Hey bloggers, is email marketing part of your blog strategy?

It should be.

Email marketing takes your blog to the next level: They’re a match made in heaven.

Email marketing and blogging: The perfect pair.

Have you ever seen one of those couples so perfectly in love it’s hard not to be jealous?

They’re in tune with one another and everything they do is in pursuit of a common goal. They bring out the best in each other.

That’s the type of relationship email marketing and blogging have.

Why do you need email marketing on your blog?

If you have a blog then email marketing is right for you — no ifs, ands, or buts about it.

Do the following questions sound familiar?

• How do I build online relationships with my audience?
• How do I encourage loyalty in my readers and blogging community?

Email marketing, my friends. The answers lie in email marketing.

Email marketing is all about relationships.

Once upon a time, you could build a relationship with your audience entirely on social media. That’s not the case anymore. Every time a social media site updates their algorithm it seems to go against small businesses’ or bloggers’ best interests. What are your options? You can pay to play with the big boys and advertise your blog or have your posts buried in favor of people’s friends and family.

In this, your hour of need, email marketing can step in and help out. It isn’t just a perfect partner for your blog — it also encourages and supports other relationships your blog should have, like with your audience.

Think about it: Blogging isn’t a one-way street. You can type, post, and publish all you want, but if you don’t have any readers for your blog then no amount of work on it will do you any good. You need to capture the attention of your readers and any future readers your blog receives and turn them into repeat visitors.

It’s not as tough as it sounds. If your blog posts are informative and satisfy your audience’s needs (and we’re sure they do) you’re more than halfway there. Your next step?

Add an email marketing sign-up sheet to your blog.

It’s probably the easiest thing you can do to create repeat readers. If someone comes to your blog once there’s no guarantee they’ll be back a second time. However, if they sign up for your email list then they’ll see your content again and that keeps you and your blog top of mind.  

How do you add an email sign-up sheet to your blog? There are a variety of ways, and it will depend on the email marketing tool you use. Don’t fret though, it’s an easy task no matter how you go about it.

How do you encourage loyalty in your relationship with your audience?

Quality content.

Few things end a relationship faster than dating an absolute bore. Don’t be that person in your relationship with your audience. If your content is a snooze-fest, you’re in trouble. Deep trouble.

Your blog (and therefore email) content must be quality content. An email composed of memes won’t inspire trust and will do more harm than good. We have nothing against a good meme, but remember to prioritize substance over a cheap laugh.

When your content is high-quality and relevant to your audience’s needs they’ll want to open your emails and come back to your blog where they can find even more awesome information (so don’t forget to include links in your emails!).

Need some inspiration? Try one of these 5 types of email ideas, all of them put together specifically for bloggers to send to their subscribers.  

You can also try sending:

• Your best performing blog content.
• A guide or other freebie for your most loyal readers.
• A coupon or discount if you sell any products or services.

Whatever email marketing service you use should offer you some kind of click tracking. That means that every time someone clicks on a link in your email it’s recorded and then added to a report for you. By reviewing this report, you can figure out what type of content resonates best with your readers and cater future emails and content accordingly.

Email marketing statistics for bloggers.

Still not sold on adding an email marketing sign-up sheet to your blog? Or not convinced that the (minimal) amount of work is worth the effort?

Perhaps these statistics can convince you otherwise:

• 99% of consumers check their email every day.
• For every $1 you spend on email marketing, you can expect an average return of $38.
• Emails related to hobbies have some of the highest open rates.
• Including a call-to-action in your emails can lead to a 28% increase in your click-through rate.

Market your blog with email.

It’s time to take your blog to the next step, isn’t it?

You know what to do to start a blog and have a plan figured for how to monetize it … now you need to woo your audience.

You can do that with quality content and an email sign up form on your blog. Capture your readers’ attention and email addresses, and never lose touch. Provide valuable, actionable information in your emails, and maybe a sweet deal every now and again, and watch your relationship with your audience bloom.

Our final tip? Make sure the email address you use when sending your emails matches your blog’s domain name. Remember, the goal here is to engender trust with your audience and build your relationship, not have them mark you as spam because they don’t know who [email protected] is.