Email Marketing

Email Marketing

If you’re not already engaged in using email marketing, you’re missing a prime opportunity to reach a significant segment of your market.

The fact is that most people use their email on a daily basis. Therefore, the only real question is this:

How can you effectively get your message in front of people via email marketing?

Email Marketing

Email marketing is an effective digital marketing strategy that delivers content to your prospects and customers via their email. The goal of email marketing is to convert prospects, retain and upsell customers, and to brand your business.

Why should you use email marketing?

Email marketing is simply effective, and it makes sense because most people, today, have an email account which they use daily.

Here are the three best reasons to invest in email marketing:

  1. Email is a primary channel of communication. 91% of consumers check their emails on a daily basis.
  2. You own your list. Unlike social media platforms, you own your lists, and you get to decide exactly how to use them.
  3. Email converts more and produces a better ROI. The data shows that consumers who receive offers by email spend more than those who don’t and that the ROI on email marketing surpasses other marketing channels when properly implemented.

How to Get Started with Email Marketing

To get started in email marketing, you need to build a list of people who have given you permission to market to them. While you can purchase lists, or create lists of contacts you’ve amassed over time, it is not a recommended practice. Aside from the fact that these types of contacts on an email marketing list are unlikely to covert, they can also cause harm to your brand if you send spam to people.

So how do you get started if you don’t have a list of people who opted in? You have to build a list the right way.

To start, you need two things:

  1. An opt-in service like OptinMonster for the digital world, and physical opt-in forms for the physical world.
  2. An email marketing service like MailChimp or Constant Contact.

With an opt-in service like OptinMonster, you can easily create customized solutions to embed your opt-in form to place wherever you like online. Having physical forms is a good idea because some people may opt-in at your office, at a trade show, or anywhere you might be physically promoting your services.

How do you grow your email list?

It is unlikely you are going to get many people to sign up to your email list by simply asking them to do so on your website. To attract people to your email list online, we recommend using a lead magnet.

A lead magnet is essentially a bribe. You will give them something of value if they give you their email address in return.

Of course, something valuable to them doesn’t mean it has to be expensive for you. You can offer an ebook, an mp3 download, discounts, free trials, or a giveaway.

Your lead magnet also must deliver on its promises. Do not use cheesy tactics that are misleading, and do not overpromise and underdeliver or your brand will lose credibility.

When setting up your lead magnet, make sure to test your headlines using a tool like Co-Schedules’ Headline Analyzer Tool. Then continue to test your headlines by measuring their performance on your website.

Be careful to not request too much information on your opt-in firms or else you will chase people away. We recommend asking for first name, last name, and an email address.

Finally, the placement of your opt-in forms is critical. You want to place them so they’re easy to access, but make sure they’re not intrusive or pushy. Where and how you use them will heavily depend on your industry and what’s appropriate for your target audience.

Personalize Your Strategy by Segmenting Your List

Segmenting your list will allow you to tailor your marketing to different groups within your list. By tailoring your approach to each segment, you will be able to better measure your campaigns, and you will be able to get a better ROI from your marketing.

What is email list segmentation?

Email list segmentation is the process of organizing your list into specific groups based on specific criteria. People on your list can absolutely fit into more than one group.

Why segment your lists?

Sending one single email to your entire list will almost guarantee that subscribers will opt-out because you won’t be providing the value they seek. For example, if you continually email your current customers about promotions tailored to prospective customers, it is likely they will disengage with your brand.

Segmenting your email list gives you an opportunity to gain valuable insight into your marketing efforts. You can figure out what made people opt-in, what made others opt-out, what made prospects become customers, etc.

The key is to be meticulous in setting up and managing your segmented lists. If you do so, your efforts will produce better results.

Consider the following tips to ensure success:

Pay attention to your email open rates.

You need to know how often your emails are being opened in order to modify your campaigns effectively.

Avoid spam filters & blacklisting.

You want to avoid having your emails going to spam and having your server blacklisted for sending out spam.

Remove inactive subscribers from your list.

If you have people who aren’t opening your emails, it’s best to remove them from your list. Go through your list and identify anyone who has been inactive for 6 months or longer, and then send them a final email to see if they respond. If not, remove their emails from your list.

Timing is everything.

It matters when you send out your emails. You should test which times get the best open-rate and continually monitor your timing strategy.

Pay attention to your subject lines, and the first sentence of your email.

As you can likely relate, people tend to get a lot of emails, so it is very easy for your email marketing to get lost in the noise.

That is why what you say or don’t say will definitely have an impact on whether or not people open your email.  You have to write eye-catching subject lines to get noticed. And you have to pay attention to the first sentence in your email because email services like Gmail show snippets of the first sentence.

Watch your tone.

Writing for marketing purposes requires a different approach than other forms of writing.

Keep it simple.

Write to the layman.

Assume they know nothing about your industry, and write as though you’re explaining something to a friend in a discussion.

Your tone should be conversational, and it should be personal.

Write amazing content, and just be yourself.

Whenever you send out content, make sure it is worthy of your brand. It is better to send out nothing than to send out garbage with your name on it.

One important component of writing amazing content is to be authentic. People buy from those they like, so don’t be afraid to be yourself. Don’t be afraid to use humor. Proudly display who you are and you will find others who connect with you.

Use Email Automation

Automating your emails can save you a lot of time while also allowing you to reach a much larger audience more rapidly. But be careful not to over-automate to the point where your audience feels a loss of your authenticity. Nobody likes to feel like they’re speaking to or engaging with a robot.

With that said, you can set up some amazing sequences for your segmented lists that will allow you to hit your audience with a series of communications set on auto-pilot. Then, if someone engages, you can kick it out of sequence so that a live person can take over and engage in an authentic manner.

There is a lot you can do with email automation, and it can be one of the most powerful tools in your marketing toolbox.

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