Email marketing is one of the most successful ways of educating prospects, building your marketing funnel, and growing sales. Businesses agree, with thousands spending billions each year to succeed in this space.
The global email marketing industry is expected to hit $17.9 billion in six years from $7.5 billion in 2020. Here’s how you can make it work for you.
1. Set Forth Clear Goals
Any email marketing strategy that is effective must begin with clear goal-setting. Your email plan should have a concrete goal that it hopes to accomplish, be that creating more email subscribers, pushing sales for a specific product, or getting people to sign up on a service plan.
Once you know why you’re doing it, it’ll be easier to address all the subsequent tips as you get to them. Clarity is a virtue.
2. Study Your Audience
You can only reach your goals by knowing the people you are targeting. Study your audience thoroughly. Examine culture, income, family outlook, pain points, and anything else where you can bring value.
Your audience will tell you what they want to know more about by how they engage with your content or content like yours. If you haven’t started yet, turn to your competitors to see who they are serving. From there, it will be easier to develop a strategy of your own.
3. Respect the Inbox
There is a fine line between emailing too much and emailing so little that people forget about you. A delicate balance is essential.
However, the balance might differ from industry to industry and where the reader is in the buying cycle. Once per week is usually a good rule of thumb for respecting someone’s inbox, though you can certainly get away with more.
Create value with every interaction. What are some helpful tips that you can deliver in bite-sized morsels to keep your audience appreciative?
4. Craft Killer Subject Lines
The best marketing strategies are destined to fail if no one is looking at your communications. Email open rates are historically low.
With moves like Google’s Promotions tab and the recent Apple privacy updates, it’s going to get more difficult to break through the gatekeepers. Your best bet is crafting a killer subject line that will make the recipient have to open.
Good subject lines are short, to the point, and yet a little teasing in the way they are presented. The goal is to advertise the value you’re about to create for the reader without giving it all away in the subject line.
Even more challenging, keep it to about 5-7 words to keep from having the best part cut off by email programs. Experiment with what you send, and keep tabs on what’s working.
5. Keep Messages Short
Messages should be short as well. Few people want to sit down and read a long email message that they know is somewhat promotional in nature. They’re too concerned about getting to “Inbox Zero.”
Eliminate unnecessary words. You can also do it by jumping right into the reason you’re writing, and making sure the recipient remembers why they opted into your list in the first place.
6. Focus On a Single Point
Each message should only have one purpose. It should be the central focus, no matter what. If someone is still in the information gathering phase, don’t try to sell them something.
Make it easy for them to find or know what the next message will be about. Give them something to look forward to. That’s why email drip campaigns are so effective at moving prospects along the marketing funnel.
They understand that it takes more than five touch-points to make a lead a customer. Emails that take their time in nurturing the prospect are far more effective at getting that eventual sale.
7. Always Include CTAs
Just because your email message isn’t selling doesn’t mean you should forgo the calls to action. There is always an action to take, whether that’s proceeding to check out or clicking on a blog post that better explains some details that your prospect is still pondering.
Plan out each message. As you do, ask yourself what the next natural step would be for someone at that phase of the buying cycle. Whatever nudges them forward will be your call to action.
8. Fragment Your List
Email marketing strategy 101 says that you shouldn’t have just one email list. Yes, knowing how many unique addresses you have is wise, but that’s not how you make the most of your email campaigns.
You do it by fragmenting the list. Targeting people on it with the most relevant messages will ensure you don’t turn them off of your product or service by demonstrating ignorance of where they are.
People want more from the companies they do business with. They want companies that know what they want before they do. List fragmentation is the best way for you to stay ahead of that curve.
9. Use Technology Effectively
There are ample tools and services for creating campaigns, automating mundane but necessary tasks, and integrating other technology tools. Use them!
Furthermore, look at the results of your work. Technology has made it simple to study what messages are getting opened, what messages are getting ignored, and what to do about it.
10. Try Different Approaches
Beyond fragmenting your list, you should also fragment the fragments to allow for more testing. Try several different messages in your email marketing strategies. This is called A/B testing, and it can help you improve your open rates and conversions.
11. Keep In Contact
Make sure you know who is interacting with your email content. Schedule time to follow-up with them to ensure they don’t lose interest. The more personalized you can make this approach, the better.
12. Make It Easy to Opt Out
Marketing by email always runs the risk of people unsubscribing. Embrace it. Don’t hide buttons or make it tough to figure out how to sever ties.
If leads don’t like the content you’re offering up, they’re going to find that button anyway. Might as well make it easy for them while protecting the integrity of your email lists.
Email Marketing Means Embracing Your Inner Planner
Successful email marketing requires a lot of planning. If you’ve never been real comfortable with that, it’s time to start. Luckily, there are many tools and data that can help.
If you still feel all this is rather complicated and would like a solution that can help you automate at least a portion of your email marketing efforts, reach out. TFG Media Company serves customers in a variety of digital marketing spaces. We can help your campaign!
