to engage your readers via email, the purpose of the email marketing campaign is to lead readers directly to your website where they can read more of your blog content and, if applicable to your business, purchase products or services. Your emails should always contain links back to your blog and website. This will also help you track from where your readers are coming—whether that be through organic search, email campaigns, social media, etc.

Cater to Categories of Email Subscribers — The process of sending different email types to users in categories such as location, online activity, demographics and interests is called segmentation. This is a more specific way to add personalization to your email marketing campaigns. If you are able to collect information on your subscribers and categorize them into different subscriber groups, you can provide them with content with which they are more likely to engage.

Make the Unsubscribe Options Easy to Find — This isn’t just a thoughtful extra—it’s required by the general data protection requirement (GDPR). Email marketing under GDPR essentially means that, as an email marketer, you need to collect freely given, specific, informed and unambiguous consent (Article 32). To achieve compliance, you have to adopt the following practices:

1. New consumer opt-in permission rules.
2. Proof of consent storing systems.
3. A method through which consumers can ask their personal information removed.

Here are some additional bonus tips on ways to drive blog traffic with email marketing:

• Sign-up Pop-ups — It’s important not to bombard your blog visitors with too many website pop-ups. However, a single pop-up encouraging site visitors to sign up for your email subscription list can be extremely effective for gaining email recipients. Make sure your pop-up appears in a place on the screen that is likely to catch the attention of users without being obnoxious, clearly state the benefits of joining your email list (particularly highlighting content that is “exclusive” and “free”), and utilize an inviting tone.
• Email Signature Links — Providing a link to your personal or company blog within your email signature can also be an effective way of gaining readers. If there are other contributors to your blog, website or company, be sure to have them include a link to the blog in their email signature, as well. Including a short but inviting call to action with a link to the blog will drastically increase how many users follow the link (i.e., “Check out our blog for easy marketing guides: [blog link]”).
• Engaging Subject Lines — Email subject lines are the gateway to reader engagement with your blog and email content. They need to get your subscribers’ attention without appearing spammy. Try to add a brief call to action, ask a question, or appear urgent. If readers don’t feel enticed by your email title, they won’t even open it. So be relevant and engaging!

If you’re looking to improve your marketing strategies with email but don’t know where to start, consider Virtual Stacks Systems UK. Our content and marketing experts can help you create an effective email marketing campaign that is sure to reach and engage your audience. Learn more about your options, and contact us to discuss a personalized strategy for your brand.