Day 19

 Bard

Today teacher asked what was born today? We were thinking and one of my classmates said that maybe it's something to do with an AI. That was very close guess. Today Google launched AI powered chatbot called Bard, which is the analog of ChatGPT, we went on the website, but unfortunately not available in our country just yet.



We also watched one of the last submitted project videos of our classmates. It was very nice. 


Email marketing

One of the main topics we learned about today is email marketing. It is a little bit forgotten, but it shouldn't be, because it is still so powerful! Email is like a push button🔘! It helps in promoting your business, we should send good content. But only should be sent to people who agreed to receive these emails, otherwise it is called spam, and we don't want to be spammy!

Writing formats

When sending an email to couple of people you can use BCC line in email. When writing an email you have 2 different writing formats:

*plain text(all styling is dropped)

*html(you have all formatting)

Spam

Tip-3 ways how to get rid of spam(unwanted newsletters):

1. unsubscribe

2.report & mark as spam

3.set up filter(click three dot button→ write email→create filter→delete

Something new to me was to find out that actually messages in spam folder stay there for 30days and then are moved to the bin.

Lorem Ipsum

Teacher demostrated formatting in email by using website Lorem Ipsum. In publishing and graphic design, Lorem ipsum is a placeholder text commonly used to demonstrate the visual form of a document or a typeface without relying on meaningful content. Lorem ipsum may be used as a placeholder before final copy is available.

Subject

Subject line in email is one of the most important things. You have to put the most attention to it, it has to be inviting, catching attention. The reason for it is, that you have put lots of effort in your email, but it might be not even opened in case if your subject line didn't catch persons attention. As an example subject line- "I blew up the car and didn't realise it till now" In the subject line don't call it what it is, try to have it conversational.

Undo in Gmail

You might have hit send button and realised there is a mistake or something missing. There is a solution for this. You have few seconds to undo your sent email and fix the problem. The small popup window shows and you have 5-30secs to hit it and undo sending. You can set the timer by following these steps: click settings→all settings→general→undo send→then pick the most suitable time from 5 to 30 seconds.

Then we tried to copy and paste some text with video from our blogs, but unfortunately the video part wasn't opening. So that's something we need to look into further. It's always trial and error isn't it? 🤷

Building a list

Always start with sending emails to yourself. This will discipline you, and try to decide on frequency. Let's say, send one email weekly on the same day. In this way people will be expecting to receive your email on certain day. So the order how to move is: have a list→set a date→set frequency(that suits)→stick to it(be regular). You need to have a strategy. For example, retail shops work very well, they offer 10% off if you subscribe to their newsletter. 

GDPR

As an email address is a personal piece, as a business you need to comply to GDPR rules. In certain amount of time emails need to be cleared/removed from your list, or have to ask if the person wishes to remain on the list. It's important to get permission as we don't want to become spam. For instance, teacher told us a story how once he gave his business card in Victoria's Secret store, as a test, and he was added to mailing list.

Numbers

You will grow your mailing list gradually. At the start even small numbers like 25-40 people is very good. Brian told us about website he created Majordomo9.com. Majordomo used to be a listserver, that was used for bulk mailing back in the 90s. 

How to get people on board? The answer is only with hard work! There is no other way around it. Use what is possible, like, fishbowl in the shop, Twitter, do surveys, where you can ask to send the report. Try to use 1 hop, so it's quick for people to land on the page you want them to see. 


Content for email

Content of your emails have to be relevant to your business, can be similar to your Social media platform content. Use your evergreen content. It has to be well designed and well written.

Frequency

Be frequent in sending emails. Same rule applies to the podcasts. Stick to your set frequencies. If you are not frequent you will probably stop doing it altogether. You will build up your readers if you regularly send emails. 

Mailchimp(tool for managing email lists) will give to statistics of your email open rates. If compared to podcasts, emails are more of a disposable, because people who invest in podcast will tend to stay with podcasts.

Mailchimp.com

Mailchimp.com, also known as Intuit Mailchimp, is a marketing automation platform and email marketing service. They offer a great deal of using their service for up to 1000 emails sent per months! For a startup business it is plenty. So teacher Brian showed us step by step how to open an account and do your very 1st newsletter on Mailchimp. See below the steps of setting up account here:
Chose method→import→organise→add emails
Then edit profile→insert name
Always do 3 or 4 of your own email addreses(on different platforms) and send to them first as test, this way you will see how your email looks on different types of email platforms. 
When creating an email it gives you option to chose from template, this is what we chose today, as it is userfriendly, and makes your email look more professional.
Checking email info: click on the three dot button→show original and you will be able to see from who to whom it was sent(backstage of an email).





TallaghtSocial.com

As a trial, we created a newsletter email from our site TallaghtSocial. All you do is, put in a picture or few, add company logo and add text(this is what we do) at the bottom very important not to forget to add link to your website and social media links. Then save and send. Save your template, so you can come back to it and just edit the content, that will save you time next time you do a newsletter.
Bulk emails are also called broadcast emails. Let's be conservative and send test emails.
Conclusion about using Mailchimp service- it's great, very user friendly. Helps to save money and promoting and marketing your business. See the preview of this newsletter: 





Creating Social campaign together!

Lastly we got a task from our teacher to create a social campaign. Teacher is hosting an event. So he asked us to practice our skills, and put some ideas for the social campaign for this event. Few details about it: 2 guys created a massive website 2-tone.info archiving discography. Those guys never met in real life as one of them sadly passed away recently. This website is hosted and maintained by our teacher Brian. In memory of this person, Brian is hosting an event in Bernard Shaw pub, next month on the 9th of April at 19:00. Tickets are €15, can be ordered or paid at the door. We can use the information gathered from this website 2-tone.info. We also listened to The Specials song Gansters




Substack


As another tool to create and manage your subscription emails is Substack.com, which is similar to the Mailchimp. Check out this Kristina's God's video- "7 things that you didn't know about Substack":



Use these tools to make it come alive! Be proactive! 😉📧

Comments

Popular Posts