Where to begin with email marketing
If you are starting to plan your client’s email marketing strategy, where should you start? Here are a few useful tips to help you begin.
- Keep your emails short and sweet. People get tired of reading long emails, so keep yours between 60 to 200 words.
- People love visuals, especially in email marketing, so include images of your products or services.
- Social proof helps convince readers that your offer is legitimate and worth their time. This includes sharing links or information in your emails from experts in the industry, positive testimonials, or influencers using the brand.
- People want to know where to go next after reading your content. And since emails are usually opened on mobile devices, you need to provide a clear CTA at the end of each email. Whether it’s to a product page or recent content produced on the website.
- Email marketing works best when you send regular emails. But even once a week isn’t enough. Studies show that people respond better to frequent emails than infrequent ones.
Email marketing strategies to increase engagement
1. Create optimized lead magnets
To effectively attract people to subscribe to your email list, you need an impactful lead magnet that catches their attention and compels them to click through and learn more about your brand. This lead magnet is typically the first element visitors encounter upon landing on your brand’s website.
If a brand fails to optimize its lead magnets for conversion, it may miss out on potential leads. To ensure that lead magnets convert effectively, it is crucial to instantly capture visitors’ attention by creating an interesting, unique, and business-oriented lead magnet.
One way to encourage people to take action is by offering an incentive such as a freebie or discount code. Another option is to provide a free report or eBook in exchange for their name and email address.
You may consider having your lead magnet as the initial email sent to the users as part of your welcome series. This will encourage the users to continue receiving emails and prevent them from immediately unsubscribing after receiving a discount code or similar offer.
2. Segment your subscribers
You may have heard of the term “subscriber segmentation,” which involves grouping your subscribers according to their interests and behavior. This allows you to provide them with more appropriate content, offers, and messages.
Targeting your audience with personalized emails is a vital aspect of email marketing. Furthermore, you can utilize this approach to generate various versions of your emails, including a welcome email, a thank you email, and a follow-up email.
Segmenting your subscribers enables you to establish trust and long-term interest for a brand by delivering desired information or offers.
3. Craft a welcome series
Welcome emails are typically automatically sent to new subscribers, purchasers, or account creators. When developing a welcome series, it is important to take into account the customer’s position in their relationship with a brand. Thus, it is advantageous to schedule the emails over a designated timeframe and ensure each one serves a specific purpose.
A welcome series is an effective method to maintain the engagement of potential customers who have just signed up, especially considering the frequency of email communication from companies. Additionally, welcome emails can be sent to existing customers who have not logged in for an extended period.
If a user signs up and does not utilize the service for three months, you may consider sending an email stating, “Hello, it has come to our attention that you recently registered with us. Are you interested in utilizing our service?”
The reason why this marketing strategy is highly successful is because it focuses on personalization and targeting. By sending emails specifically designed for individual customers, it demonstrates that mass emails are not being employed. These emails also serve as an effective tool for establishing trust and familiarizing customers with receiving communications from you.
4. Implement automation
Now that you have completed the task of creating an email series, the next step is to automate their delivery. This will eliminate the need for manual sending, allowing you to schedule the emails according to your preference. The process of automating emails in marketing is made simple through the use of tools such as MailChimp, Constant Contact, Campaign Monitor, and Convertkit.
These programs enable the creation of automated emails by using triggers like email opens, link clicks, or customer purchases. With this feature, manual emailing becomes unnecessary, which is particularly helpful when managing a large number of subscribers and reduces stress.
5. Define your target audience
In the age of technology, customers anticipate tailored offers that address their individual issues. Considering the time constraints of many customers, it is undesirable for them to interact with nondescript emails that fail to assist them in making well-informed purchasing choices.
Defining your target audience is essential for designing email campaigns that cater to your particular customers. Essentially, your target audience consists of individuals who are inclined to purchase or require your offerings. To identify your target audience, it is necessary to invest time in examining the interests, motivations, pain points, and preferences of your customers.
As you attempt to acquire more knowledge about your target audience, here are some queries to ponder:
- Where do they live?
- How much money do they earn?
- How do they use your products or services?
- What is their level of education?
- What are their challenges?
- Where do they find their content online?
By first identifying your target audience, you can establish solid customer connections and create efficient communication methods. Additionally, you can utilize alternative platforms to attain email subscribers, who can later be classified according to your comprehension of your target segments.
6. Provide content that delivers value
While aiming to enlarge sales is a crucial objective for any business, it is equally important to ensure that your email correspondence prioritizes delivering value rather than solely generating revenue.
Every day, customers receive numerous emails from various companies. On average, individuals receive 121 emails daily. Regrettably, a significant portion of these emails have low conversion rates due to their lack of valuable content for the recipient.
To add value through your emails, the most effective approach is to offer high-quality content that is personalized for your audience. It is important for the email content to narrate a story and demonstrate how your company can address the recipient’s concerns. Additionally, it should have appealing subject lines, maintain simplicity without unnecessary information, and refrain from using industry-specific terminology that may be unfamiliar to the average reader.
7. Develop an email marketing plan
It is advisable to create an email marketing plan before initiating your initial marketing email. Strategizing allows you to consider the intended outcomes you aim to attain. Having a comprehensive plan can serve as a roadmap during the marketing journey.
A potential inclusion in an email marketing plan could be:
- A list of email marketing tools
- Types of emails to include in your campaign
- Timelines
- Specific tactics to build your email list
The absence of focus and commitment leads some email marketers to skip the step of creating marketing strategies and plans. However, it is crucial to understand that achieving marketing success is nearly impossible without a well-executed plan.
8. Perform A/B testing
A/B testing, also referred to as split testing, is a distinctive marketing strategy employed to evaluate various versions of marketing campaigns. The objective of A/B testing is to ascertain the email that yields superior results. This type of testing can be conducted on emails, website pages, YouTube videos, and other marketing resources.
To illustrate how A/B testing works in email marketing, let’s assume you have two subject headlines for an email and want to determine which performs better. Send one headline to one group and the other headline to another group. During the campaign, analyze engagement metrics to ascertain the more effective email.
When conducting A/B testing, it is possible to test different variables such as CTAs, audio, video, and images. It is important to test only one variable for each A/B test in order to accurately determine the cause of one email’s success over the other. Assessing multiple variables simultaneously can complicate identifying the specific reason for the difference in performance.
9. Include calls to action (CTAs)
What is the desired action you want recipients to take after reading your emails? It’s possible that customers are unsure about the next steps they should take. Therefore, it’s important to include a clear and noticeable call to action in your emails. Some examples of effective CTAs include ‘Sign Up’, ‘Buy Now’, ‘Join Free for a Month’, ‘Subscribe’, ‘Get a Coupon’, or ‘Get Started’.
When customers see these messages, they understand the particular action they are being requested to undertake. It is important to be specific and concise when creating your CTAs. Additionally, an effective CTA will instill a sense of urgency, prompting the user to take prompt action.
10. Set SMART goals
Before you begin creating your email marketing campaigns, be ready to experiment with various strategies. Additionally, it is important to establish realistic expectations for your strategies. To effectively monitor your progress, develop a timeline for the email marketing campaign lasting from six months to one year.
When setting goals for your marketing initiative, it is important to establish SMART goals. These goals should be specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and time-bound. By setting realistic goals, you will gain the motivation, clarity, and focus necessary for enduring the marketing process patiently.
Here are a few illustrations of SMART goals for email marketing:
- Generate 250 email marketing leads in each quarter by implementing inbound funnel marketing campaigns
- Increase company internet sales by 15% within 12 months by running weekly email campaigns
- Boost our business blog’s email subscriber list by 25% within 6 months by offering a downloadable eBook
