Email Marketing Essentials

Importance of Email Marketing

People these days are looking for the best way to get in touch with their customers. I hear the idea of building a community bandied around and it is a great idea when you have the time to put into it.

1. Email is the most used channel of any channel you can hope for

Email Users in %

 

There are over 3 billion people in the world using email. To sign up for any social media you need an email address, meaning this will always be the case.  Now nearly half of the people in the western world use their email on their smartphones which means that you can get your message straight to people’s hands in seconds.

2. It is super personal

 

Make it personal not general

Email is one of the most personal types of contact you can have. Why is this important? Because your customers don’t want to feel like they are just a number on a spreadsheet they want a personalized message. They want to feel special like you care about them and they are the only person getting this message. How many times have you received a generic “hello user” email?

3. Engagement rates are amazing!!

 

Open Rate / Click-Through Rate

With Facebook and Twitter, you have endless streams of content which are generally full of pictures and videos of people’s cats and dogs doing funny things. For your business, this is a killer since you don’t want to engage in this. With an email marketing service, however, people have to actively look at emails and decide if they want to delete or keep them, they can be very focused and to the point. If you can amaze people in the first second they open your email and you keep them coming back for more and more again and again.

4. The best channel for ROI

Email marketing and email campaigns are ranked as the best channel for return on investment with 68% of people saying either good or excellent return on investment this year. Why would you spend time and money on anything else when you can spend time creating a great email campaign to engage your already adoring customers?

Tips for Successful Email Marketing Campaigns

As any digital marketing expert will tell you, one of the most effective methods of reaching the desired audience and increasing organic website traffic is through the execution of a successful email marketing campaign.

If planned and maintained correctly, a successful email campaign can become a key element in an overall digital marketing strategy.

In order to make an Email campaign tick, one must follow 10 essential guidelines to ensure every aspect of the campaign runs smoothly and effectively.

Set Your Goals

The first thing you need to do before you launch anything is to assess your goals and objectives. Define why you are launching this campaign in the first place, what you hope to achieve and the audience you’re hoping to market to.

Doing this will set the foundation for the whole campaign and give you a clear insight into what you want to achieve. If you don’t set your goals in place you can be sure your campaign will fall apart very quickly.

Plan your activities

Just like a builder wouldn’t dream of building a house without first laying down a foundation a digital marketing team definitely wouldn’t launch an email campaign without having a proper plan in place.

  • Analysing and understanding your goals and objectives.
  • Assess how you’re going to achieve these goals.
  • Putting a clear and precise strategy in place ensures plain sailing in implementing the other elements of the campaign.

Identify your target audience

After the initial strategy is devised it is now time to set the target audience by conducting market research, assessing the customer’s needs and creating a profile of the specific demographic you feel may be interested in your product or service by doing this you can save time, resources and money while attracting the right traffic towards your website.

It is important to do your homework with this, for instance, a life insurance company would hardly direct an email campaign at an under-50 demographic nor would a sportswear retailer direct a campaign at an over 35 demographic meaning you must always customize to the product or service at hand.

Become more focused

Email marketing campaigns can be an effective way to reach potential customers with the information they need and want.  It has a place in the sales funnel as it narrows and people seek more specific and tailored content.  Visitors arrive started with email marketing or at your website looking for broad, general information about a problem they want to solve.  As they learn more from you, their questions become more focused.

The information they want at that point in the sales funnel is usually more detailed and varied than what you would want on your website.  (You want to have a comprehensive website, but not one so full of detail that people feel lost in it.)  Email marketing is how you can get people the details they want. Procuring these details will allow you to begin building your email marketing segmentation strategy.

On your site, you should have calls to action that allow people to request further information from you. It might be an ebook or a chance to participate in a webinar.  It might simply be your general email newsletter.  But whatever it is, you should ask them for some information about themselves when they request it.

Create an Email list

At this stage, you have the strategy in place and the audience profile built so now it’s time to create your email list.

This can be done in a number of ways, one is by a subscription service by signing up via the company website, also utilising social media is another way to encourage people to sign up.

Alternatively, you can use a third-party resource such as MailChimp which provides paid mailing lists which save a lot of time and work for a nominal fee. This is suitable and effective for a larger company looking to branch out into the tens of thousands mark.

Use The Right Email List-Building Strategies

To maximize success with email campaigns, it is essential to employ list-building strategies. LinkedIn is a useful platform for B2B companies to build their subscriber base, but it doesn’t always work for B2C brands.

Use lead magnets

Having a lead magnet is an effective way to draw in potential customers to your mailing list. It could be in many different forms and geared towards people who would benefit from having a free email address. Unfortunately, people have become more cautious about providing personal information, so you must make sure your lead magnet is valuable in order to get email addresses. Think of lead magnets as something helpful and useful which will make prospects’ lives easier. Can you come up with some lead magnet designs?

Remove Inactive Subscribers to Keep Your List Fresh

It is essential to keep in contact with email subscribers on a consistent basis. However, the emails may become outdated over time due to subscribers changing emails or no longer being interested in the company. It can be beneficial to remove any subscribers who have not responded to emails in the last six months. Additionally, it is a good idea to send out additional emails to attract new subscribers.

Create Eye-catching headline

Try and capture the imagination of the audience here, nobody wants to see another spammy-looking generic email popping up in their inbox, providing a title that makes an email too irresistible for a person NOT to open gives a huge call to action advantage.

For instance, a department store promoting an upcoming sale using a title like “ SUPER SIZZLING SUMMER SALE COMING SOON. IT’S TOO HOT TO MISS!!” would command the interest of a potential customer straight away.

Creating Engaging Subject Lines
6 Steps To Creating The Perfect Email Subject Lines

Create a Subscription/Landing page

There’s no point in creating a beautifully crafted email without having a landing page for the audience to visit upon opening.

Make sure to create and provide links to a subscription form (with a subsequent thank you form!) along with a website landing page which provides more in-depth details of what you’re promoting or selling, do this correctly and watch those conversion rates soar!

Provide an Email unsubscribe option

An unsubscribe link is a link in your email campaign that allows users to cancel their subscriptions when they don’t want to receive any more emails from you. Unsubscribe links are essential to protect your email deliverability and are also required by many spam laws around the world.

There may be several laws or opinions to consider when deciding whether or not to have an unsubscribe link for digital life.

Include instructions on how to unsubscribe from future emails. Your message must explain how the recipient can opt out of getting emails from you or opt-in from the future, in a way that is easy to understand.

Deliver a connected experience across all your customer emails

The wide choice of products available today means every interaction you make with your customer will be the critical touch point for the success of the company. From marketing emails to transactions, ensure you offer the best possible customer experience.

Integrate with Social Media

Now we come to social media, it’s like marmite, some love it, some hate it but the facts are it has become CRUCIAL in all aspects of digital marketing with email marketing channels being no different, combining both can be a match made in heaven as it gives potential to

  • Expand the potential reach of your emails.
  • Grow your email list by attracting new subscribers
  • Provide better engagement and connectivity to your potential audience.

A lot of clothing catalogues and retailers use this to great effect, Topman is a prime example of this with an array of social media sharing buttons and links positioned at the footer of their email templates.

Create Stable Frequency

There’s nothing worse than opening up your inbox to find a litany of repetitive annoying marketing emails from the same source, people don’t like to be harassed and have a product or service forced upon them even if they have subscribed so in that respect keep it subtle.

Distributing twice-weekly emails would more than suffice, this way you’re seen to be engaging yet not too overbearing, keep the content consistent and relevant to the product and try to change the email template regularly, people won’t open something they feel they have seen before!

Automate email sending

On the one hand, you want to automate some of your email marketing strategy and processes to be more efficient. But on the other hand, digital marketing is all about making a personal connection and engaging with people. Is it possible to reconcile these truths? Can you use automation to step up your email marketing while also making it more personal? Absolutely. In fact, automation can make your email efforts more personal, not less. And yes, this is a powerful strategy for small businesses – especially those selling online.

Automation isn’t the answer to all of your emails. If you receive a query, it merits as personal and specific a reply as possible. Sending an automated response confirming that the query was received and a reply will follow is fine – just make sure the reply addresses the specific questions posed. If you get many similar queries, you might be tempted to use a cut-and-paste reply. But really, what you should do in that situation is fill in the missing information on your website and make sure it is easy to find!

The deliverability ratings of your email marketing software or marketing automation vendor should also be carefully examined.

Keep It Responsive

Most people nowadays are using mobile devices and tablets to open and read their emails so it is vitally important that you design mobile-responsive emails.

If people open their emails and are unable to read them without pinching the screen then you can be certain they won’t go to the trouble of reading them! So make it easy, keep it responsive and easy to read and build up that subscriber list.

Create Call To Actions Elements

A call to action is the reason why you’re sending your email, you want the audience to come on to your website and engage with your business.

It is important to provide appropriate wording to command the attention of the audience and provide visible links throughout the email link directly to pages on your website.

Avoid Spam Filters

It is essential to construct an email that follows all of the necessary guidelines so that it will be effective in reaching the desired audience and not get lost in the vastness of the internet. Furthermore, it is important to be mindful of, not erasing emails that may be spam, as there is a chance they may contain something relevant.

Think Smartphone

Recent studies show that over 65% of people use their mobile devices to check their email inbox at some point this figure is also growing rapidly, keeping this in mind it is absolutely essential that you make your email template mobile responsive.

The bottom line is if your emails don’t fit on their screens they certainly won’t have trouble reading them!

You can either do this yourself, recruit a web designer or use resources such as MailChimp which will provide this service, it’s well worth the cost!

Follow Email Marketing Laws and Regulations

Be aware of the laws governing email use, including CANSPAM and data protection laws, so you don’t receive emails from people you don’t know. Make sure you follow the unsubscribe process when necessary. Don’t be intimidated by the legal aspects; it’s there to protect you.

Create a Clear Privacy Policy

A major stumbling block toward successful conversion rates is the refusal of people to provide personal details about themselves.

Unfortunately with all the good, the internet provides there’s also a dark side with people out there determined to exploit anyone or anything for their personal profit with spam emails being a major part of their methods, this, in turn, creates an element of suspicion from people about providing personal details online.

To alleviate these fears you must present a clear and recognised privacy policy statement within your emails which explains the intended use of this information and the promise of non-disclosure to any third parties, this statement can be included in the T&Cs of the welcome email.

Now you have everything set up and everything’s ready to go…well nearly, at this stage it’s time to test the effectiveness of your emails by using A/B split testing, by splitting your first test between two specific segments of your audience.

Test, Test, Test!

  • A: 20 % of your audience
  • B: 20% of your audience

This should be done over the course of a number of days. This allows you to gauge the feedback in real-time and decide where to apply changes if needed, afterwards you should send out the winning test to 60% of your audience to get a final idea of how well-received your emails were.

Understanding of metrics

Open rate: This figure indicates how much of your target group views the emails you distribute. An elevated open rate usually indicates that your headline is pertinent to your target audience.

Bounce rate: This reveals the number of people who didn’t get your message. If the rate is high, it is likely due to having a lot of inactive, invalid, or obsolete contacts in your address book, or you require a new email service provider.

Unsubscribes: This demonstrates the number of individuals who opted out of your email service provider’s mailing list. A large number of unsubscribers may signify that the emails you are sending are either not suitable for the people receiving them or are not being directed to the correct individuals.

Spam complaints: It is necessary to be knowledgeable of how spam grievances are handled and how to try to prevent them, as even legitimate emails may receive complaints from spam filters.

 

Importance of Email List

Your list should be more than a collection of names and email addresses.  As you learn more about your prospects, this information needs to be included in your database.  What calls to action has this person clicked?  What other information did they provide to get the information offered in your call to action?

The trick here is to ask for a small bit of information at a time.  If you ask for too much, people are annoyed at the time involved in answering your questions and they might find it invasive.  But if you ask for a couple of relevant details per call to action and compile them in your database (making it clear you are doing so), you can build a detailed picture of your prospects.

When the details you request are incorporated into your database, you can be proactive.  You can give people the information they genuinely want.  For example, if you used a call to action about a particular product, you can target the people who responded to it for special offers related to that product.  If you send everything to everyone on your list, people tend to tune out.  Your emails don’t get opened.  But if you target them carefully so that the people who receive them are the people who actually want them, they can be very powerful.  A carefully crafted email campaign can draw your web visitors through your sales funnel and convert them to solid sales leads.

If you send everything to everyone on your list, people tend to tune out.  Your emails don’t get opened.  But if you target them carefully so that the people who receive them are the people who actually want them, they can be very powerful.  A carefully crafted email campaign can draw your web visitors through your sales funnel and convert them into solid sales leads.

 

Why Email Marketing is here to stay?

Rumours of the demise of email marketing have been greatly exaggerated. No matter what you’ve heard about social media replacing email as a powerful marketing tool, don’t abandon email just yet. Social media is a powerful marketing platform, but that doesn’t mean it should replace email. If you bought an amazing power drill, you wouldn’t throw out your hammer, would you?

Adding a new tool doesn’t mean you throw out other tools that do other jobs. Social media has a role, a big role, but it isn’t the same role as an email marketing tool. Email is different – and yes, businesses are still benefiting from good, finely-tuned email marketing campaigns. Here are three reasons why people like email and email marketing still works.

  • People can read emails when they want when it is convenient. On Facebook, Twitter and other social media pages, content flows quickly. Your message can get lost in the crowd. Email inboxes allow your message to wait until your reader can get to it. You can send your email whenever it suits you, and people read it whenever it suits them.
  • Email is easy to save, review and organize. People can read, save and re-read your email message. It doesn’t disappear in a stream of information. Email accounts often have folders that allow users to sort and store their messages, meaning they can keep your message where they can find it again easily.
  • It can reach a receptive audience that doesn’t use social media. It’s hard for some to believe, but not everyone uses social media. People have different reasons. Some don’t understand privacy settings and fear anyone could see their information. Others worry about being tempted to waste time, and some just aren’t interested in being online. But email can reach people who don’t socialize online, which gives it substantial power for some audiences.

Of course, your email marketing campaign will only work if it meets your readers’ expectations and needs. Send only emails that give the recipient value – a compelling offer or useful information. Use a personal tone to drive meaningful engagement. Social media works so well because posts get shared among like-minded people, giving you easy access to a broader market. It promotes visibility. Emails are a platform for more than a quick soundbite. You get a chance to give more detail about your product or service’s unique selling points and benefits, and you can include a call to action and links to your website or blog.

 

Social Media vs. Email Marketing: When to Use Each

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