Email Marketing is a strategy adopted for advertising. It should always be done along with your other digital activities. It helps to reach your audience and keeps them engaged.
First Step
The initial step to your email marketing would be setting up goals, i.e what are you aiming at? Or what do you want your audience to do? Either click your gallery, book your service, buy your product or download any document etc. Accordingly prepare your email content and landing page.
Next step
The next step would be to prepare a list of your potential prospects, the list should be of people who are interested in your business. If you are trying for a newsletter sign-up form, remember to keep the sheet short, the most important field you want is the email id.
Content of your email
Minimal content with high relevance increases the purpose of email marketing. You should not add too much content in a single mail, also avoid sending too many mails with an intention to cover an entire topic. The content should be useful at any point and could also be entertaining. It is good to send personalised emails or add some questionnaires with which you can sort out one’s interest and thereby you can customise your newsletter.
Your business name should be included clearly in the mail. Subject should be short and compelling, should be relating to your service. Also avoid some words like free, reminder or symbols like !, $$ etc which could trigger spam filters.
How frequently to send newsletter?
Send periodically, means once or twice a week maximum or once in a week or once in a month according to your business strategy.
Now that people connect with internet via mobile, tablets, etc, make sure your landing pages are mobile friendly.
A/B testing
It is always a good strategy for A/B testing while firing a campaign. Suppose you are unsure of the subject line you want to use. Here you can send some of your newsletter with a particular subject and some with a different subject and can have check for its performance.
You can simply refer Inout Email Marketer, a MailChimp/AWeber clone script from Inout Scripts for a newsletter service.