12 Apr 2022
An Introduction to Email Marketing (Part 1)
An email marketing campaign is a fundamental technique of digital marketing. There is a distinctness regarding this email marketing service. On the one hand, many marketers think it is outdated because it is one of the oldest forms of digital communication. However, on the other hand, email marketing still is one of the most successful ways to communicate and transmit messages.
There are contemporary communication methods with your audience, like live chats, social media, online questionnaires, SEO, affiliate marketing, etc. Still, the most significant advantage of email marketing is that approximately 4 billion people use it, while social media sees plenty of users scattered across varying media.
Moreover, one great benefit of email marketing is that it has an average Return on Investment (ROI) of $38 for every dollar spent. This significant amount makes effective marketing emails an indisputable ally in every marketer's toolbox.
Since email campaigns are so essential and valuable, why do some startups or businesses not prefer them?
Below, we will examine all the perceived drawbacks and techniques for managing effective email marketing campaigns giving you email marketing tips.
What is Email Marketing?
In short, email marketing is a way to send promotional messages to clusters of users, boosting sales or leads.
The risk with email marketing is that, due to the plethora of digital advertisements that users have to face, there is a high probability that many email campaigns are left unopened or unread.
To distinguish your emails from the others, you have to find the pulse of loyal customers and provide your unique perspective. Before we continue to the technicalities, a successful email marketing campaign demands you be professional, gentle, and respectful to your clients.
Moreover, you have to use specific subject lines and email marketing tools to create campaigns like sharing your blog post and your whole content marketing strategy.
After this disclaimer, we are ready to create your email marketing strategy from scratch.
Sufficient email marketing software needs three fundamental features:
1. Mailing List
A mailing list is the number of email clients who have agreed to receive your content like texts, company news, discounts, etc. In addition, stakeholders may subscribe to your list through a lead magnet (or a direct offer). This lead magnet is nothing more than something your niche market would be interested in, like a discount, a coupon, or something to motivate them to give you their email addresses and consent to receive messages mainly through a call to action.
2. Defined Purposes
Do you have a clear purpose for emailing customers and making marketing efforts? For example:
- drive sales
- increase brand awareness
- develop and boost leads
- engage clients
- raise customers' commitment and pump their value
3. An Email Service Provider
Email marketing platforms that help email marketers create marketing strategies automate, design, and manage them are known as Email Service Providers. Moreover, you can study analytics regarding your subscribers through this, like the percentage of people opening or reading your message or those who unsubscribe from your list.
Your email list, Email Service Provider, and purposes must interact and aim to similar goals to complete your email campaigns. That means that you must have clear objectives and act on them accordingly.
How can you combine the above categories?
If you organize your first email marketing campaign or just recreate your email marketing services, you have to follow the above steps:
- Firstly, you must shape the email list and segment it according to subscriber demographics, interests, or actions.
- Secondly, refine your goals and create a series of emails designed to get consumers to accomplish those goals.
- Thirdly, send emails through the Email Service Provider and monitor the email campaign analytics.
Email automation
You can achieve the above categories and an effective email marketing campaign by marketing automation to facilitate and achieve better results.
But how can you achieve it?
1) Determine Your Segments
The first step is to separate your email subscribers into groups to construct more personalized campaigns. In this way, you have to create different campaigns for every group.
2) Design an Efficient Workflow
After creating the groups, design a workflow to achieve the campaign's goals. Workflow, in short, is a sequence of tasks that processes a set of data, and in this manner, you have to form your strategies.
3) Define the Right Motivations
You have to select the motivations that lead users to open your emails for every workflow. Those motivations are unique because they direct customers to open your emails, click on links, or not open them within a predetermined time frame.
Pros of an Email Marketing Strategy
The advantages of an Email Marketing Strategy are:
1) Users Let you in
Due to the large amount of content that every user encounters daily, users may no longer share their email addresses effortlessly. So, when they do, they may want to receive news and notifications from you, and they are even more likely to open these emails.
2) Affords You Immediate Entry to Your Audience
Email marketing offers instant messaging to a massive volume of users while it opens a conversation with most users. In addition, because both mobiles and computers are connected to emails, the users will likely read your messages.
3) Not Tied to a Medium
If Facebook and Instagram are shut down, all the hard work you have done on those platforms will be lost in the blink of an eye. However, email marketing does not have risks because email communication will never stop and there are many email platforms.
4) Personalized email marketing
You are provided with demographic or psychographic data to form more human-centered campaigns that users will identify through your email marketing efforts. Research shows personalized campaigns increase revenue by as much as 760%!
5) Translates to Clear Numbers
At any time, you can calculate the click-through rates and the effectiveness of your campaign performance, modify it and reshape it to make it more attractive and open to more users.
6. Alterable
Marketing channels can be changed entirely or restructured without financially burdening the company.
Best Email Marketing Strategies
To thrive in email marketing means that you design your campaigns in detail. Below you can reach out to some last pieces of advice to improve your email marketing strategies:
1) Operate the Right List Building Strategies
The quality of your email lists influences the triumph of your email marketing campaigns. So, you have to create your lists with full attention and without rapid motions. There are different list-building strategies for every niche market regarding the target medium to find your audience, age, interests, etc.
2) Don't Forget to "Clean" your Email Lists
Do not neglect to "clean" your email lists as often as possible. In this way, you ensure that your lists have active users since you exclude the inactive subscribers and the email addresses no longer in use.
3) Send Emails Frequently
Do not omit to send emails regularly. In this way, your subscribers will not forget you, and you won't have low conversion rates. Watch out not to bother them with too many emails, though. Again, it's all about balance.
Don't forget to send free eBook and discount codes to your subscribers to gain customer loyalty and increase email deliverability. The power of word-of-mouth will aid in the acquisition of new subscribers. Don't forget to use consistent email templates and a characteristic email subject line so that the subscribers know it's you. In addition, in your call to action on your website, include a signup form for your email marketing.
The better the subject lines, structure, and frequency of your emails, the less likely they will be in the spam folder. Also, don't forget to format your emails to be read equally well on mobile devices.
4) Concentrate on One Goal at a Time
Every email should focus on just one purpose at a time. Do not attempt to fulfill many goals at once because you may confuse your audience.
5) Define and Track the Right KPIs
Right key performance indicators (KPIs) are the way to pay attention to the performance of your campaigns. Just sending emails is not enough; you should study the ratings and make the required modifications.
Disadvantages of Email Marketing
1) Challenging Competition
In addition to the thousands of content users encounter daily, each company must compete with similar email marketing strategies. Which email will the user open? Which company will they read about? You have to be innovative in email subject lines to ensure that your emails get seen and opened.
2)Building the List
Sometimes, some companies find it demanding to gather people for the email lists. However, a marketer must already have an email list before starting email marketing to break through.
3) Tough Rules and Regulations for your Email Strategy
Sending emails is not as easy as it seems since you have to obey specific rules for your email marketing strategy to go through. The most well-known rules are about the usage of email for commercial purposes. A standard example is the GDPR, where you have to respect and protect users' personal information and data, and you can't send emails to anyone if they do not explicitly consent to take part in your lists.
The worse thing is that some subscribers also report emails as spam even after they subscribe to a list. As a result, your address reputation is hit hard; the more reports you have as spam, the more likely your emails will go straight to spam folders, even to users who have not reported you.
How to Write Email Marketing Copy to Take Advantage of It?
The first step is to reach users' mailbox, the second one is to get them to open your email, and the third and most crucial step is to have them read your message.
5+1 rules to achieve the above:
1) Know your Target Audience
The first rule relates to whether or not you know your email marketing target audience. Where will the above help? In the optimal segmentation of your audience and the most targeted email copy to each group.
2) Create a Hard-to-Ignore Subject Line
The subject line is probably the most critical in email marketing, as it is the driving force for whether users will open your email or leave it unread.
There are some secrets to writing to the point and hard-to-ignore subject lines:
- Use targeted keywords that the user enters directly into the subject by reading them.
- Make it benefit-driven, that the user will comprehend precisely the content of your text even with a glance, without any difficulty.
- Using active voice instead of passive helps users better identify with the content of your email by making it direct and approachable.
- Personalize as much as possible to help users relate to your email through storytelling.
3) Convey your Message Clearly
How can you get the preview text right? Text appears instantly below or after the subject line by correcting the email and the preview. Limited to a maximum of 140 characters, it acts as a driving force to persuade people to open your email. In addition, an optimized preview text boosts your subject line and supports your value proposition.
4) Make It Effortless to Read
People have minimal time to read your emails, making them understandable and straightforward. You have to write it in mind to read and comprehend. Do this by:
- utilizing brief sentences and paragraphs
- avoiding complex expressions and words
- working with lists and bullet points
They'll probably engage you more if they discover it straightforwardly.
5) Leverage Storytelling
As we already mentioned, storytelling is a solid form to catch the attention and get your messages across. That's why you should integrate storytelling into your email marketing strategy.
5+1) Use Psychology to Your Advantage
You have to create an email based on psychological triggers to lead your users towards achieving your campaign goals. Instances of such triggers:
- color psychology
- fear of missing your news
- social validation
These triggers can assist you in crafting compelling email copy.
