Have you given any thought to how you can keep up with your clients? Well, one of the best ways to keep in contact with your customers and keep them up to date on all of your specials and company news is by sending out a newsletter through email. In fact, a study done by MarketingCloud suggests that 77% of consumers prefer permission-based marketing communication through email. 

You can email this newsletter out monthly, weekly or whatever frequency you deem most appropriate. But the important part is to be consistent. Not only do you need to be consistent with your newsletters, but you should also make it your goal to give your customers a reason to want to receive your letters. One of the easiest ways to make your customers want to receive your newsletter is by including discount codes or coupons. These not only give your customers incentive to want to receive your newsletter, but it also encourages them to purchase more of your products or services.

This is what is referred to as email marketing. According to Forbes, not only is email marketing a great way to keep in contact with your customers but it can also help you to build credibility, boost sales, generate leads, promote your services and much more.

And the best part is, any business can use it. However it can be time consuming and tricky to set up if you're not quite sure how to do it. So let's take a moment to discuss email marketing in-depth

How Email Marketing Works

Email marketing is pretty simple if you understand all of the basics. Below are five things that need to be taken care of if you want to be a successful email marketer. Let's go over the process step by step.

Step 1: Choose A Platform

One of the first things you need to do is choose a website that will host the emails you're collecting in a way that will keep you organized. The most important thing is to choose a email marketing service that has a server that you can rely on and that people can unsubscribe from if they need to. According to PC Mag, Campaigner and MailChimp are the two most trustworthy platforms, though there are a few more that we'll discuss later on in this article.

Step 2: Create A List

Once you've created an account, create your main mailing list. You may want to create multiple lists, but in the beginning it's usually best to keep it simple by creating only one. Platforms usually give you the ability to name your lists as well as choose the name of your return address. For example, you may want people to see your name when they receive your email or your company's name. Just make sure it's something that your customers will remember and easily recognize. 

Step 3: Create An Autoresponder

An autoresponder is the email that goes out immediately after someone confirms their first subscription. For example, if you offer a free gift for the people who sign up for your newsletter, then you need to create an autoresponder that has that attachment included once the customer opts-in. This ensures that the person receives the gift immediately. Autoresponders are a great way for you to do less work, but also keep up with your subscribers more efficiently. Also, Hubspot recommends that Autoresponders be sent out 1 day, 5 days and 10 days after the person signs up so that they don't forget that they've joined your mailing list. 

Step 4:Create Opt-In Forms

Within your platform, go to your list and create a signup form that is specific to that list. You may choose to create something for your sidebar, which is seen throughout every page of your website. You may also want to consider placing your form in more than one place as well. BufferApp experienced a huge increase in sign ups by adding more email capture opportunities to their site.

Brian Dean from Backlinko is a perfect example of this. 

He puts his form in several places.