One of the challenges that small or online businesses face is finding a cost-effective way to market their brand. This is where email marketing comes into play. A good email marketing strategy is essential for advertising, boosting revenue, and growing your brand, regardless of whether you’re just starting out or you’re already established
Although there are innovative ways to reach your audience and customers, email remains one of the most popular marketing methods. But knowing its value is one thing, understanding how to do it right is another.
This post is lengthy, but it is well worth reading. We’ll go over how to develop an email list, write an email that users want to read, plan automated campaigns, and measure your progress.
What is an Email Marketing Campaign?
An email marketing campaign consists of a series of emails sent to nurture leads and existing customers to increase engagement and sales. Typically, each email has a specific call-to-action, such as a sign-up form, contact info or a product to purchase.
Keeping in mind that not everyone is ready to buy from you at this moment is important, that is why the email is such an important channel.
Email allows you to keep top-of-mind by sending communications directly to their inbox, and marketing automation allows you to do this at scale.
The recipients of an email campaign should have opted in to receive this content, and each piece should be valuable.
Marketing emails can be promotional, informative, or tailored to a specific consumer’s buyer journey.
If you look through your email box right now, you’ll probably find that at least half the messages are email marketing.
Here’s are quick example of what to look out for:
Email marketing remains the most successful marketing channel, outperforming social media, SEO, and affiliate marketing.
Additionally, with email marketing, you control the connections — you don’t have to be concerned about algorithm updates ruining your reach.
You’re still not convinced? According to HubSpot, four out of five marketers would choose to forego social media over email marketing.
That is why, now more than ever, creating an effective email marketing strategy is critical.
There’s only one issue: most people don’t know how to do it correctly and you’ve probably come across those people in your inbox. Let’s see how NOT to be one of them.
The Email Marketing Basics
Let’s start with the basics before digging into the techniques you’ll use to create and leverage email marketing. These pointers will help you make the most of your email marketing campaign, which we’ll discuss next.
1. Stay Human: Email marketing is popular, which means it is also competitive. Use email to communicate directly with your users, using their names and allowing them to see the human aspect of your brand
2. Use Compelling Titles and avoid clickbait: Using engaging subject lines is important for raising email open rates but keep them on topic. Users that feel misled are more likely to unsubscribe or designate your communication as spam, reducing deliverability.
3. Use Short and Concise Messaging: most email is viewed on a mobile device, so keep your copy brief and to the point. If you need to convey a lot of information, direct your audience to a blog post or landing page.
4. Include CTAs at the Top and Bottom: CTAs are usually featured above the fold on landing sites; apply the same concept to email by inserting powerful CTAs after the first paragraph and again at the conclusion.
5. Get Permission and Keep Your Promises: Ensure that your recipients have opted in to receive your emails. Never buy email lists, it’s illegal to do so and would hardly get you any ROI in most circumstances . Ensure you present high-quality content or deals.
How does email marketing campaigns work?
Email marketing campaigns are straightforward: they are effective because they target a specific group of people or a company’s target audience.
Before launching a campaign, a business must first determine its email marketing strategy, which includes deciding on a target audience. It is possible to have multiple target audiences, which is great because the larger the target audience, the better. Once the target audience has been identified, a company’s marketing experts can begin developing a tailored marketing strategy, regardless of size.
A newsletter is an excellent email marketing strategy for providing your audience with interesting and useful content. Your newsletters will be much more likely to help you reach your objectives if they are tailored to your target audience’s interests and preferences.
You can build out its email campaign using email marketing software once you’ve established an email campaign strategy. Also,email marketing campaigns require a great deal of thought and planning, despite their apparent simplicity.
Create an email marketing plan
Having trouble figuring out your email marketing strategy? We are here to help you, so don’t worry.
Here are a few best practices you should consider when developing an email marketing strategy. We guarantee that the time you set aside to create your email marketing strategy will be worthwhile.
Segmentation and personalisation
You need to understand your audience to effectively communicate with them. As a business owner, one of your most important jobs is understanding your brand’s demographic.
It is imperative that you segment your list in conjunction with timing. By doing this, subscribers aren’t bombarded with emails that aren’t relevant to their needs, which can disrupt their customer journey and negatively impact their personalised experience.
Hubspot suggests that personalized messages are the most effective way to increase engagement rates with emails. The likelihood of a consumer making a purchase increases by 80% when a brand offers personalized experiences.
Segmentation is one form of personalization. Other tactics include:
- The use of subscriber names in subject lines and body copy
- Content that is relevant to the recipient’s interests
A new product suggestion based on previous purchases can also be included in the email. However, without personalization, the email will come across as generic and may reduce the motivation for users to go to the next stage of their customer journey.
Timing
Email content must be distributed at the correct moment to the right individuals in order to provide tangible value.
The day of the week and time of day your emails are sent, as well as the recipient’s position in the customer journey, are all factors in timing. Above all, the optimal time to send an email is determined by the habits and behaviors of your target audience.
Performing A/B tests and monitoring results will give you a better sense of when to show up in a prospect’s inbox. It might be helpful to start with industry benchmarks in the short term.
Track, analyze, and improve
Email marketing data can help you answer crucial questions such as who is reading your emails and what activities they are taking. This information can be used to improve future campaigns:
Finally, your unsubscribe rate indicates how many individuals hit the “unsubscribe” link at the bottom of your email.
If your unsubscribe rate is higher than your opt-in rate, you’ve moved past the point of creating value and producing effective copy… You have a great deal of work to do .
You’ve essentially constructed a sieve, and those that sign up eventually depart. If this fits, look at when people leave and take action based on those leaks.
If they leave after receiving a specific automated email, rework it. If people leave after receiving marketing messages, modify the way you present offers.
If they leave early in your email funnel, you need to tweak your initial call to action to match the rest of your messages.
Email analytics are important since they provide intuitive and simple indicators as to what you’re doing correctly and incorrectly if you pay attention.
The foundation of effective emails is relevance: sending the appropriate message to the right people at the right point in their customer journey.
Getting this right requires a combination of customer knowledge and marketing expertise.
Consider where in the customer journey email will benefit your overall marketing plan. Then, experiment and construct templates that drive action by creating segmented and tailored campaigns based on tried-and-true features of high-performing emails.
Email marketing data helps you answer the important questions about who’s reading your emails and what actions they’re taking. This can be used to fine-tune future campaigns
Finally, Among the many criteria you should follow when sending a marketing email, the most important is to treat your subscribers like people.
Keeping this golden rule at the forefront of every autoresponder, lead magnet, and subject line will help you achieve your email marketing goals.
It is important to remember that your subscribers want to hear from you and relate to you. Be a true resource, and they will look forward to receiving an email from you as they would from any friend.
