Email marketing has been one of the most popular marketing channels for a long time and its popularity is only increasing. There are many good reasons for its popularity!
The best way to connect with your leads, give them value, and turn them into clients is to talk to them directly.
We have created this email marketing guide to help you be successful in your startup journey.
Email marketing is about the customer, not you or your agency. It should be used to build an existing relationship with your subscribers and leads by providing relevant, valuable information to help them take action on their goals.
Some of The Most Common Ways You Can Use Email Marketing are to:
1. Build Connections
You can build a close relationship with your audience by personalizing your content.
2. Generate Leads
In order to receive a valuable free asset, visitors should provide their personal information.
3. Nurture Leads
The resources you provide to your leads should help them convert into customers. Make sure you are providing relevant resources that add value to your leads, such as blog posts, eBooks, guides, etc.
4. Promote Yourself
to increase their brand awareness, drive traffic to their website, or achieve their desired outcome. Make sure your blog posts and promoting your services are relevant to your audience and will help them achieve their desired outcome, such as increasing brand awareness, driving traffic to their website, etc.
5. Gets More Reach
Approximately 3.8 billion people worldwide use email, making it an excellent place to find and reach potential customers.
6. You Have The Control
Email marketing is the best way to reach your audience directly, and segmenting your list ensures that your marketing communications go to the people who are most likely to be interested in them.
7. High Chance Of Conversion
The people you send emails to are those who have already signed up for your emails. They’re already interested in your brand, so they’re easier to convert.
8. People Don’t mind Marketing Messages In Their Email
Does it bother you when ads pop up on your social media platforms when you’re in the middle of something?
Although marketing emails can be annoying, they are not as bad as social media notifications because when you provide your email address to a website, you generally expect to receive some emails from them.
Email Marketing Goals
1. New Sign-Ups For Product
If you have a product to sell, a key goal should be to increase sign-ups. However, this does not mean you should only send sales emails.
2. Increase Your ROI
You can increase the ROI of your email marketing campaign by making it cost-effective.
Email marketing can have a very high ROI, with some estimates as high as 4200%. This means that for every dollar you spend on email marketing, you could see an average return of $42. Because of this, it is important to set goals that will help increase your ROI even further.
3. Generate New Leads
Email marketing can be a great way to reach out to more people and generate leads for your business, whether you’re selling a product or a service. You can set a series of goals to help you generate new leads.
4. Improve Open Rates
If your subscribers are not opening your emails, your email marketing is ineffective. An unopened email is the same as an unsent email. Therefore, improving your open rates should be a goal for your email marketing campaign.
5. Building Email Lists
There are plenty of ways to build your email list without buying emails. Check out these strategies for growing your email database, along with a few extra tips.
6. Create Lead Magnets
A lead magnet is a great way to get people to give you their email address. Essentially, you give them something valuable that they can use right away in exchange for their contact information.
Your opt-in should be a relevant resource for your target audience. Keep in mind that the more valuable the resource, the more signups you will get.
7. Add Multiple CTAs
Put buttons on your website that say “click here” or “sign up now” in places that will make people want to find out more. By doing this, you can get their email information.
You should also add an email sign-up form to your “about us” page and any other landing pages that get a lot of traffic. Just be careful not to overload your pages with too many CTAs, or you’ll risk annoying your visitors.
8. Have A CTA On Blog Posts
If you want more traffic on your website, it makes sense to have a CTA to get people’s email addresses.
One way to increase engagement on your blog is to add a resource at the end of each post that is relevant to the topic and provides value to the reader. Another way to add a CTA is to offer PDF versions of long-form content that readers may want to refer back to.
9. Content Cliff-Hanger
At the end of the article, you say “if you want to know the remaining 5 secret ways, please subscribe to my newsletter” Content cliffhangers are a great way to get people to sign up for your email list! For example, if you write a blog post about “20 easy ways to build your email list,” you could mention only 15 of the ways in the article.
Then, at the end of the article, you could say “if you want to know the remaining 5 secret ways, please subscribe to my newsletter.”
If you want to know more “5 ways,” you will have to provide your email address. However, this will only work if your content is exciting and of high value to readers.
A few things to keep in mind when doing all these activities to build your email list:
Make sure to write convincing and interesting copy when you are asking for people’s email addresses. You should explain what they will get in return for their email address in a way that is most convincing. You can use powerful words like “free,” “exclusive,” “kickass,” and “ultimate” to make your case.
The design and visuals of the landing page need to be appealing in order to encourage the viewer to input their personal details.
Make sure your email sign-up forms are short, with only the most important fields. The fewer steps involved, the more likely people are to sign up.
Do not end your presentation by spamming your audience with information they do not want or by not giving them the information you promised. It is just as easy for them to unsubscribe from your presentation as it was for them to sign up.
Sending Marketing Emails
1. Choose an Email Marketing Service
If you need assistance with your email marketing campaign, consider using an email service provider.
The features available will assist you in creating successful email marketing campaigns and achieving all of your email marketing goals.
Here are examples of features services like HubSpot offer to consider when choosing an email service provider:
- CRM platform with segmentation capabilities
- Good standing with Internet Service Providers
- A positive reputation as an email service provider (ESP)
- Easy-to-build forms, landing pages, and CTAs
- Automation
- Simple ways to comply with email regulations
- Ability to split test your emails
- Built-in analytics
- Downloadable reports
2. Use Email Marketing Tips
Email marketing requires more consideration than other types of email because the goal is to generate leads. This means that factors such as time and format are important to consider.
Let’s touch on the components of a successful marketing email:
The text in your email should be consistent with your voice and only focus on one topic.
Your images should be chosen in a way that will make them look good on all devices, be eye-catching, and be relevant to the topic.
The call-to-action in your email should be relevant to the offer in the email and stand out from the other content in the email.
The best day and time to send emails, based on a study that observed response rates of 20 million emails, is Tuesday at 11 AM ET.
Around 55% of emails are opened on mobile devices, so your email should be optimized to work well on mobile as well as all other devices.
Personalize your emails by writing them as if you are sending them to a friend. Be personable and use a familiar tone when addressing your reader.
Your subject line should be clear, actionable, and enticing. It should be personalized and aligned with the body of your email.
3. Implement Email Segmentation
The process of segmentation involves breaking up a larger email list into smaller sub-categories based on factors such as subscribers’ interests, preferences, and background. This allows for more targeted and personalized communication with each group.
We should not send generic email blasts to our subscribers because they are humans and we should treat them as such.
When we talked about segmentation before, we briefly mentioned how important it is. It’s worth mentioning again because if you don’t segment your audience, you might end up sending the wrong content to the wrong people and losing subscribers.
Building trust with your leads will make it easier to convert them later. Segmenting your list will help you build this trust.
Segmenting Email Lists
To segment your contacts, you will need to create separate lead magnets and opt-in forms for each different stage of the buyer’s journey. This will automatically split your contacts into separate lists.
This allows you to send targeted emails to specific groups of people based on their contact information and behavior.
Here are some ways you could break up your list:
- Geographical location
- Lifecycle stage
- Awareness, consideration, decision stage
- Industry
- Previous engagement with your brand
- Language
- Job Title
4. Personalize Your Email Marketing
Email customization, or personalization, can result in increased open rates. Additionally, the majority of customers (83%) would rather share information that would create a more personalized experience.
Here are a few ways to personalize your emails:
- Add a first name field in your subject line and/or greeting.
- Include region-specific information when appropriate.
- Send content that is relevant to your lead’s lifecycle stage.
- Only send emails that pertain to the last engagement a lead has had with your brand.
- Write about relevant and/or personal events, like region-specific holidays or birthdays.
- End your emails with a personal signature from a human (not your company).
- Use a relevant call-to-action to an offer that the reader will find useful.
5. Incorporate Email Marketing Automation
Automation is putting your list segmentation to use.
Autoresponders
The autoresponder series might consist of 3-5 emails that gradually introduce your product. An autoresponder is a series of pre-written emails that are automatically sent out once a certain action is triggered.
For example, if someone downloads your eBook. The autoresponder series may contain 3-5 emails gradually introducing your product.
Autoresponders are great because you can set them up once and then forget about them. Every user who is part of your autoresponder series will receive every email that you’ve added to the series.
Workflows
Workflows take autoresponders a step further.
Workflows have two key components:
- The enrollment criteria, or the action that would qualify a user for the workflow.
- The goal, or the action that would take a user out of the workflow.
The workflow tools are programmed to know if a user opened an email or downloaded an offer. If the user does either of these things, the tools will set off a series of actions. These actions could include sending an email series or changing a prospect’s lifecycle stage.
6. Use Email Marketing Templates
When creating emails, templates can be a helpful tool to save time, as they include design, coding, and UX-definition work.
The only thing to be aware of is to choose email templates that have been shown to be effective.
When choosing an email template, it is best to choose one from a reputable email service provider that has tested it against many other options.
When crafting emails and developing your marketing strategy, be aware of some email regulations regarding things like quality work and great reputation.
Email Regulations
Email regulations are in line with what consumers want in terms of knowing how and why their information is being used. We care about meeting our customers’ expectations and potential customers’ expectations.
1. CAN-SPAM Compliance
The CAN-SPAM Act is a law that regulates the sending of commercial email. The law applies to all commercial email, including business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-consumer (B2C) messages.
An opt-in is a way to make sure that people only receive emails that they have requested.
The law, passed in 2003, applies to any commercial emails used for business purposes.
Here are the ways to ensure that your emails are CAN-SPAM compliant:
- Include your company name and address in every email.
- Place visible unsubscribe links within your emails.
- Use real email addresses in the “From” and “Reply to” fields.
- Write subject lines that indicate the contents of the email.
2. GDPR Compliance
Inbound marketing is about giving customers the choice to hear from you, and to choose your products.
Here’s an overview of how you can comply with GDPR laws:
- Use clear language when requesting consent to store personal information.
- Only collect contact data that is necessary for and relevant to your business.
- Store contact data in a secure manner and only use it for the agreed-upon purpose.
- Retain data for justifiable business purposes only.
- Delete contact data on request.
- Make it easy for contacts to unsubscribe from your list or update their preferences.
- Comply promptly to a contact’s request for access to their data.
- Keep company records to prove GDPR compliance.
3. Avoid Spam Filters
The last thing you want is to spend time creating the perfect email and adhering to regulations only to end up in a spam folder.
You’ll want to avoid the spam folder because:
- It hurts your deliverability rates across the board.
- Your contacts will likely miss all of your emails.
- You won’t be able to accurately measure your email marketing effectiveness.
- Your analytics will be skewed.
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