Everyone knows that email marketing is important, but with all of the competing technologies out there, it’s easy to forget just how effective email marketing can be. With a potential return on investment of up to 4400%, we have yet to see another strategy with such a high return on investment as email marketing!
Email marketing is a powerful channel and is one of the basic marketing strategies that all businesses should be using. After all, one of the most significant advantages of using email marketing is that people still use email. In fact, 90% of adults and 74% of teenagers use email!
Email is an essential tool for attracting and retaining customers. It builds customer relationships and helps to generate and nurture sales leads for your business. However, as with any strategy, email marketing must cover a few basic factors to be successful.
Let’s take a look at three of them below.
Email List Quality
The most successful email marketing campaigns begin with an email list full of qualified people who are truly interested in what you have to say or sell. The best way to achieve this is to first get audience permission. Permission is the act of getting consent from a subscriber to send them marketing messages. Receiving permission from your audience isn’t just a nice thing to do, it’s a clear indicator the subscriber wants to hear from your business and also meets the CAN-SPAM Act standards.
Many businesses choose to scrape or purchase their email lists. However, when you actually receive permission from your audience to send them emails, you can increase your ROI on campaign initiatives by up to 40x more than if you did not obtain permission to email them.
The best way to build an audience is by converting website visitors. In order to do this, you need to create opt-in forms on your website and encourage them to sign up. A few ideas for opt-in forms include:
Welcome Gates – pop-up boxes that appear when someone lands on your site. You can use this to offer your newsletter subscription or a free content gift for signing up.
Lightbox Popups – these are sign-up forms that appear anytime on your website and blank out the background until the reader decides to sign up or “X” out of the box.
Exit Popups – these are sign-up form boxes that pop up when the user is leaving your site.
Inline Forms – are simple forms embedded directly into your service pages or blog posts, perfect for relevant content offers related directly to that service or topic.
Slide-ins or Floating Bars – give you a more subtle approach to requesting a user’s email by sliding into view from the side of your screen or floating below your content.
Locked Content – is excellent for premium content, by giving users a taste of your blog post or article, then requests their email to read the full post.
There are other places you can add a signup form on your website ranging from the header, footer, and inside various pages of your website, giving the call to action to sign up.
Quality Email Campaigns
A successful marketing strategy starts with setting goals. Begin by thinking about what you want to accomplish. Are you welcoming new subscribers? Are you launching a new product or service? Sending content relevant to your goals increases your odds of converting your subscribers into paid customers.
Many businesses line up their general sales conversion goals with their email marketing goals. This makes sense because the ultimate goal of any business is to make sales, right? Here are a few typical goals for email marketing campaigns:
Welcome new subscribers by telling them about your business, and begin to build a trusting relationship.
Engage with your subscribers by sending them valuable content or promote a helpful webinar or event.
Nurture your existing subscribers who may be interacting and reading your content but haven’t made a purchase yet. With each email you send, work your subscribers through a sale funnel.
Re-engage subscribers who haven’t opened an email or interacted with you for a while.
Finally, as they say, timing is everything. Sending your emails at the right time can make all the difference. Are your subscribers professionals who are working and checking emails throughout the daytime hours? Or is your product or service meant for after-hours entertainment; therefore, subscribers will be reading your content after work in the evening? You can use this as a foundation of when to send your emails and then begin A/B testing the time sent to see which emails perform best.
As you get to know your subscribers, personalize their experience by sending them what they are interested in. Doing so at just the right time while simultaneously moving them through the sales funnel will ultimately lead them to spend money with you. (or buy from you again!)
Email Marketing Technology
Using the right email marketing platform can make a huge difference in the success of your marketing campaigns. Look for features like:
- Campaign creation and automation options, with templates
- Software integrations with platforms you are already using
- Segmentation options
- Analytics
Additionally, as mentioned in the previous section, your platform should allow for A/B testing. This feature lets you, for example, send the same email to half of your list at one time and half at another time, then compare the results. As you track these results, you will find the exact time you are most likely to get your email opened. Also, deliverability is important. You may have the best intentions, but email platforms like Outlook, Gmail, Yahoo, or others are always watching for spam emails to send to the junk folder.
While many factors go into a successful delivery, basic functions within your email service provider like domain verification will increase the chances of your emails landing in the Inbox.
Above all, your email marketing platform should be one you are comfortable working within.
Conclusion
Suppose you’re tempted to jump on the latest social media trend and put your email marketing on the back burners, don’t. Email marketing is far from dead or outdated.
Don’t take our word for it; check out these unbelievable stats provided by Optin Monster:
- 18% of companies achieve ROI greater than $70 per $1 invested.
- Email is 40x more effective at acquiring customers than Facebook and Twitter combined.
- Shoppers spend 138% more when marketed through email than those who do not receive email offers.
Are you ready to get started with a monthly newsletter or new email marketing campaign of your own? Let us help! Learn more about our Email Marketing Services at GreenCup Digital.
