18 Jul
Email marketing is not a new concept, it’s been around forever, and for good reasons. It’s an effective way to connect with your leads, promote your services & products, and reach your business goals.
Email marketing is a vital marketing strategy that outlines all other marketing strategies including, SEO, PPC, and Content Marketing.
Let’s start with the fundamental question.
What is Email Marketing?
It is a highly effective marketing strategy of sending emails to prospects and customers. It helps to convert leads to customers and turn buyers into loyal customers.
In email marketing, you don’t need to worry about any algorithm- they are your own connections. So, building a successful email list is crucial for your business.
But most people don’t know how to do it in the right way.
Let’s talk about building a successful email marketing strategy.
#1 Build Your Email List
Before you can start sending emails, you need people to whom you can send emails. So, how to build an email list? A simple way is to put a banner on your website, asking visitors to subscribe to your emails.
Offer a Freebie
Think from your perspective- you wouldn’t subscribe to an email without getting any benefits, right? Offering freebies is the easiest way to gather email addresses.
There are many ways to do this, of course. You can provide some free newsletters, product updates, or a discount for your products or services.
For example, many provide a free e-book or worksheet, making it interesting for freebies to subscribe.
You can also provide a checklist, white paper, or other downloadable assets to ask visitors to share their email addresses. I can’t tell you which one is right or wrong for your business but, one thing is sure to have a clear idea when asking for an email address.
Follow all Email Marketing Laws and Regulations
Make sure to follow all the local rules & regulations, don’t let the legalese scare you. Just make sure not to buy any email lists.
Make it easy to unsubscribe.
#2 Provide Great Content
Email Marketing is all about expectations, and it’s up to you to set them apart from others. If your content is great, follow-up is consistent, and the call to action is strong, then your email campaign is already doing a great job.
However, if you send emails once or twice a week and do not send them regularly, errors may occur.
Send out an Introduction Email
Sending out an introduction email helps subscribers about the basic process and what to expect from their emails.
Almost all email service providers provide an automated welcome sequence, so make full use of it.
The initial follow-up email should be sent as soon as someone subscribes to your email list to provide a detailed picture of what you plan on doing with the new subscriber’s email.
Don’t Pitch Right Away.
You’re here to engage with your customers and make sales – not just for the fun. It can be tricky when an email list which provides lots of free value turns into a list that pitches products for the money.
You’ll have a successful campaign if you send sales pitch emails once in a while.
Use Email Automation.
If you have just started building your email list, it’s easy to say that you’ll have a lot of time to personally respond to every email. But remember once your email list grows, it’s nearly impossible to respond to every email.
Yet top marketers make it look easy to do this exact thing. How?
Well, the secret is email automation.
It automatically sends out the emails that you schedule in advance. Setting out a set of emails in advance helps you prevent “going dark” for any length of time.
Many companies plan out a series of emails- ranging from days to months- that automatically delivers, warming up whoever signs up for your list.
#3 Analytics & Segmentation
Now, we have to understand the basics of email marketing. Let’s talk about using segmentation and analytics to refine your email list to generate even better results.
Understand Email Analytics.
Every email service provider provides basic analytics. There are three important things to look out for: open rate, click-through rate, and unsubscribes.
Open rate explains how many people opened up your email. The single tracking tool helps to gather the information about the number of people opening your emails.
Open rates usually tell you how well your subscribers are engaged with your mails. Are subscribers excited to read your emails?
On the other hand, if it’s too low, it shows people are unengaged with your emails. You need to work harder on your content and subscribers’ expectations.
The Click-through rate shows how many people clicked on the mentioned link in your email. If CTR is low, that means that your message is away from your targeted audience. Focus on improving your copy.
Unsubscribe rate shows how many people clicked the unsubscribe button on your email. If your unsubscribe rate is more than your subscriber’s rate, then you seriously need to work on it.
Email analytics are crucial because they provide clues on what you’re doing wrong.
Email Segmentation
Email segmentation is basically splitting up your email list into more targeted groups.
For example-
- Customer List
- Newsletter subscribers
- Daily email list
- Interests
Just like targeting an audience in paid ads, dividing your audience gives more ability to send more engaging content.
Segmentation helps split your audience to make it easier for you to sell emails accordingly. For example, you can send a broadcast to only those who didn’t open your last email to those who showed interest in your last email.
Segmentation isn’t rocket science, but it’s time-consuming that’s why most don’t do it right.
On the Final Note
If you’ve been ignoring email marketing, it’s time to start reevaluating your strategy.
Email marketing delivers huge ROI for marketers. It seems complicated but it isn’t.
Check Out our Email Marketing campaign here.