📥 Marketing Article: Email Marketing 101
Coe Clausen
There's a rumor that email marketing is dead. Guess what? It's all bs.
Email marketing brings in billions of dollars in revenue for companies annually, making it one of the most popular forms of marketing. In fact, 47%
Email marketing's popularity stems from its direct-to-consumer nature, which customers can browse from the comfort of their homes. Also, email marketing costs are far less than other marketing platforms, such as social media marketing, advertising in magazines, or other alternatives.
It's also a great way to show your creativity. Regardless of why you're emailing your customers, you can put your heart and soul into each email. Using attractive graphics, GIFS, or videos within your emails are fun ways to interweave a bunch of info into your emails in engaging ways.
But there is more to email marketing than telling customers to buy your product or support your company. And when you are a beginner, the whole concept of email marketing can seem mind-boggling. From creating an email marketing strategy to writing copy that entices readers to click on a call to action...it's a lot.
So, I put together this guide to help you get started with email marketing! Together, we'll learn how to use email in marketing effectively, the different types of email marketing strategies out there, and how to optimize your email marketing strategy. Let's get started!
Email Marketing Strategy
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As I mentioned above, email marketing is more than plopping in front of a keyboard and telling your customers to buy your product. You need to give them a reason to believe and have an email marketing strategy before getting started.
There are many different email marketing strategies, so choosing one that fits your company's personality is best. Let's look at different types of email marketing so you can curate your plan.
Types of Email Marketing
You may employ several or all of these types of emails within your email marketing strategy. Of course, all of them have their place in marketing. Still, you must be careful to schedule them to send at optimal times to ensure the best delivery and open rates. Sending emails carelessly and without a plan can lead to great messages being missed because of poor delivery.
Information Email
Does your company have a special announcement, such as a new CEO or location? Did you release a new blog? These pieces of data would make great information emails. These have their space in email marketing because while it's not a direct sales message, they keep your customer in the loop and build brand awareness.
Newsletter
A newsletter is a great email marketing option for a company that wishes to present itself as the leader in their specific industry. A newsletter is typically a longer email filled with tips and tricks of the trade. They can also have interviews, short stories, or whatever the creator wants. Newsletters are excellent for building brand trustworthiness.
Product Update
Did your company release the latest edition of your software? Or your summer collection is launching, and your customers need to know. These would be great topics for a product update email! These are the most apparent marketing emails we send, but you must craft them carefully. Otherwise, your message could be missed. These are great for light sales-forward verbiage and a chance to be aesthetically pleasing.
Transactional Email
This one might make the most sense to us. These will be purely sales emails, sometimes offering promotions or discounts to tempt buyers into purchasing your products. These are very valid forms of email marketing! However, your transactional emails might appear shallow without using the other email types above, sometimes seeming like a money grab and not generating the revenue you had hoped for.
When to Start Email Marketing Campaigns
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Many marketers will debate the best time to start an email marketing campaign. However, regardless of what stage your company or project is at, you'll need one thing before you can begin: Email addresses. Have you already established an email list, or do you need to procure one?
Sending out email marketing campaigns is only possible if you have recipients. Email marketing will only be effective if it reaches the right people. A good place to start getting emails is lead generation software to help produce quality leads so that you can start effectively creating email marketing campaigns whenever you're ready.
You can tailor your email marketing campaigns to be sent to the right people at precisely the right time in the customer journey by using their highly advanced targeting rules. Accordingly, your list of quality leads will grow dramatically, and your company will see a significant profit increase.
Picking An Email Service Provider
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Now that you have your email marketing strategy and mailing lists, it's time to choose an email service provider. There are so many in the industry that picking one can feel overwhelming, but don't worry! I've carefully reviewed each of the top providers and listed their features and benefits here.
Sendlane is a new name in email marketing, but don't let that fool you. It's backed by some heavy hitters and has some compelling features. Sendlane is an all-in-one marketing platform that helps you generate more revenue, increase retention, and automate personalized experiences for your customers through email marketing and SMS. Sendlane also provides real-time analytics, intelligent pop-ups, and deep-data integration so you can better understand how your customers are interacting with your emails.
Klaviyo gives you lots of options to grow your eCommerce business. In addition, it helps you build customer loyalty with its suite of tools, which is why it's considered one of the best eCommerce email marketing tools around. You can guarantee your email is relevant to each recipient with dynamic blocks for order details, cart content, product recommendations, and more.
Convertkit offers a comprehensive marketing automation platform that small businesses and individuals can use at an affordable price. Subscriber management is a good feature, allowing users to segment subscribers into four categories and showing analytics, simplifying the data analytics process for email marketing managers.
Mailchimp is one of the more recognizable companies on our list. They provide AI-powered, user-friendly tools that anyone can use to create a robust foundation for customer relationships. Using their platform, you can reach your audience through their marketing email platform, landing pages, postcards, reports, and more. As a result, millions of businesses and individuals trust Mailchimp to help them achieve their audience more effectively.
ActiveCampaign provides a customer experience automation platform that enables businesses in 170 countries to engage effectively with their customers. The platform is flexible enough to meet the needs of any size business by offering 500+ pre-built automation and integrations with popular social media, email marketing, and CRM platforms.
Creating an Opt-in Form That Converts
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It's one thing to ask the viewers on your site for their email. It's a whole other thing to actually get them to do it. So when creating an opt-in form to add to your website, in an attempt to gain emails for your email marketing, you need to make sure your opt-in form converts. But how do you do this? Let's take a look at some key points below.
1. Make your headline enticing: Clearly state the benefits that your lead magnet will provide in your headline.
2. Be clear: In your description, are you clear, concise, and to the point? Use bullet points to allow the reader's eye to quickly scan the content.
3. Be visually appealing: If possible, include an image of the lead magnet (such as a mockup of your eBook, website, or product). Additionally, a photo of someone looking at the opt-in form can effectively boost conversions.
4. Keep your form simple: Make sure you only request the first name and the email address. Your conversion rates will suffer if you ask for too much information upfront.
5. Add an enticing subscribe button: If you have a subscribe button, make sure it stands out from the rest of the page with a contrasting color. Also, make the copy creative so people will click through.
Email List Segmentation
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Segmenting your database makes your emails much more targeted to your audience. Compare this to sending one email to your entire database, which may have subscribers across the country (or the world).
Do you find it annoying to receive an invitation to an event on the other side of the world by email? Unfortunately, that email marketer didn't use segmentation in their email list, which likely lost the company possible customers!
Let's start with a few segmentation examples:
Branches of business:
What type of business do you have? You can segment your subscribers by industry so that they receive emails about products and services that are relevant to them. For example, if you own a pet supply company, you would be more likely to open an email about pet supplies than fashion accessories.
Account-based marketing:
Segment your email campaigns according to the size and revenue of your prospects. It's unlikely that a small business with 5 employees will be ready to attend the most major industry conference of the year. At the same time, a larger company might be a better fit.
Sales cycle segmentation:
To reach the different stages of the sales cycle, you'll need to approach buyers in diverse ways. For example, early-stage buyers prefer informational email campaigns. And once they're ready to make a purchase, they'll respond well to product webinars and free trials.
Automated Email Marketing
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You can create an autoresponder by inputting a list of people on your email list that receives a sequence of emails once they join your list, browse your website, abandon a cart, download a PDF, or buy a product. Using email marketing software, you can create and schedule a series of email autoresponders in advance.
Autoresponders are essential for online businesses for two main reasons:
They nurture your leads using an automated onboarding process by providing them with valuable information and insights.
They turn prospects into customers by building "know, like, and trust" before asking for the sale. As a result, you can make your pitch at the right time without seeming overly pushy.
Before you create your autoresponder series, decide which (or a combination of) goals you would like to accomplish. Your autoresponder can be used for many purposes, but here are the three most common:
Send a "welcome" sequence to new subscribers: For example, following a person's subscription to a mailing list, you should send them a welcome email. That email can contain a link to your lead magnet for an easy download or a call-to-action for seeing your most popular blog posts.
Send an email for an abandoned cart: If you're an eCommerce brand, this is a huge one. Set up an autoresponder series to send to a customer if they've added items to their cart without checking out. You can even sweeten the deal for them and add an extra incentive to buy, like a discount or BOGO deal.
Send a helpful, informative email: Information marketers use email autoresponders as a sales tool. Still, software companies, eCommerce businesses, and service providers can also use them. Try using your autoresponder to send customers educational videos, sales videos, and follow-ups to sell your information products, for example.
Optimize Email Campaigns with A/B Testing and Analytics
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When you're making an email campaign, it can be nerve-wracking. You're often left wondering: Will it be compelling enough to get your subscribers' attention? Will it match the content? Will they unsubscribe? These questions can be answered with A/B testing, which helps optimize email marketing by showing what works and doesn't.
Analyzing email marketing campaigns requires that you pay attention to several things:
Open rates: Email open rates are an essential metric to monitor. If you're not getting opens consistently, it means your message isn't resonating with the recipient. You may need to reevaluate your subject line or who you send them to. And while open rates have been historically declining, that doesn't mean that they don't matter anymore. They still provide valuable information about which subject lines resonate with your audience and what times of day they're most likely to open their emails.
Click-through rates: Are your subscribers taking the actions you need after they open your email? The body copy in your email may not be as compelling as it should be if you believe your click-through rate is low. Think about this: Does the subject line of your email match the body copy? Are your subscribers receiving real value from the email you sent? Do you have a clear call to action? Can you find the link easily? Things to think about when looking at your email analytics.
Unsubscribe rate: People are likely to unsubscribe from your list, which is okay because they aren't the right audience for you anyway. If your unsubscribe rate is high, however, there may be problems with how you delivered on the promises made to subscribers when they signed up for your list. For example, are you tailoring autoresponder content to segments of your list? Do you deliver enough value in sales emails? These are all things to consider when troubleshooting a high unsubscribe rate.
You’re still here! Wrapping things up.
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I'm so glad you're still here! While reading an email marketing guide can be overwhelming if you're a beginner, you've learned a lot and are doing great.
We learned together how to create a successful email marketing campaign, the best practices for making your campaign a success, and more. There are millions of ways to generate a unique and personalized marketing message that will drive revenue or bring you more customers.
But there are a few things you should avoid doing in your email marketing campaign. Let's talk about them as we wrap up today's newsletter:
Never Cold Email: Did you know that mass cold emailing is illegal? Different countries have different laws regarding digital marketing. Before sending any promotional material, you will typically need permission from the person you plan on contacting. If you forget this rule, your company could be fined.
Let Your Audience Reply: It's human nature to interact with others. If you receive an email with the address "no-reply," it shows that companies aren't interested in talking with you. It also warns recipients that they are receiving generic emails. I received a personalized response when I replied to Amber Petty's
Do you have any other email marketing tips that I missed? Let me know in the comments section below!
And if you don't have time to write your content and craft your marketing messages, I've got you covered. With rates starting as low as $50/hour, I can be your one-stop shop for copy, content, and marketing! Contact me at coewritescopy@gmail.com.
