Email marketing is a segment of digital marketing that entails sending email campaigns and newsletters to your subscriber list with the aim of creating awareness of a product or service, making an announcement, giving offers, directing readers to your site just to name a few.
Email marketing is a more cost effective technique of reaching out to an audience. Research shows that it is the technique with the highest Return on Investment (ROI) and has the lowest cost per lead or cost per acquisition.
In this article, we will look at 7 basic steps you need to take to have an effective email strategy.
Automation
Email automation is an effective way of nurturing prospective and existing clients. Through email automation, you are able to interact with past and present website visitors and clients. This fosters an ongoing relationship that could lead to a positive brand reputation and more conversions.
The benefits of email automation are numerous if the process is implemented well.
Email automation is about scheduling targeted and relevant emails when users perform specific actions.
Common use cases for email automation include:
- Sending a welcome email when you get a new subscriber.
- Sending an email when a user abandons their shopping cart.
- Sending an offer, sale or an announcement to your subscriber list.
- Informing subscribers on a new article.
According to research by Hubspot, 96% of visitors to your website aren’t yet ready to buy.
And according to CLEARCODE, this provides the perfect opportunity to foster a relationship with these users and lead them down the funnel. Check out this small excerpt from their site based on the stat by Hubspot above:
“However, since they have shown interest in your product or services, they are perfect candidates to continue communicating with to try to get them to buy later on. A great way to do this is to get them to subscribe to your email list.
For a user, subscribing to your list is a much smaller step towards conversion than immediately handing over money to you, and therefore people are much more likely to do it.
With an email-automation tool, you can set up a series of lead-nurturing emails or drip campaigns (read this post to better understand the difference) to regularly remind people about your brand.
Lead-nurturing campaigns are designed to convert leads into customers over a series of automated emails. Such a campaign could start with very mild, general emails that showcase the benefits or focus on various use cases of your product. Over a period of a couple of weeks, the messaging can change to a more salesy tone.
Drip campaigns can be used for different, non-sales-oriented purposes such as onboarding new clients. The goal of these emails, instead of selling, would be to get new customers to use the new software.”
2. Segmentation
Personalization can improve open rates by up to 26%.
The first action point of any email campaign is to ensure your subscribers open the email. Segmenting your list, however small, is a good way to ensure you increase your email open rate.
Not all your subscribers or users are interested in the same service or product. Ensuring that the emails sent are personalized to their interests is important in increasing open rates.
For example:
If you run a digital marketing agency, you’re probably offering more than one service. You’d therefore need to segment the users that are interested in let’s say SEO to those who are interested in social media marketing.
How can you do this?
The best way is to ask users to let you know what their interests are before they subscribe. You’ll notice, in this blog, before one subscribes, I ask them what service they are interested in. When they select one or more, I will be able to send out campaigns that are relevant to the interests of the user.
3. Effective and simple design
Let me share with you some interesting facts about user experience and design.
- Visit-to-lead conversions can be 400% higher on sites with a “superior user experience”
- AirBnB’s Joe Gebbia credits UX with taking the company to $10 billion.
Personally, I would walk out of an establishment or restaurant if the customer service was not good.
When it comes to the look and feel of email newsletters, customer service goes beyond replying on time.
According to Radicati , experts generally agree that a person receives 121 business emails are each day.
And the average email open rate is between 20 and 40%. (Source: Campaign Monitor)
Assuming that you have segmented your list well and you have a catchy subject line, to ensure your customers and prospects are opening your emails every time it hits their inbox, its design has to be appealing to them. They need to feel as if they would miss out on something if they didn’t open. This goes hand in hand with the content you produce.
Below, I’ll show you two examples of emails I received. Both are good. But what I want you to focus on is the difference in design.
Example 1:
Example 2:
As you can see from the two examples, the designs are different. But both, in my opinion, work great. Why? They understand their audience.
And remember, an individual can have different design preferences based on the subject matter, product or, service. Brian Dean is one of the best SEOs we have around and for such content, especially if its a link to a site article, I personally like it short and sweet. Get your user’s interest by telling them what the article is about and the ensure the call to action is clear.
When I was about to publish this article, I went to twitter and published the tweet below.
Well, I was quite surprised that Joe Gebbia, the co-founder of Airbnb and an amazing and talented User Experience specialist replied to it. Having said that, I’d like to share with you a video and an article on how he managed to use UX at Airbnb to form a human connection with their audience.
4. Tracking
The purpose of any campaign is to drive traffic and generate revenue. Right?
But how are you able to differentiate campaigns that are doing well from the ones that are not?
By setting up tracking mechanisms. In an email campaign newsletter, there are various actions you can track.
- Email opens
- Link Clicks
- Device used
- Location
Personally, the most important metrics are the open rate (number of times your email is opened against the number of emails sent) and link clicks (Clicks of any links embedded in the email).
If your email has a low open rate, you need to change a few things. You can try using different subject lines or sending the email at a different time of day. Another reason for low email opens could be your emails en up in the spam account. To avoid this, avoid stuffing your email with too many images but the best way to avoid this is by asking your subscribers to add you to their contact list.
Example of how you can do this (attach a short message as shown below on the email):
“…to ensure you do not miss out on future offers, announcements and newsletters, kindly add us to your contacts. It’s quite simple. Head over to the top of the email and click on the user icon that is on the left of the email address section and click add to contacts.”
5. Cross Marketing
Email marketing works even better when used in conjunction with other forms of digital marketing.
For example:
You can run a promotion on social media, in this case, Facebook, asking your followers to subscribe to your email list. You can then run email campaigns later that are parallel to your social media promotions to increase the visibility of your offers.
Cross marketing increases the eyeballs to your business and increases your conversion rate.
6. Choosing the right email service provider
Choosing the right email service provider is very important. These platforms should be able to give you functionalities such as:
- Enable you to design templates
- Enable you to segment users based on different criteria.
- Allow sending of automated emails.
- Provide tracking features
MailerLite has all these amazing features and more. The best part is that it’s quite user friendly and the learning curve is quite flat.
I am an affiliate and I, therefore, get a commission when you subscribe to one of their packages. Learn more here: MailerLite
7. Following Legislation & Regulations
Over the past couple of years, data and privacy laws across the globe have been taken seriously and implemented by governments in a bid to protect the data and privacy of its citizens.
To ensure that you are compliant with the laws across the globe, below is a list of some of the steps you should take to ensure you are complying with them.
- Ensure that the recipient gave you permission to send them emails.
- Always have an opt out or unsubscribe link in every email you send.
- Ensure that the “From” name and address represents the right business. For example, if I send out an email letting my subscribers know about this article, I should clearly say its Jeder Agency and not Google that is sending the email.
- You need to disclose that your email is an ad or a promotion if it is one.
- Disclose your physical location or where your business operates from.
Note: Even if you use a third party to run your email campaigns, for example, a digital marketing agency, both the agency and your business will be liable for any violations that occur. So, ensure that you deal and operate with an agency that knows what they are doing.
