How To Do Email Marketing

How to do email marketing is part of our Christian Blogging Series which is designed to help Jesus bloggers have more effective online ministries. Click here to read the other articles in this series.

Learning the best practices of email marketing is very important since it helps you spread the Word of God as well as the word about the events and promotions of your online Christian ministry.   

Learning how to do email marketing effectively is also vital if you want to monetize your Christian blog because almost all successful bloggers declare that “the money is in the list”.  

Therefore, if you want to have a sustainable Christian blogging ministry and you have prayed about it and feel led to monetize your Christian blog, follow these simple steps and learn the best practices of email marketing.

Grow your email list correctly

Grow your email list the right way by having a sign-up form on your blog that requires subscribers to opt-in to receive your emails. Do not be tempted and buy email addresses since cold emailing annoys people since it clutters their inbox. Click here if you would like to subscribe to our email list.

Segment your email subscribers

Avoid sending the same emails to every subscriber on your list by segmenting your subscribers according to their gender, geographical location, interests and stage in the buying cycle. Doing this allows you to tailor your message and send them emails that are highly relevant to their specific needs which in turn increases their engagement with your ministry.

Send your welcome email immediately

Send your welcome email immediately your subscribers sign up is one of the best practices for email marketing since you are still fresh on their minds as this helps your ministry gain traction in their minds. Waiting for a couple of days before you send them your first email can result in those who have forgotten that they signed up for your newsletter unsubscribing or delegating it as spam.

Personalize your emails

Do not send a generic email that does not speak to any of your subscribers. Instead, personalize your emails as this increases their chances of being opened by 26%.

Write an attention grabbing subject line

When composing your email, write a short, attention grabbing subject line since 33% of emails are opened because of the subject. As you do this, avoid using all CAPS and words like “free” and “sale” as they can trigger email filters and result in your email being sent to the spam folder. In addition, ensure that you pre-header text is also engaging and provides more context to your message as this gives them more incentive to open your emails.

Send a mixture of emails

Send your subscribers a mixture of marketing emails and informational emails. For marketing emails tell them about what your ministry offers and consider automating your marketing messages to create customer journeys that provide valuable content periodically. For informational emails, tell your subscribers about the latest news, events and developments in your topic of interest. As you do all this ensure that your emails deliver your message succinctly without wasting your subscriber’s time since they have many other emails to read and tasks to attend to. For optimum results, cover  only one topic for each email.

Check your emails before you send

Before you hit the send button, check your emails for grammatical and spelling errors as well as broken links to ensure that you are sending emails that best represent your Christian ministry. Make sure that you also have an effective call-to-action (CTA) regardless of whether you decide to use linked text or images. Make sure that you also check how your emails look on different email clients like Gmail, Outlook and AppleMail. Furthermore, ensure that your emails are optimized for all devices (desktops, laptops, tablets, phones) since most of your subscribers will be reading them from the small screens of mobile devices. Finally, check to see that you have given them the option to unsubscribe if they do not want to hear from you again as this gives your ministry a positive image.

Send your emails at the best time

Avoid sending your emails to all your subscribers at the same time and send them according to their time zones since this increases their chances of being opened. In addition, ensure that you do not send them too many emails – one email per week is a good frequency.

Send your emails from a good email address

Avoid sending your emails from generic email addresses like marketing@yourblog.com as this increases the chances of email filters sending them to the spam folder. Instead use a person email like mike@yourblog.com and append your signature, blog name and url address to the email.

Study your email marketing analytics

Study the email marketing data provided by your email provider like your open rate and click through rate so that you can improve your future email campaigns and customer engagement. In addition, ensure that you also conduct A/B testing to discover the best subject line formula, image placement and CTAs for your ministry.

Source: 10 Email Marketing Do’s and Don’ts by Campaign Monitor

Follow these tips and learn how to do email marketing correctly so that you can increase the reach and revenue of your Christian blog and online ministry.