Free email marketing has become one of the most widely used tools for professionals and small businesses that want to have a direct and close relationship with their customers.
There are many platforms that offer free plans, such as Mailchimp, Sendinblue or MailerLite, which give the possibility of creating and sending email campaigns, automating responses and even analyzing the results.
How to design an effective free email marketing strategy?
Free email marketing platforms have their limitations, but the quality of your campaigns doesn’t have to be compromised. The key is to structure and plan your options so that your strategy really works.
Contact List Segmentation
One of the first steps in a free email marketing strategy is to divide your contacts according to their interests, behaviors or demographic characteristics in order to personalize the results and be able to personalize the messages and improve the results.
Most free email marketing platforms have the option to select and segment customers with basic segmentations, which can be a good starting point.
Good content creation
Quality content is the reason for free email marketing. It’s not just about sending emails to your customers, but also offering them quality, useful and relevant content. Offering good content increases the opening rate and long-term customer retention.
- One-on-one: Free email marketing platforms allow you to personalize your emails. A simple “Hello, and the customer’s name” can mean that the message comes across in a more positive way and increase interest.
- Something special: Add interesting information, exclusive offers, useful guides or news to your emails. The goal is to let your subscribers know that your emails are worth reading.
The importance of the issues
The subject of your email is your cover letter and will be the filter through which subscribers will decide whether to read your content or not. To achieve this, you must make sure that it immediately captures their attention. It must be short, to the point and impactful. Optimizing the subject lines of your free email marketing is essential to improve the opening rate.
Part of the digital email marketing tools is choosing keywords that generate interest, and why not, using emojis can make your email stand out from the rest. Remember not to overuse them, it can be counterproductive.
Free email marketing tools
There are several platforms available to manage your email marketing for free. Some may be more limited than others, but they are all good options for small businesses or professionals who are just starting to explore this alternative.
- Mailchimp – It’s easy to use and has a wide range of integrations, but it’s expensive if you have a large contact list.
- Sendinblue – Their free plan is powerful, especially the automation tools.
- MailerLite: A simple and effective platform for free email marketing for those looking for an easy-to-use tool with good customization features.
- Hubspot: This tool, one of the most powerful on the market, also offers a free trial option.
Automation on free platforms
Being able to enjoy the automation options in free email marketing platforms means being able to better manage time when communicating with customers. In order to have fluidity in constant communications and interactions, the automation of free email marketing tools is essential.
Basic automation in free email marketing
The free email marketing automation features may limit you over time, but its basic functions are very useful depending on which basic functions.
- Welcome sequences: These are sent automatically after a specific action, such as subscribing to your newsletter or downloading a free resource on your website. These emails can be intended to welcome, educate about your products or services, or simply keep the subscriber engaged with your content.
- Email sequences for new subscribers to your list: If a user registers on your website, you can set up an automated welcome email that will be sent instantly.
- Drip campaign settings: to schedule a series of emails that are sent gradually over days and weeks. An easy way to nurture leads and keep customers engaged without overwhelming them.
- Plans with more advanced features are usually paid as the free versions only have a limited number of automations and frequencies.
Optimize email marketing delivery with free tools
One of the most important things when creating a free email marketing strategy is to make sure that your emails are read for their interesting content and that they reach the subscriber and do not end up in the spam folder. There are some recommendations that you can follow to prevent this from happening:
- Domain authentication: some platforms allow authentication of the domain from which you send emails, which improves the entry of your email to the main gateway.
- Keeping content quality and relevant to the user is more likely to avoid spam. Segmenting users to send relevant information is very important at this point.
- Some words and symbols can cause your emails to be sent straight to the spam folder. Avoid words like free, sale, millions, hundreds, bargain and cheap or symbols like the dollar sign.
- Sending emails to inactive or incorrect addresses can cause your domain to suffer and lead to more emails being marked as spam. Pre-verifying valid email addresses will also help reduce this.
- Best sending times: Schedule delivery at times when your subscribers are less active. The best times to do this are early in the morning or late in the afternoon.
- Subject line testing: Some platforms offer the ability to run tests to see which subject line or layout gets the most open. This can be a good way to ensure which format is most engaging for your audience and improve your deliverability.
Free email marketing platforms are a key tool in digital communication with customers and a great way to start getting familiar with this technique is to take advantage of the basic and free plans that some platforms offer.
Maximize the resources you have available, create relevant content, and take advantage of all the features that these free email marketing platforms offer to stay in direct contact with your customers and subscribers. Good email marketing planning, interesting content, and segmentation will lead to an increase in sales and traffic that will undoubtedly translate into the growth of your business.
