Did you know there are 3x more email accounts than Facebook & Twitter accounts? Or that you are 6x more likely to get a click-through from email than on Twitter? Email marketing is not a new tool, but it is only becoming more popular every year. According to Statista forecasts that up to 4.5 billion users will view letters by 2024.
In this article, we’ll walk you through setting up your email marketing funnel using real examples so that you can acquire leads and generate sales.
Email marketing has been around forever, and for a good reason:
1. Personalization and strengthening relationships
Email marketing is a great way to build one-on-one relationships with current and potential customers. If your audience has different interests and needs, you can offer them different content for mailings.
Also, by creating well-written and engaging emails, readers get to know, like, and trust you and your company.
2. Helps increase brand awareness
Each time an email is sent to consumers, awareness of your company, products, and services is reinforced. In addition, it helps to keep your company’s name top of mind when it comes time to make a purchase.
3. Low cost & high ROI
Compared to other marketing channels, email marketing costs very little. For example, the average email open rate across industries is 22%, and the average click-through rate for most companies is 4%.
For comparison: the engagement rate in social media is, on average 0.6%. For every $1 spent, $44.25 is the average return on email marketing investment.
To track the ROI of your email campaigns, use the following formula:
Net profit (Gross profits from email marketing – Email marketing costs) / Email marketing costs
4. Easy to measure
For each email sent, metrics and reports are provided that show open rates, click-through rates, bounce rates, and conversion rates. This information is key to understanding what is working and what needs improvement.
How to build a database:
First, remember the rule:
So you should avoid using your client’s base for an automatic subscription.
It is illegal and deprives the potential subscriber of any choice. Even if the user would like to subscribe, he will not subscribe in the future because he had no choice in the past.
And forget about buying ready-made databases.
Remember, neither a free mailing list found online, nor a buyable one can be your way to go. It might be fast, but it’s not right.
It is even worst than automatic subscriptions because users there may not even know about your brand. No one likes getting letters from no-name brands.
So comprehensive email lists cannot be generated overnight, but exist fast and effective ways to grow email lists.
Some popular methods include:
Your website – If a lot of your customer interactions happen via your website, then including a subscribe form there is a great way to build your email list.
But where exactly should you include it? Here are some of the most effective we’ve seen:
Checkout or signup process – If your business sells something online, you can use your email signup and checkout forms to capture email subscribers.
Contact form – If your website has a form where people can contact you, adding a subscribe tick box is a great way to capture new email subscribers. These people are already entering their details into the form and have a strong interest in what you offer.
Blog – If you run a blog to help build your business, this is a great place to add a subscription form. People who subscribe to your blog will likely be some of the most valuable readers, accounting for most of your comments and sharing your content 3x more than other visitors.
Your social channels – If you have built a following on social media channels, it’s a good idea to try and convert them into email subscribers.
Special landing – It is a separate page that can be promoted on social networks or media. It’s cool if the landing page not only talks about the benefits of a subscription but also offers a lead magnet.
You can promise to send a lovely gift in the first letter, for example, a helpful PDF brochure with trends on your niche, a checklist, or a promo code for a trial lesson or sale. So the user will be even more motivated to share the email address.
Here is how we used a lead magnet on the eve of the New Year on our website:
Examples of different types of emails in marketing:
Above all, you must be honest with your readers. Tell your audience what is happening with your business or project now.
Supportive and empathetic content is especially relevant now. Now people need support, and their favorite brand can give this support. Your brand voice in such letters should be warm, calm, and caring.
Yes, you cant solve all the problems, but you can give support. And now this is important.
Announcement
Email is sent to your subscribers announcing a new product, feature, or service. It’s not just about the current situation. For example, it’s always great to warn readers that prices will go up in advance. A prime example of an announcement campaign is this email from edmradio announcing the launch of their new app and fresh design.
Marketing Offer
According to Marketing Sherpa, 86% of users don’t want to receive promotional emails more than once a month, so don’t overuse your special offers.
It can take different forms, including a campaign showcasing some of the latest stock and encouraging people to purchase or a campaign offering a discount or special promotion on your products or services. For example, we want to show one of our emails — Express Logo Design Service promotion campaign.
Useful or “Snack content”
It is digests and collections where readers can quickly snatch out only what is interesting. It can be news for the professional community, book bestsellers, design guides, or the leading promotions of the week.
Re-engagement emails
Another necessary type of marketing email is the re-engagement email. As the name suggests, re-engagement emails work to reconnect with customers or subscribers who haven’t been active lately. Take a look at this example from Shopify:
In this example, the re-engagement offer gives the customer the chance to provide feedback on Shopify’s platform. Other options for re-engaging contacts include offering them a unique discount, sending them a birthday message and coupon, updating them on the news about your product/service, and doubling checking their contact preferences.
How to launch your first email marketing campaign:
1. Strategy
Take some time for the concept and answer the question:
What could be interesting, helpful, and essential for the brand’s audience now? Then, if you see a massive problem, try to launch a campaign to solve it.
Another question is, why does your brand need to talk about this? Decide on the tone of communication, and outline actual topics, at least for the near future.
2. Define the goal of your campaign
Before you send out any emails, you have to figure out why you’re sending out the emails in the first place. So what is the goal of your campaign?
Examples of common goals include:
– Promoting a new product
– Sharing a discount with loyal customers
– Getting more downloads for your latest ebook
– Updating subscribers on some important piece of company news
3. Content plan
Creating a content plan is easier than starting from scratch based on the strategy. The main thing is to stick to it.
4. Use an easily recognizable sender name and address
The sender’s name answers the recipient’s first subconscious question: Is this genuine or spam? So, to be easily recognized in the inbox, use the same sender name and address for all campaigns, preferably a corporate one. Introduce yourself in the first line.
The best way to reinforce trustworthiness and brand recognition is to incorporate your brand name into the sender’s name. You can use your company/brand/newsletter name on its own or a combination of brand name and your first name (e.g., Kate at SweetcodeLab). Mailings from unknown mailboxes irritate, and people click “This is spam.”
5. Email subject line
The email subject line is one of the most important elements of your email marketing campaign. It is the first thing a user sees in the inbox, and you have three seconds to hook it. Don’t use clickbait. Aim to create intrigue or a desire to open in just a few words.
– Keep the subject line to 50 characters
– Highlight your most interesting offer
– Appeal to your subscribers’ emotions and ambitions
6. Layout
Navigation in an email should be easy and convenient: headings, buttons, GIFs, and pictures help to understand the meaning of your email better.
7. Target action
Each letter should have a purpose and call to action. Be careful: “Learn more about the offer on the site” often works better than “Buy now.” Don’t use more than one CTA and one link in one email.
8. Opportunity to unsubscribe
The user should understand that he has the opportunity to refuse the mailing list. Add the “unsubscribe” button in a visible place and set up a reaction for those who click it. Do not dramatize, but do not pretend that you do not care.
What email marketing service is best?
Popular email tools include Mailchimp, Constant Contact, Sendinblue, Convertkit, Mailjet, and HubSpot — to name a few.
First of all, evaluate your needs. But distinguish between must-have features and nice-to-have features.
Here are some questions to help narrow down your options:
– What’s your budget?
– What kind of emails do you plan to send, and how often? That’ll give you an idea of your required number of email sends.
– Have you already got a list of opt-in contacts? How many are there?
– What’s your skill level in designing emails? You need a drag-and-drop email editor if you’re a beginner. You also can use ready-made email templates.
– Will you set up automated email workflows? Then, pay attention to what the ESP offers in email marketing automation.
– Will you plan to segment your contacts? If so, what contact list segmentation capabilities are offered?
Our team uses Mailchimp as our primary email tool. Mailchimp is a popular email marketing software. It is excellent for beginners and professional marketers, as it is easy to set up. Also, Mailchimp has a free plan for up to 2,000 subscribers, making it a good free email marketing service.
How to determine if your campaign was successful?
Analyzing key email marketing metrics will teach you how to improve your strategy for future campaigns. So keep an eye on the following metrics:
– Open Rate is the ratio of the number of people who opened your email divided by the total number of recipients
– Click Rate is the ratio of users who click on a specific link to the number of total users who view your email
– Hard Bounce is an email that has failed to deliver for permanent reasons, such as the recipient’s address being invalid
– Soft Bounce is an email that is temporarily undeliverable, usually because of some problem on the recipient’s side
– Unsubscribe Rate is the number of unsubscribes divided by the number of emails delivered
So there you have it!
We hope this article has given you a better idea of email marketing and will help you make actionable decisions about your future campaigns. Email marketing is a powerful driver of sales & revenue for your business, whether small businesses to large enterprises. Follow the steps outlined in this article for a quick start to email marketing and campaign success.
Also, we invite you to learn more about our SMM plans that were strategically designed to help grow communities and keep the audience engaged.
