Email Marketing — The oldest buddy in the game of Digital Marketing
A common belief in previous days among digital marketers was that-
“Email marketing is dead!”
But from early 2020, it’s ever-changing. Let me tell you in detail.
“Email marketing has an ROI (Return of Investment) of $42 for every $1 spent. In simple words, you will get $42 investment back while spending only $1.”
Such a high ROI suggests that now you need to take care in learning the art of effective email marketing to extend your business value and land a lot of customers.
Therefore, this guide is meant to urge you to start with effective methods to pitch your readers and convert them into customers consequently. Adding to it, the e-mail marketing guide conjointly includes a bit-by-bit guide to putting together an efficient email list and pitching it with the assistance of various tools.
If I define email marketing now- A way to pitch users directly via multiple emails to grab their attention over a specific target.
So, I assume you know what email marketing is. Now, I want to share a real-life short story where you can find key elements of email marketing.
Sarah, who owned a small business, struggled to reach her target audience through traditional marketing methods (e.g.; local newspaper ads, leaflets, etc.). But found success with email marketing by setting up an email list (by opt-in forms on her website and social media pages), creating a professional template, and using automated campaigns to nurture leads and drive sales. Her newsletter was a hit. But Sarah didn’t stop there. She realized that email marketing was more than just sending newsletters and promotional emails. She started using automated email campaigns to nurture leads and drive sales. Her email marketing efforts paid off in a big way. As a result, her business doubled in size and she was able to hire her first employee.
Sounds cool, right?
Now you can ask me, how does it work?
First of all, email marketing requires a series of different events just like any other type of marketing.
For that, you need to have an active email list of subscribers, which you have to target to bring implicit leads and deals.
Next, you’ll need a proper email service provider, i.e., software or a platform where you could manage all your email campaigns real quick and easy.
In the end, you’ll have to define your pretensions about a specific email strategy to make sure that you can target the email list duly.
By doing so, your business or brand will start getting authentic and more secure. Not only that, but you could also pitch your users for implicit deals once they start trusting your brand.
Example:
Since I’m into learning different strategies of how email marketing works, We receive a lot of emails from different companies trying to convert us into clients.
If you have a look at this email, you will notice the following things:
Use of Attractive Colors: The Company took the help of multiple colors, (Yellow, Black, and Red) to emphasize its message.
Copywriting Skills: I got hooked up after reading the first tagline, i.e., “Last chance, 50% off”
An excellent way to keep me engaged!
More Elaboration: It also mentioned the additional details with the Terms of Services.
Another example that I loved is from Firefox Marketing Team. Here it goes:
That is what email marketing is all about, i.e., to force a user into taking some kind of action through different tactics.
Why do you need to get started now?
Even with so much social media hype these days, you should not close your eyes when it comes to email marketing.
As a beginner digital marketer, here are some of the benefits of email marketing that will help you take the first step to start learning this art from scratch:
— Communication Channel:
Although I know people now prefer checking Facebook or Instagram on a daily basis, it does not change the fact that 99% of users still check their emails every day. So, it is still one of the largest communication channels available worldwide whether you believe it or not.
— You Own the Email List You Make
You could enjoy followers and fans on different social media apps until your account gets deactivated one day and you are left with nothing. However, you will not have to deal with this problem when it comes to an active email list. You can literally save it anywhere you want and pitch your subscribers anytime you want.
— Email Converts Better Than Any Other Marketing Tool
With the right copywriting skills, you can convert a user within a short period of time.
Not to forget, the ROI percentage of email marketing is around 4400%.
So, once you build a list out of scratch, you will have an effective way to grab more subscriptions and sales without any hurdles.
— Building a Trustworthy Audience
Most of all, with effective email campaigns and strategies you are actually building trust among your audience for your business or brand.
Once this relationship develops between your brand and audience, you can cash this opportunity to the full extent. I’ll share how you can build an audience in this email marketing guide.
Those are some of the reasons to get started with email marketing right now.
Believe me, you will start loving how easier it could get to increase your brand’s revenue and sales with simple yet effective strategies.
Now that you have made up your mind to learn email marketing strategies from scratch, let me help you out.
How to Get Started in 2023?
As a newbie, I had to explore a proper roadmap to start with my email marketing journey.
Unfortunately, I was not able to find something exceptional. However, now that I have command over the field, I took it upon myself to make a clearer roadmap for newbies.
— Pick the Best Email Marketing Service Provider
Picking the right email marketing service provider (ESP) would already solve 50% of your problems related to email campaigns.
However, making the right choice, especially when you are a beginner could become a little daunting.
To avoid this problem in near future, you need to see whether a specific ESP will let you scale your business or not.
The best way to do this is to read multiple reviews about different service providers and then make the final decision.
— Build Your Email List: Create Lead Magnets, Opt-In Forms & More
After figuring out which ESP to go with, the next step involves focusing on creating an email list out of scratch.
Different digital marketers utilize different strategies to create an audience-oriented email list. That said, some of the tips that you can utilize for creating a large email list are:
- Create awesome CTAs
- Use Lead Magnets to attract email addresses
- Build engaging opt-ins
- Add humor where needed
- And most importantly, add value to your audience
Start adding Email Addresses to Your Tool
After collecting email addresses from the strategies we have utilized above, you will have to add them to your email marketing tool. Different tools will have different options to upload the collected email list.
The most common one is to add collected emails into a spreadsheet and then upload them directly to a specific tool.
I will leave it to your preference and convenience as you can decide better on adding email addresses as per your will.
After adding them to your email marketing tool, you can make multiple labels and segment the email list to target them perfectly.
Create or Choose From the Best Email Templates
Do not panic even if you cannot design beautiful emails.
I still remember not being able to design something that could actually force my readers to take the action.
However, the email templates library of Constant Contact did help me a lot and now I know how to pitch my users just by doing some tweaks to the already-built templates.
Learn the Art of Email Copywriting: Catchy Titles, Images & Body
The most interesting and time taking section of email marketing is learning the art of copywriting while pitching the users.
Your email will have no effect on the user if you do not learn copywriting skills.
Email copywriting simply means writing in a way that could compel a user to make an action.
More precisely, it should stand out among a large inbox and should force a person to open the email.
The use of appropriate titles, images, and writing the Body part effectively could easily land you many potential clients and subscriptions.
However, “Rome was not built in a day” and that is the case with email copywriting.
You need to practice this art as much as you can and even so, this field will require you to gain as much knowledge as you can.
Some of the tips that I would give to newbie email marketers about improving their copywriting skills include:
1. Identify the “Who” and “What”
The biggest questions to ask yourself before writing an email copy are:
Who you are writing to? and
What do you want them to do after they open the email?
As for the “Who” part, you need to understand your targeted audience and how they will behave after receiving your email.
2. Keep Subject Lines Short
Subject lines or headlines of an email act as the first impression you make on your audience.
Keeping them short, concise, and to the point will help a user understand them clearly and the chances of your email getting opened will increase sufficiently.
According to recent research, it has been found that subject lines ranging from 6 to 10 words have an opening ratio of around 25%.
3. Make a Clear Promise
Analyze the offer you are making and then pitch the user by making a bold promise in the subject line.
With that, you will have an instant impact on the mind of users and they will be compelled to open the email to see whether you are fulfilling your promise or not.
Some catchy subject lines I have used over the years to attract the audience include:
- Learn how I lost my weight within a month with 5 Proven Ways!
- These 5 habits have helped me increase my productivity to a whole new level!
- Some interesting facts about “The Office U.S.” You must know!
4. Focus on Aligning Subject Line with Body Copy
To understand it better, you first need to divide your email copy into three parts, i.e.
- The Subject Line,
- Body Copy and
- Call to Action.
Now, after making use of an eye-catchy subject line, make sure that your body copy aligns with it.
Do not make the mistake of promising something else in the subject line and then negating it while writing the copy.
5. Focus on Using Relevant Images
Make good use of relevant images in your email copy where possible.
I am not telling you to stuff irrelevant images as it will have no impact on your audience.
Use it where it seems like you are trying to explain something via visuals and graphics.
Send Your Emails at the Best Time
Again it is important to note the time you want to send emails to your potential list. For that purpose, you need to focus more and more on understanding the demographics of your audience. Identifying the region they live in could make things easier for you.
Fortunately, you can utilize some techniques in tools like Constant Contact to have an idea of the best time to send an email.
For that purpose, you can consider Email Sent History while comparing low open rate campaigns with that high open rates.
This will give you an idea of when to send the emails to a specific audience.
Similarly, you can open the campaigns with the highest opening rates and review their open report to see at what time your subscribers opened your email.
You can find more details in my book Unbox your Digital Strategy
Track Your Results: A/B Testing, CTR & Open Rates
Keeping a track of your email campaign will give you insights into how well you can manage your future email strategies.
Make sure that you keep track of your results including CTR (Click Through Ratio) and open rates, etc.
Utilize the following things to get better results in your next email campaign
1. A/B Testing:
A/B testing actually means using different versions of the same email copy to see which one is performing better.
You can use tools like Constant Contact, OptinMonster, and Sendinblue to do A/B testing.
Based on the results from this testing, you can choose the best version and carry on with it accordingly.
2. Open Rates:
The average percentage of open rates revolves around 10% to 15% according to the data shared by Campaign Monitor.
If we take that into perspective, out of 100 emails you send, only 10 or 15 will get opened.
To optimize open rates percentage, you must focus on the subject line of your email and keep the whole copy as aligned as possible.
3. CTR (Click-Through Rate)
With the average CTR of only 2.5% as per Campaign Monitor, you should optimize your Call to Action buttons as much as possible.
Doing this will increase your CTR rate and will eventually get you potential leads.
Improve Along the Way
“Practice Makes a Man Perfect!”
Focus on this quote when you practice with different email marketing strategies and campaigns.
Keep learning the art of email copywriting if you want your campaign to be a successful one.
Moreover, you could do split testing (A/B testing), use storytelling in the body copy of your email, and optimize your CTA buttons to improve along the way.
A time will come when you will get the ideal open rate and CTR percentage. Moreover, you will be able to manage email campaigns on a large scale easily.
In Conclusion
Email marketing is an effective method to try and lure your targeted audience to take action.
With the help of multiple email marketing tools, you can automate your email campaigns and track their results accordingly.
If you feel overwhelmed, have a look at these hand-picked tools:
- Hunter.io for getting email addresses
- Email validation tools by H-Supertools
- OptinMaster for lead magnets
- GetResponse for full-fledged email marketing
Make sure that you learn the art of email copywriting and practice it with different templates. And persuade your recipients in the best possible manner.
Let me summarize the guide for you:
- Work on your email marketing goals
- Pick the best email marketing tools
- Start building your email list with lead magnets
- Set up your email welcome email
- Implement the best of email copywriting
- Improve your titles for increased open rates
- Track your results along the way
- And repeat what’s working for you
Follow the step-by-step email marketing guide I have explained above. Improve your skill as an email marketer or boost your business as an entrepreneur.
