Marketers nowadays place a lot of attention on webinars, video marketing, and other novel ways to reach out to their clients.
However, you should not let your modern communication tools distract you from one of the oldest and most powerful message channels, i.e., email.
You might be asking if email marketing is still a viable option.
Even in 2022, Email yields $42 for every $1 spent, a staggering 4,200% return on investment, making it one of the most effective solutions accessible.
That's the power of email marketing.
Email should be a cornerstone of your digital marketing approach for this reason alone. It's like leaving money on the table if you don't use email marketing.
It's perfectly normal if you're unsure where to begin. Email is a broad topic. Beginners might easily become lost in a sea of tools, strategies, and jargon.
In this guide, we have shared every nitty-gritty of email marketing and how to create an email marketing campaign for your business.
What is Email Marketing?
Email marketing is one of the direct marketing strategies that involves sending customized, bulk emails to leads to educate and persuade them to do a specific action, such as purchasing something.
It's a very successful internet marketing technique. Prospects become customers with effective email marketing, and one-time purchasers become repeat customers and ardent fans.
For a good reason, email marketing has been around for a long time. It regularly outperforms all other marketing channels when it comes to interacting with your leads, nurturing them, and converting them into customers.
Email marketing can be used to enlighten your contacts, increase sales, and establish a community around your business.
Modern email marketing has shifted away from mass mailings that are one-size-fits-all in favor of consent, segmentation, and personalization. This may appear to be time-consuming, but marketing automation takes care of the heavy labor.
Why is Email Marketing Important?
Email marketing is one of the most effective digital marketing tools you can use. The following benefits represent just a sample:
- Increased leads and conversions: When your email opens, you have a high chance of converting someone into a customer. Email delivers relevant content right to people's inboxes, increasing the chances that they'll pay attention and take action.
- Increased brand awareness: Email delivers valuable information in an attractive and easily-digestible format. It demonstrates sincerity from your business, which can have a lasting effect on customer perceptions of the brand. Brands that email customers to improve brand awareness and loyalty will almost always see an increased open rate due to their opt-in nature.
- Increased traffic: Sending promotional emails to reach your prospects who generally may not visit websites is a good way to get their attention. So email marketing may give you initial traffic, and in the long run, will carry that person to your website for better information search results.
- Increased online lead collection: Besides the primary purpose of attracting potential customers from those who are already paying attention to their inboxes, you can use email marketing as another step towards actually making sales. The concept is generally called "getting consumers to collect more data."
Advantages and Disadvantages of Email Marketing
Here are some major pros and cons of Email marketing.
Email Marketing Pros
- Email is permission-based: It's the equivalent of being given the keys to their house when a customer gives you their email address. Instead of showing up uninvited, gaining permission to enter boosts the possibilities of engagement and conversion.
- Gives you better control: You have better control and reach to your subscribers as compared to other marketing platforms like social media. If the platform goes away, all of your hard work goes away with it. You own the relationships you build with your subscribers when you use email.
- Feeling of personalization: Sure, you can think of email as a broadcast message. But creating an experience for the reader is much more human and engaging to them than simply a mass-produced broadcast message in the past. You can create personalized and hyper-targeted campaigns using demographic or psychographic data.
- Helps with brand recognition: Your company's brand consists of much more than just its logo. Your brand is how people recognize you in the marketplace. The tone, design, and content of your emails will all contribute to developing your distinct brand.
- Build better relationships: Email is an excellent way to communicate with customers in a personal and personalized manner. Creating an email that accurately reflects your company's brand will help customers get to know you better, build trust, and increase sales.
- It brings customers to your website: You may attract visitors to your website with email marketing that includes engaging material and a clear CTA.
Email Marketing Cons
- Requires consistency: Email campaigns must be well maintained and refreshed regularly. Customers will want more if they see new content and information.
- Emails can be sales-y: Emails, while customizable, do not replace the value of human interaction. Remember to keep your attention on real people, even when communicating virtually.
- Email open rate is low: Because most people receive a large number of emails, it's extremely likely that yours will get lost in the shuffle. Customized and interesting emails will help you stand out in a congested inbox.
How Email Marketing Works?
One of the most effective techniques is email marketing, which is easy to understand and frequently automated.
Email Service Providers (ESPs) are used by businesses to send marketing emails.
A software that sends and handles email marketing campaigns is known as an Email Service Provider.
Email Service Provider is sometimes known as an email marketing platform, email marketing tool, or email marketing service.
An effective email marketing campaign has three elements:
- Email List:
You'll need an active email list to run successful email campaigns. This is a list of email addresses expressing interest in getting marketing emails from your company.
Building an email list can be done in a variety of ways. One of the simplest is to design a lead magnet (also known as an offer) that your target audience will want in exchange for their email addresses, such as a voucher.
- Email Service Provider:
An Email Service Provider (ESP), usually referred to as an email marketing platform, is software that aids in the management of your email list. It also aids in the creation and implementation of automated email marketing campaigns.
You can use an ESP to automate actions triggered by your target audience's behaviors. These allow you to customize each connection with them, resulting in higher engagement and conversion rates.
- Clear Goals:
You should have clear and well-defined goals to run an email marketing campaign.
The first step is to categorize your email list by demographics or actions taken by subscribers.
Create an email, or a series of emails, to persuade customers to take action and accomplish your goal.
Finally, use your Email Service Provider (ESP) to automatically send emails and track the campaign.
Is Email Marketing Worth for Small Businesses?
Email marketing can have a big impact on small businesses.
It can create strong relationships with customers, resulting in higher conversion rates and more sales.
Since Email marketing is cost-effective and easy to manage, it is a perfect tool for small businesses targeting busy target markets.
Here is why small businesses should use email marketing:
- Easy Accessibility
Email is accessible to people of all ages. It appeals to a wide range of people, including those who aren't particularly tech-savvy.
Although we live in the digital age, not everyone is at ease with the internet. On the other hand, most people know how to check their email. As a result, it is the most common type of digital marketing.
- Affordable solution
Since email is such an affordable marketing method, you can use it to reach a large number of people.
You'll need an email marketing solution to get the most out of your marketing efforts. Email marketing is a very cost-effective strategy. The majority of email marketing solutions include pricing plans to suit any budget.
Many email services have free plans. These are great for new email marketers who want to acquire a feel for the program before investing in it. There's no reason not to give it a shot when you have nothing to lose.
- High ROI
As mentioned above, email yields a 4200% ROI. That's even more than even what SEO generates.
An online business can benefit from email marketing in the following ways:
- Boost your revenue
- Increase your sales conversions.
- Increase the number of people who visit your website and become aware of your brand.
The return on investment is determined by various factors such as the products you sell, your profit margins, the cost of customer acquisition, and how well your email marketing campaigns are optimized.
- You Own Your Email List
Your email list is a valuable asset for your business, and you don't have to share it; you own it.
A large list of customers who freely and manually subscribed to your list can significantly increase the resale value of your business.
How to Launch Your Successful Email Marketing Campaign?
There is no single answer to this question, since the best way to launch your successful email marketing campaign depends on several factors. Some of those factors include what kind of products or services you offer and how relevant your email content, such as subject line and body is to your target audience.
Below, we have shared the step by step email marketing strategies guide:
- Make Use of Email Marketing Tools
Finding an email marketing solution to deliver and manage your email campaigns and subscribers is the first step.
Sendinblue, Mailchimp, Constant Contact, Convertkit, Mailjet, Mailerlite, and HubSpot are just a few examples of popular email marketing tools.
It's difficult to know which of the hundreds of ESPs on the market is best for your company.
It's also easy to get compelled by flashy bells and whistles that you really don't require (not yet, anyway).
Examine your requirements. Make a distinction between must-have and nice-to-have features. Make a list of everything you want to do.
- Build Your Email List
You must first find people to whom you can send emails before you can begin sending them. How do you begin building your list?
The best way is to offer a form or a sign-up prompt to collect their email address. But that won't come easy!
You need to be great at writing content and promotions:
- Write great content
Email marketing is all about setting expectations, and it is up to you to do so.
Email marketing campaigns wouldn't excel without great email content and an email subject line.
Additionally, you can expect a successful email campaign if your call to action is strong and your follow-up is consistent. By planning the email content at each stage of the customer journey, you can make your email marketing journey robust and successful.
- Offer something valuable
Incentives are the most straightforward way to collect email addresses.
Of course, there are numerous ways to accomplish this. Some people prefer to give something away for free, whereas others simply provide a newsletter or product updates.
For example, various sites like SEJ uses the sidebar on the right to alert readers with the latest news about SEO & Digital Marketing.
You could also provide a checklist, ebook, white paper, or downloadable resources.
Another excellent way to get people to give you their email addresses is by holding contests and giveaways.
The best way is to establish credibility, explain the purpose of the emails, and pique people's interest in receiving them.
Simply posting "enter your email for updates" will not pique anyone's interest. More people will subscribe if you share a specific call to action or benefit for providing their email address.
- Don’t Pitch Right Away
You are not running an email list for the sake of running one—you are there to engage customers and make sales.
It can be difficult to transition from an email list that provides a lot of free value to a list that pitches a product for money.
It's a good idea to plan your pitching ahead of time if you want to do it well. You don't want to catch everyone off guard with a pitch all of a sudden.
See if your message is in line with the expectations you've set. Understand what the customer has previously expressed interest in and send similar offers down the line if possible.
Again, each company has different requirements, and there are no hard and fast rules about how frequently you can pitch or provide content.
Just keep in mind that an email list is a permission asset, and it's better to err on the side of caution than to be too loose and reckless with it.
- Set up Welcome Email for New Subscribers
When you set up your welcome email, it's important to ensure that it contains all the information a potential subscriber needs to get started.
An automated message sent to new clients and subscribers is a welcome email. The aim is to introduce your business and any content that will help the subscriber create a relationship with you – a welcome discount, links to recent articles, relevant information, and so on.
It's preferable to be lengthy and meticulous rather than brief and obvious for the new subscribers.
- Create Quick and Responsive Emails
Most email marketing providers include a drag-and-drop email editor to make things easier. These are ideal for creating clean, straightforward, and hassle-free designs.
That isn't to say that having a professional email designer, especially for eCommerce, isn't valuable. An email designer can help you stand out from the pack with bespoke templates. It's something to think about in the future — or even right now if you have the resources.
Email design, on the other hand, does not have to be tough or technical. You can construct gorgeous and professional marketing campaigns using a drag and drop editor.
There's no need to get caught up in making big, elegant emails. More significantly, you should concentrate on writing an email that reflects your company's image.
- Focus on Email Optimization
There are various ways to boost email open rates and conversion and average return rates. The following are some of them:
- Use a recognizable email sender name and address
Using your brand name as the sender name is the best method to reinforce credibility and brand recognition. There are numerous options for doing so:
- Your company/brand/newsletter name.
- A name that is a blend of your brand name and your first name.
- To distinguish different sorts of email content, use a unique sender name
- Write a compelling email subject line
The subject line of your email is just a few words that can affect whether or not your email gets read. With so much competition, they need to stand out in the inbox these days.
Try to elicit curiosity or a desire to open in just a few words.
- The subject line should be no more than 50 characters long.
- Emphasize your most intriguing offer.
- Appeal to the emotions and goals of your subscribers.
You can use an email subject line generator like Scalenut to create compelling subject lines.
- Create email preheader/text
The email preheader (also known as preview text) is a sample of text that appears behind the subject line in some email clients, especially on mobile devices.
The preheader gives your subject line context and can increase open rates dramatically. To begin telling the reader a tale, the subject line and preheader should function together.
It should pique the reader's interest enough to make them want to open the email and learn more.
If you don't specify a preview text, the first line of text will be displayed in the email client.
- Use Email Analytics Tool
You can use an email analytics tool to track your email marketing efforts.
Analyzing crucial email marketing stats will help you better your campaign plan in the future. There will always be places for development as a newbie email marketer.
The majority of ESPs provide an analytics dashboard that includes at least the real-time KPIs listed below:
- The number of persons who opened your email divided by the total number of recipients is the open rate.
- The ratio of the number of persons that clicked on a link in your email divided by the total number of recipients is known as the click-through rate.
By using these monitoring campaigns, you can determine if the email marketing strategy is working in the right direction.
FAQs
Q1. What are the different types of emails?
Ans: According to many email marketers, there are 9 types of emails:
- Newsletter emails
- Special offer emails
- Transactional emails
- Review request emails
- Welcome emails
- Curated content emails
- New product announcement emails
- Abandoned cart emails
- Confirmation emails
Q2. What is email automation?
Ans: Email automation or email marketing automation is the process of automating certain tasks in your email campaign, such as scheduling and sending messages on behalf of your business. Automation can make campaigns more efficient by handling some common tasks for you.
Q3. Does A/B testing work in email marketing?
Ans: At times, you have the option of sending different variants to different recipients, such as "different subject line," "similar content," and so on. The results from the A/B test can guide you in choosing whether or not to send a particular variant and which leads should receive one variant versus another based on their likelihood of buying / engaging with your email.
Q4. How do I segment my email list?
Ans: You can use any reliable email tool like Hubspot, ActiveCampaign or MailChimp to split subscribers based on demographics, interests, and find subscribers or non-subscribers. This way, you will get better insight into customer segmentation.
Q5. Is it possible to set up an email list without using a tool?
Ans: You can build an email list without using a tool, but it may take longer to do that manually.
Conclusion
It's time to rethink your email marketing approach if you've been ignoring it.
For marketers who are ready to learn how to do it correctly, email marketing has a significant payoff. It doesn't have to be overly difficult.
To begin, keep in mind that you're a visitor in your subscribers' inboxes. Your subscribers are always one click away from losing interest in your emails. Be courteous, respectful, and helpful.
If you are looking to create a compelling email subject line or text, make sure to give Scalenut a try.
Oh! And, do not forget to subscribe to our email list.
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