Free Full Email Marketing Technical Guide: Step by Step



Welcome everyone to my email marketing technical guide. Here in this guide, I will go through all the basics, concepts and topics that you need to understand very well before entering the world of email marketing.

I will cover the basic and the important following topics:

·        Email Marketing Introduction or Overview:

What is Email Marketing?

Is Email Marketing relevant until now?

Types of Email Marketing?

The Email Marketing System Configuration or Structure?

·        Deep in Email Marketing System:

What is SMTP?

What is Email Marketing App?

Email Marketing Services?

Building Email lists:

What is Email List Building?

What are Lead Magnets?

What is Opt-in Forms?

Important Concepts and Terminologies:

Click and Open Rates?

Spam and Inbox?

Email Bouncing?

IP and Domain Reputation?

 

 

Email Marketing Introduction or Overview:

What is Email Marketing?

Email Marketing is a type of Digital Marketing techniques, where you are collecting emails from the people in a specific niche or a specific aspect which point to Building Email List. After that, you send email to those people to promote a service, product, blog, or anything else, so you can increase revenue and web traffic or whatever the purpose is.

 Benefits of email Marketing:

The Two main advantages of Email Marketing compared to other digital marketing techniques:

1.     Price: You can send hundred thousand emails maybe for just 10$

Later, I will explain how you can save a lot of money in Email Marketing, especially if you use your own Marketing System.

2.     Simplicity: It is simple with using Email Marketing automation

Right now, there are a lot of Email Marketing Services, such as MailChimp, AWeber, GetResponse, Moosend, Woodpecker and much more other companies which make everything easy for you to manage your Email Marketing Campaigns, Email lists and everything else.

And even if you are using your own email system, you can have all these features of other companies.

Is Email Marketing Still Relevant Until Now?

No doubt, yes. By doing research you will find that:

ü More than 90% of internet users use email, while around 60% use social media.

ü Around 70% online users said that their preferred marketing method is Email Marketing.

ü Opt-in feature of allows marketing by consent, which means that people subscribing to your list, so enable you to send them Email Marketing messages.

ü Email marketing messages offer much more extensive range of formatting.

ü Emails offer more reporting and analytics capability like open rates, conversion rates, bounce rates and click rates.

Email marketing can increase your income by doing it right, I will guide you to do it successfully. Don’t worry.

Types of Email Marketers?

1.     Bulk Mailers

2.     Straight Mailers

Bulk Mailers:

Are those individuals who gather, scrape, or purchase individuals' Emails and begin sending them promotional messages to sell them their services or perhaps share affiliate links as partners connect to earn some commissions. They are considered as spammers.

Why spammers?

Since they are sending messages to individuals who didn't allow them to do that, and they don't have any knowledge of them.

Straight Mailers:

The legal type of Email Marketing, where websites and entrepreneurs send messages to just individuals who subscribe to their Email list to promote their services, sending updates and newsletters.

The Email Marketing System Configuration or Structure?

Where to Begin?

To make things very basic, when you need to work with Email Promoting, you need to understand the email marketing system structure well.

Basically, any Email Marketing framework consists of two sections:

1.     The sender (SMTP server): this is the specialized part or the technical part. It permits you to send emails over the internet or web.

 

2.     The Administration Application: where you can arrange, configure and managing your Email Lists, monitor and analyze results, manage Marketing Campaigns, deal with your sending servers, etc.

So, by connecting both together to we get an Email Marketing System.

So, to start we have two options:

·        We can go with an Email Advertising Company, where it gives or provide us with the two sections together in one stage like, Aweber, Getresponse, MailChimp, Moosend, Woodpecker or different companies.

 

·        Or we can build or construct our own Email Marketing System by Building or Buying a Sending Service (SMTP) such as AWS SES, Mailgun, Mandrili and others.

Then, Install it on Email Marketing Application Like Mailwizz, Mamura, Interspire, Mailster, or other different applications.

Then you connect both together to publish your own Email Marketing System.

Utilizing your own Email System, have just a single disadvantage, which is building the system physically interestingly, which can require around 2-3 days to accurately set up things. However, at that point you will actually be able to send a 10x amounts of Email Messages for cheap costs.

For example, you can send up to 100K Emails messages for just 10$, WOW YES!

Deep in Email Marketing System:

What is SMTP?

SMTP which means Simple Mail Transfer Protocol, it is simply a network protocol that is responsible for sending emails over the internet.

What is SMTP Server?


Read the following article to learn more about the SMTP server in 3-4 minutes.

What is SMTP Server? and Its Relation to Email

 

What is an Email Marketing App?

We have now an SMTP server to send emails, but the main problem how can I send Emails? and how can I save my Email List to create my Email Marketing campaigns?

How I can manage, automate and monitor my campaigns to send Emails?

The answer simply is to connect the SMTP server that we own to the Email Marketing Application, so we can manage and control emails using the app that using SMTP service to send emails.

Email Marketing Services?

The other way is subscribing to an Email Marketing Company or Service that have both the SMTP server and the Email Marketing Application, combined together in an easy and simple manner without worrying about the technical stuffs.

What is the best or top email marketing platform?

To choose any service you should consider these important four following factors:

 

ü Pricing

ü Features

ü Simplicity or user-friendly

ü Support

 

1.  Pricing:

We will choose five of the best Email Marketing Companies and perform a small comparison:

Let’s take 5000 contacts or emails.

·        MailChimp: 75$ per month and save 50% for Yearly plan with (35$/m)

·        GetResponse: 54$ per month and save 18% for yearly plan with (44.3$/m)

·        ConvertKit: 79$ per month and save 16.45% for yearly plan with (66$/m)

·        AWeber: 59.99$ per month and save 33% for yearly plan with (50$/m)

·        ActiveCampaign: 99$ monthly or 79$ for annually paid

So, you see that services starts from 54$ and up with the 5000 contacts, if you go up with contacts you may pay up to 400$.

2. Features:

When you compare services, you see that all of them almost the same. Maybe some of them give you funnels builders like GetResponse and others, while some have image hosting capabilities like AWeber.

However, when you see them from the core email marketing features which are campaign management and monitoring, list building and management, Forms builders and integrations, all these tools have the same powerful features.

3.    Simplicity:

All these best Email Marketing Companies have a simple and user-friendly platform. Any one can learn them in one day.

4.    Support:

Generally, all have excellent response and support.

What service to choose?” you think”

To make things easy for you, if you have just started your online business and you don’t have a big list, and you need only the Email Marketing features, just go to the pricing and plans page and choose the cheapest service or you can go with the free plan.

And if you are feeling you need more features, you can check the features details provided by each service and decide which to choose and fits your business needs.

But if you have a growing business and you are planning for a big Email Marketing Campaigns, you can go and build your own Email Marketing System.

You can send with your own built system 100k emails, for just 10$ with unlimited number of subscribers.

 

To develop or build your own Email Marketing System, you need to set and configure two things:

ü The SMTP Server (Sender)

ü The Email Marketing Application

You may think, I don’t have an IT skill or I don’t want to bother myself and my head with these things.

Don’t worry, I am here to help you achieve what you think is very hard and make it easy as a piece of cake!

1. Building an SMTP Server:

Which it is the first step. Building the email sender or which called the SMTP server.

You can build this server with many several methods and applications such as:

  1. PowerMTA
  2. Sendmail
  3. Postfix server
  4. Exim
  5. Or by any other methods and applications

If you are not familiar with these things, don’t worry about these terms now.

Now, if you take the action to build your own Email Marketing System click the link below to start building step by step:

 

Or, the other way you can build your server using an SMTP service like AWS SES, Mailgun, Mandrill. And then install an Email marketing Application Mailwizz, Mailster, or other applications. Then you connect both together and have your own system as if you subscribe to mailchimp, GetResponse or other Email Marketing Services.

 

How to do this and how it works?

You will need to configure an SMTP service such as Amazon SES, which is the cheapest service compared to other services and has high sending rates performance with a super delivery.

Please click the link to this article to start building your SMTP server using the other method: See this awesome tutorial:

AMAZON SES Full Setup Guide – Open The Sending Limits!

 

Building Email lists

What is Email List Building?

The first action you need to start is to have a plan strategy for your business and thinking about how you are going to collect leads or emails and building your email lists.

So, Email Building List is the action of collecting emails and organize them in lists. Then, you send them emails.

What is a Lead Magnet?

The easiest and common way used to collect emails or Building Email lists is Lead Magnets.

Lead Magnet: simply is giving something free (it can be a free eBook, a free course, or software) to people in exchange for their email addresses subscription. Also, it is preferred to be related to your services or products and people interests, so you construct or build a targeted email list.

There is a lot of other methods and tactics to build targeted email lists. If you want more information click and read the article below:

 

Let’s discuss and more details and other methods to build and grow your email lists practically.

1.    Subscription Newsletters:

It’s the basic strategy to collect emails. If you visit almost any website you will see a box somewhere in the page asking you to subscribe to the newsletter and get updates if you would like.

So, if you are interested in that website’s content, you will subscribe to get updates.

How to add subscription forms?

It’s very simple today, because everyone is using a WordPress or blogger, Joomala or even an already made website that includes such forms by default.

What you need to do is to connect these forms with your Email Marketing Systems like GetResponse, MailChimp, AWeber, or your own Application like Mailwizz or Mailster as we discussed and explain above.

2.    Popup or slides in Opt-in boxes:

You can use Popups on your website that appears on your website while someone is reading an article or so on.

Best practices and tips:

·        To increase your email lists, you might want to try injecting some personality into your call to actions, like this one from Optimonk.

·        Give value in the call to actions: for example, use the following keywords: “Download,” “Featured,” “Exclusive,” “Access,” instead of using “Sign Up” and such traditional phrases and keywords.

·        Let people feel about the value or what they will get when they subscribe.

·        Use Timings: You will get more people to subscribe if you set the offer for a limited time, you can show a countdown timer to drive people to get your offer before it ends.

 

3.    Put your newsletters on social media, forum’s profile, and email signatures:

If you have a follower on Twitter, Tik Tok, LinkedIn, fans based on Facebook, Pinterest, Quora, or any social network or Discussion forums, try to inject your Newsletter in these places to get new subscribers.

 

 

4.    Running a Giveaway:

 

Giveaways are known as one of the top strategies in growing, not only in building your email list but also growing on social media, YouTube, and other platforms.

You can use platforms like easypromosapp, rafflecopter , shortstack, or gleam.io to create and manage your Giveaways.

 

There are a lot of other tips and strategies that you can set in building your email lists, but these was a highlight on the top known strategies that Marketers use until now.

Now, after we built our Email Marketing System and built our email lists, you can start sending emails and marketing your services and products.

Before you click send, there are some critical terminologies and basic concepts that you have to know as a marketer.

 

Important Concepts and Terminologies:

Open and Click Rates:

When you send an Email Marketing Campaign, for example, you send a message to 1000 people.

Of course, not everyone will open the message or email.

So, the percentage of people who open the message or email is the open rate of this Campaign. I think the idea is simple.

If 300 people opened the message, then the open rate will be 30%.

The same concept for click rate, it is the percentage of people who clicked in any click inside the message.

It’s essential to observe and monitor both Open and Click rates and analyze the results to see how much your campaigns are being successful.

How you monitor them?

Usually, all Email Marketing Applications have this built-in function.

So, whether you have your own Email Marketing System, or if you are subscribed to an Email Marketing Service (as we explained above), you will be able to monitor these things very easily.

What you need to know also that you can do a split test. You split your campaign into two campaigns, and you can change the subject line and the content, or use different SMTP servers, and then you compare and see which campaign performed better and getting more clicks.

 

Inbox and Spam:

It’s a drawback for email marketers. We always get hundreds of questions about them like:

How do I reach the inbox?

My emails going to spam, help?

How to avoid spam filters?

And much more similar questions.

When you send an email to someone, your email may be classified as a spam email, and it will not reach the inbox of that person.

So, the recipient will not be notified about your message, and this will decrease your open and clicks rates, which leads to make your email marketing campaigns fails.

Why are Emails marked as spam?

Mainly, there are three main factors that may filter your emails as spam:

1-     Spammy Keywords:

There is a list of keywords and words that are categorized as spam keywords, so if your message or subject contains one of these keywords, your message will be probably marked as spam and will not reach the inbox.

2-     DNS records and message signing: (Dkim, rDNS, SPF):

 

·        SPF (Sender Policy Framework):

 

An SPF record is a TXT record that is added to your Domain DNS Zone and allows you to set the mail servers that are allowed to send emails from your domain.

Messages sent from a server that isn’t included in the SPF record will be marked as spam or will be rejected.

For example, you can’t send emails from your own server and set your sending email as “mail@google.com, you can’t use Google’s domain. It indicates that you are trying to spam.

In the same way, you can configure SPF and prevent anyone from using your domain to send emails. So, setting SPF is very important when it comes to making your domain trusted by other mailing providers.

To set up SPF. Open your DNS zone and add the following record:

v=spf1 a ip4:XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX ~all

Replace these XXX with your server IP. So, now only your server can send emails from your domain.

 

·        Dkim (DomainKeys Identified Mail):

 

A Dkim record is also a TXT record in your DNS that holds a public authentication key. This key will be validated using a private key saved privately inside your server.

All emails will be signed, and this will avoid any alterations and protect your email, and this is very important for your server to archive high sending or delivery scores.

·        rDNS (Reverse DNS):

 

The reverse DNS is called a pointer record and is used to point your IP to your domain. It’s the inverse of the regular DNS A record.

So, when you call the IP, you will get the name. It is also an essential factor in setting up your mail server and increasing your sending score and reputation.

3- Email List Health:

By keeping your email lists healthy and clean is very important to keep your mailing system healthy. To keep your Email list healthy, you should always clean it from any inactive or invalid emails that may cause your bounce rate to increase, and this will hurt your reputation.

 

Email Bouncing:

Bounce rates and bounce handling is a critical point to take care if you want to run a professional and Successful Email Marketing Campaigns.

What is an Email Bouncing?

Or what is a Bounced Email?

When you send an email to someone, and it’s not delivered to any reason, it will bounce back. So, it’s called a bounced email.

Why Emails Bounce?

The Main reason for that is when the target recipient’s email is not available or doesn’t exist. Sometimes, the target email is temporarily down, so you get a Soft Bounce, and if it doesn’t exist at all, it will be a Hard Bounce.

The main thing that you must know is that Bounce Rate will have a significant effect on your Email Marketing System, because higher bounce rates may get you blacklisted and make your IP and Domain Reputation lower. And this will cause your emails to be marked as spam.

 

IP and Domain Reputation:

When you build an SMTP server or subscribe to an SMTP service like Amazon SES and get a dedicated IP for you. You will have a score for your IP and your Domain. This score determines if your server will send it to the inbox or not. So, Higher Score means a good reputation, which means better delivery to the inbox.

 

So now, after we built our Email Marketing System and Built our Email List, you can start sending emails and marketing your services and products by sending your Email Marketing Campaigns.