Email marketing

Email marketing for bloggers can be one of the most powerful ways to promote your content. As such, building an effective strategy can grow your audience and keep them coming back for more.

There are a number of ways you can go about achieving this. For starters, you’ll need a suitable email marketing platform and some methods to incentivize your audience to subscribe. If you choose, a few affiliate links to generate some off-site revenue will help too.

In this post, we’ll offer a straightforward guide to email marketing for bloggers. We’ll discuss why email marketing is useful for bloggers, and offer some key tips to help you create a strategy. Let’s get started!

Why email marketing is useful for bloggers

In a general sense, every email you send to a potential or current customer is email marketing. However, this technique typically involves cultivating a subscriber list, then sending them messages with varying degrees of frequency depending on your goals.

This can be an extremely powerful way to connect with your audience. As a blogger, you can keep your captive subscriber list up to date on your latest posts or other relevant events. In turn, this encourages return visits and, over time, builds a sense of community.

In addition, your emails can be a good way to connect with your audience on a more personal level. Many people enjoy getting emails, as long as they are informational, useful, and not ‘spammy.’ Some may even engage directly as a result, providing you further opportunities to connect.

Compared with other direct marketing methods, such as popup offers and pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, building and maintaining an email list of subscribers for your blog can be more effective. With newsletters, you can prove your expertise and credibility by providing value, building trust and generating leads over time.

You can read more about what is email marketing and why it is an important strategy.

How to Create an Email Marketing Strategy for Your Blog (4 Key Tips)

Creating a strategy as well as building your email marketing subscriber list can help you stay focused. With the tips below, you'll be well on your way to success!

1. Build your customer list

Your first step will be to build your customer list. Arguably, this can be the most challenging part of email marketing. Of course, if you don't have customers, your amazing content will go without engagement.

To get more email subscribers, you will need a signup form on your website. Ideally, you want it to stand out and grab your readers' attention with an effective call to action (CTA). You can put one on your home page, about page, or even consider using a popup. For example, take a look at where HubSpot places its subscription form:

The on-brand bright orange contrasts with other low-end components. It grabs the reader's eye, and also provides multiple ways to subscribe to the blog.

One tool that works well for capturing email leads is OptinMonster. It lets you display a variety of popups and forms to grow your email list.

2. Choose an email marketing platform that integrates with WordPress

You'll also want to choose an email marketing platform that integrates with WordPress. With the right tools, you can create simple emails to get the job done:

HubSpot uses a simple format for their emails. Direct branding is at the top, and there are links to additional content.

To create high-converting emails with style within WordPress, we recommend (and use)

The Subscribe Form plugin lets you create customized subscription forms, send beautiful newsletter emails, and provide real-time information about deliverability and performance.

Installation and activation is practically the same as any other WordPress plugin, and we encourage you to take a look at our documentation for a guide on how to get started.

3. Give customers a taste of your latest content

Now, with a subscriber list, you can focus on your emails. Ideally, your email content should lead back to your website in some way. This lets you increase engagement on your blog and engage your audience with valuable content to boot.

Fortunately, email is already highly accessible, especially via mobile, making it a great way to alert readers to new blog posts. However, to further entice them, you may want to give them a taste of what you have to offer. This can be the beginning of your post or an interesting excerpt, followed by a link to the full article on your website. Check out this Neil Patel email:

A simple email message with several links to the latest blog post as well as an excerpt from the first few lines. Hopefully you have started reading the article and are interested enough to continue reading. Thus, traffic to the blog will increase, as will overall engagement.

4. Add affiliate links to generate offsite revenue

Affiliate marketing is just one method you can use to monetize your blog, and it can easily be integrated into your email marketing efforts. It is the technique of marketing a company's products or services in exchange for a commission on converted sales. Usually, this is in the form of an image or a link to the product page.

In addition to your blog posts, you can also include affiliate links in your emails. As long as these links are relevant to your audience, you can use this method to generate additional income.

However, it is important to be careful how you use this strategy. Many links may come across as spammy. Additionally, if the only thing your emails are doing (or at least doing) is plugging a product, they're not providing the value your customers expect. This can negatively impact your list, and in the worst case scenario readers unsubscribe from your mail outs.

Also, be sure to check the terms of your affiliate partnership. Some affiliate programs - notably Amazon Associates - do not allow you to place affiliate links in emails.