We spend a lot of time on the Benchmark Blog, in our emails, on chat, the phones and email helping businesses do their email marketing. You’d think we’d be pretty good about practicing what we preach, right?

Well, full transparency here. When going through our new book, Clues for the Clueless Email Marketer, we had to admit that even we could be a bit clueless from time to time. It happens to the best of us.

You see, we’re all clueless once in a while. After all, you have to start somewhere. We’re not born knowing everything, as much as some of us would like to think otherwise (just me?!).

The book contains seven quick and easy strategies for nurturing relationships with your email list. After all, it’s your most valuable marketing asset!

Here’s what you have to look forward to when you download Clues for the Clueless Email Marketer:

Grow Your Email List

This chapter talks about how to grow your most valuable marketing asset: your email list.

The first step in doing growing your email list is understanding all the off touchpoints where you have an opportunity to do so.

Here are all the touchpoints we discuss how you can go about growing your list:

• Homepage
• Blog
• Other high trafficked pages
• Social Media
• Over the phone
• In-store/on-location
• Events
• Print Ads

The next step in growing your list is getting your timing right.

Timing comes down to where you place your signup forms on your page and whether you use things like pop-up signup forms or exit-intent signup forms.

The last step for growing your list is the words you use in your signup forms.

It’s important to know what voice to use, what incentive to offer and how to craft a compelling Call To Action (CTA).

Learn how to grow your email list when you download Clues for the Clueless Email Marketer.

Know Your Subscribers

Once you’ve done all the work to bring in as many subscribers as possible, it’s time to gain an understanding of them. After all, it’s important to remember that there’s a person behind every email address.

Even some of the more clueless email marketers have at least heard of list segmentation. This chapter focuses on the ways you can do that both from the start using signup form data and then after signup using their engagement history.

Opportunities for segmentation during signup:

• Gender
• Location
• Industry
• Job Role
• More!

How you can segment based on interests:

• Purchase history
• Website activity
• Clicking habits
• More!

You can also create a preference center to allow your subscribers to segment themselves and choose what types of communications they want to receive from you.

This chapter also discusses proper email list hygiene. That includes actions like list verification and creating a re-engagement campaign and then ultimately removing inactive subscribers.

Learn what it takes to deliver relevant content to your subscribers when you download Clues for the Clueless Email Marketer.

Use New Tools and Technology

Growing your list and caring for it is important. As we already mentioned, your list is your most valuable marketing asset. After that, it’s time to expand your horizons beyond the basics with email marketing.

Some tools and features we believe you need to be taking advantage of:

• Marketing automation
• Targeted Emailing
• A/B Testing
• Integrations

These are features that will save you time, foster better relationships with your contacts, improve your sales and make you a better email marketer overall.

Learn how to take advantage of every aspect of email marketing when you download Clues for the Clueless Email Marketer.

Create Better Content

If you’re not ready to try the more advanced features, though we believe Clues for the Clueless Email Marketer makes it possible to do so, you can focus on improving the content of the emails you are already sending. Or at least try sending some new types of email marketing campaigns.

Here are some of the types of email campaigns you should be sending:

• Welcome Emails
• Promo Emails
• Follow-up Emails
• Newsletters
• Value Emails
• Product Education Emails
• Survey Emails
• Testimonial Emails
• Special Occasion and Holiday Emails

Aside from the types of emails, you can create to better your email marketing, you can also work to improve the content of those emails. Focus on writing better subject lines and on including better topics within the email itself. You can also work on kicking the design of your emails up a notch.

Learn how to send more quality emails when you download Clues for the Clueless Email Marketer.

Get Better Information from Subscribers

Hopefully, by now, you’re starting to understand how important it is to nurture your relationships with the contacts on your email list. The best way to do that is by doing customer-centric email marketing.

To achieve customer-centric email marketing, you need to learn as much as possible about the subscribers on your list.

One great way to get some more intel on your subscribers is to simply ask them. Groundbreaking, we know. Sending polls and surveys is an excellent way to gain some insight into your contacts.

Here are some additional free resources where you can seek out information on your subscribers:

• Social media
• Niche blogs
• Discussion forums
• Q&A sites
• Amazon reviews
• Video sharing communities
• Newsletters
• Search engines
• eBooks, manuals and guides
• Case studies
• Support documentation

Learn how to effectively gain important data on your subscribers via polls, surveys and free resources when you download Clues for the Clueless Email Marketer.

Understand Your Reports

By this point, we’ve discussed how effectively nurture relationships with your email list by growing it, learning from it and sending better content to it. Is it working? That’s where your reports come in.

Your reports are the clues you need to become a better email marketer.

You can look at these elements of your reports to see what is (or isn’t) working for your email marketing:

• Open rate
• Click-through rate
• Opens by hour
• Unsubscribe and abuse

Use this information to see areas that need improvement and what tactics you should be doing more of.

Learn how to turn your report data into a better email marketing strategy when you download Clues for the Clueless Email Marketer.

Seize Opportunities

Carpe diem! Sometimes, it’s possible to tap into the zeitgeist with a timely email and it will get more attention from your subscribers.

Holiday email marketing campaigns are one way to do this because everyone is focused on that day (and may even expect deals or sales around that holiday).

Don’t be afraid to think big! Sometimes, the only limits to what we can achieve with email marketing are what we believe is possible. Give yourself some lofty goals and reverse engineer them to figure out the steps to work towards it.

Learn how to take advantage of the right moment with the right message when you download Clues for the Clueless Email Marketer.

Wrapping Up

The ROI for email marketing is about $42 for every $1 spent. The value of email marketing cannot be understated.

Trying something new can be intimidating. We get that and have been there. Nobody likes to feel like they’re clueless.

That’s why we wrote the book, Clues for the Clueless Email Marketer. Everyone, even all of us here at Benchmark, had to start somewhere. That’s why we’re here to clue you in.

Learn how you can quickly and easily turn your most valuable marketing asset, your email list, into relationships and sales when you download Clues for the Clueless Email Marketer.