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Email marketing is one of the oldest forms of Digital Marketing; however, it is arguably the most efficient channel in modern-day marketing. Its average Return on Investment of $42 for every $1 spent makes it an important marketing channel.
While there is a lot of hype around marketing channels such as social media and live chats, these channels would struggle to match the 4 billion Email user base. And as a Marketer, you should focus on platforms with the most prospects.
Beyond the number of users and email marketing, the connections are yours. This means you do not have to worry about algorithms or systems changing. This gives Email Marketing an advantage over channels like SEO.
The large user base and control of some sorts that Email Marketing offers make it a Marketing Channel every marketer should be interested in.
It is not uncommon to find Marketers struggling with their email marketing campaign. This article, however, would guide you on the right way to execute Email Marketing campaigns.
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Table of Contents
What is Email Marketing?
Email Marketing is the process of sending out promotional and personalized emails to prospects or customers. These emails educate their recipients on the sender’s products or services.
Email marketing can also convince recipients to make specific decisions, such as purchasing a product or registering for an event.
It is an efficient form of digital marketing. When executed correctly, it converts prospects into customers and makes loyal customers from one-time buyers.
With email marketing, marketers can generate leads, connect to those leads, and nurture them until they become recurring clients.
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Why Email Marketing?
With the rise of social media and the importance of search engine optimization, you are probably wondering why email marketing is still so important. Why should you put so much effort into making it work?
I stated earlier that the efficiency of email marketing supersedes that of SEO and social media platforms, but I never really said why it is.
Well, the first reason you have to consider is its user base. Sometimes, having a large user base might not be enough. It’s now a question of how often the members of that user base access the channel.
About 99% of people with emails check their emails daily. You would struggle to find any other communication channel that offers something close. 99% of over 4 billion is a figure that should be mouth-watering to any Marketer looking for reasons to optimize their email marketing strategies.
The following reason you should consider is the control it offers. With other social media platforms, users can get suspended, or they can delete their accounts on said platform. And as a Marketer, you would not get notified about this.
However, with email marketing, you own your contact list. And it is almost impossible to have the leads on that list taken away from you.
The third reason is straightforward; email marketing is effective, and it has an estimated ROI of 4400%. Customers who buy products advertised to them via email spend 138% more than those who believe through other advertisement media.
Email marketing is almost the best marketing channel out there. You look around, and it is nearly impossible to find another marketing channel putting up numbers at that level.
How Email Marketing Works
Before we get into the technicalities involved, we must note the following things.
You must remember that you are a guest in your prospects’ or customers’ emails. Their email is probably full of countless adverts, pitches, and interruptions. So, try to be as polite as you can be.
Be of good manners and be as engaging as possible without being forceful. Now, let us get to the workings of a good email marketing campaign.
Have an Email List
Have an Email List: You’d require an active email list to pull off an email marketing campaign. You can’t send out emails if you do not have anyone to send them to. And you cannot have just anyone on that email list; you need to ensure that you fill your email list with your ideal customers.
This makes the lead generation process all the more critical as you need to capture leads if you aim to grow your email list. One easy way to do so is to create a lead magnet that would interest your target audience. For instance, you can offer a coupon to your site visitors. In exchange, they will provide you with their email addresses.
You can also capture leads with lead generation software or tool. An example of such is OptiMonster. With the state-of-the-art targeting feature, you can get your campaigns to the right audience and at the appropriate point of their purchase cycle.
With such software, your email list will be grown organically. This will, in turn, lead to an increase in profits.
Get an Email Service Provider
An Email Service Provider (ESP) or an Email Marketing platform is software that facilitates the management of your email list. With an ESP, you can group your audience, organize your list, and deliver your email campaigns to your target audience. Your ESP should track the results of all of these to improve the quality of movements in the future.
Your ESP should also work with other essential marketing tools you already use. This will help manage your processes efficiently and make the Lead generation process smoother.
With ESP, you would be able to automate actions. The actions of your target audience will trigger these actions, and it will, in turn, make it easier for you to interact with your audience as conversation and engagement improve persona
Set Clear Goals
The goals of your email marketing strategy, the contacts on your email list profile, and your ESP must align to have a successful email marketing campaign. Having your email list organized into various categories helps a lot. With this, you can choose what audience you want to keep engaged or increase their loyalty.
Other email marketing goals include; boosting brand awareness, generating and nurturing leads, and driving sales.
You must also create emails targeting specific demographics or individuals to achieve the goals.
We are going to stay on the email list for a short while. How do you grow your email list as a new company or marketer?
How to Grow your Email List
The standard tactic companies and marketers use to build their email list is having an opt-in form on their website. They do this hoping to get people to sign up. These days, this tactic is becoming inefficient.
Instead, marketers have opted to attract people with an irresistible offer. This offer is a Lead Magnet. This is typically helpful; something offered for free to the audience in exchange for their email address.
Lead Magnets typically come in PDFs, Audio Files, or videos you can create with minimal cost. They can also include tips, resources, white papers, free trials, and webinars.
So, what makes a good Lead Magnet?
- Easy to consume: Whatever form of lead magnet you choose must be easy to take in. You don’t want to write a 400-page thesis; no one would look at it. It has to be something the public can make use of quickly.
- Actionable: Your lead magnet must offer the audience a skill, helpful information, or tool.
- Noticeable Improvement: Lead magnets should be as valuable as products or services. Once people realize your lead magnet is applicable and dependable, the audience will keep patronizing your brand.
- Relevant: You need to know what the needs of your prospects are. Your lead magnet will solve their problem or offer a decent solution.
- Immediate Availability: Patience is something that a lot of customers have. So, why not make your lead magnet give them an instant solution to their trouble.
Examples of Successful Email Campaigns
As efficient as email marketing has been over the years, it is also pretty easy for marketers to get it wrong. Here are some examples of successful marketing campaigns to prevent you from being part of that group of marketers.
Dropbox
As an email marketer, getting customers who haven’t patronized your company in a while to open your email can be very difficult. Dropbox did light work of this.
They made use of whimsical cartoons, as well as cute and funny emojis and emoticons. These consistently short and sweet emails made their intentions of not wanting to intrude obviously.
The company’s goal with this email was to remind its email list that it still existed and the various ways they could be helpful.
Rip Curl
This Australian surfing sportswear retail company found a brilliant way to promote a new product.
The emails and headlines combined a sense of urgency and the need to be part of something bigger to achieve this. Their promotion materials were meant to convince the audience that their product was some form of revolution. And who does not want to be part of a revolution?
Brooks Sports
The 2018 Boston Marathon victory of Desiree Linden presented a massive opportunity for her shoe and apparel sponsor Brooks Sports. To capitalize on this, they focused their email campaign on the accomplishment of Linden.
This strategy was a way to demonstrate their loyalty to the athlete, adding value to their product. They used Linden’s success to push their email marketing campaign.
Uber
The email marketing strategy of Uber buttresses the old saying that “there is beauty in simplicity.” Uber’s emails to their customers were brief and straight to the point. Typically, these emails were either to alert customers to new deals or promotions run by the company.
Their emails also came with a consistent design found on their website, applications, social media photos, and other aspects of their visual branding.
The primary reason this approach was successful was how all these came together to consistently tell the brand’s story. Plus, the consistency in its visual media was vital in converting one-time customers into loyal clients.
Trulia
The strategy utilized here is pretty interesting. Trulia chose to gain customers’ loyalty by using their emails to become a trusted information source in their field of expertise.
Trulia is a search engine for the property market. However, going by their email marketing campaign, they are also a credible source for information on real estate. Their subject lines are pretty irresistible.
The most significant advantage of this is how it sparks the reader’s curiosity. With this, they have a finger on the pulse of the industry.
Now it’s time to look at the advantages and disadvantages of Email Marketing.
Advantages of Email Marketing
Email Marketing is Permission-based
You should fill your email list with people willing to receive emails from you. By sharing their email contact with you, they have actively chosen to be recipients of your emails. These prospects are interested in your product or service and would likely engage your brand.
There should also be an option to unsubscribe from getting emails from you.
Design Flexibility
You are free to design emails in whatever way you see fit. You can use graphics, plain text, or an attached file.
This level of flexibility enables you to convey your brand personalized.
Scaling
Email marketing campaigns are easy to expand. This expansion can be achieved without straining your resources or even reducing the quality of the movement.
This implies that email marketing is effective regardless of the size of the company making use of it. It can also reach a small or large audience, depending on the company’s or marketer’s goals.
Cost-Effective
Email marketing is easily the cheapest form of marketing. You do not have to pay for space, time, or advertising fees.
Direct Access to the audience
Email marketing offers marketers direct Access to their audience. Direct communication with the individuals on your email list means they can check your emails at any time and respond.
Keeping in mind that email users check their mail daily, it is inevitable that they will view your email.
Control
With email marketing, the platform is yours to use as you see fit. You own the relationships you have built with the audience. You do not even have to worry about a change in algorithms.
Personalization Capabilities
You can argue that no other marketing platform offers the level of personalization that email marketing offers. With email marketing, you can send personalized messages to the recipients. You can take it a step further and categorize your email list based on their interest and level of engagement.
You can send each category of contacts emails relevant to their type, and this would boost sales drastically. Research has shown that personalized emails increase sales by up to 760%.
Measurable
With the help of analytics software, you can measure the effectiveness of your email marketing campaign. The analytics software allows you to experiment with design and copy to check what is adequate for your campaign and what isn’t.
Testing
It is easy to test your email marketing campaign before you start. You can test the efficiency of calls-to-action, email copy, messages, and subject lines.
Testing increases the efficiency of your emails and ensures the content is engaging enough for its recipients.
Easy to Share
Sharing the contents of an email is pretty straightforward. Sharing emails is an effective form of word-to-mouth marketing. The ease of sharing means it is effortless for your content to go viral, which would, in turn, lead to more customers.
Saves Time
With the help of an email automation tool, you can send specific emails to sure customers based on the actions they perform on your website.
For instance, you can have the automation tool send a welcome mail to anyone who signs up on your website or send a mail offering a discount to users who abandon their shopping cart.
Once you have created the template for the various scenarios encountered, you will save a lot of time that should be invested in other productive activities.
Benchmarking
There are free benchmarking results for email marketing all over the internet. You can compare the results of your email marketing campaigns with others in your industry.
This will provide insight into improvements, prioritized actions, and aspects of your excel.
Real-Time Marketing
Email marketing allows you to connect with customers in real-time. With the help of automated triggers such as recent purchases, abandonment of a shopping cart, sign-in, etc., you can reach customers at the right time, the right place, and with an offer suitable for their current situation.
Environmentally friendly
In the context of marketing, environmental care might not be the focus. But taking little measures to care for our planet doesn’t hurt. So, suppose you are a marketer who cares about the actions positively affecting the environment to repair the damages already done.
In that case, Email marketing should be your favorite form of marketing.
You won’t need to use fuel in any of its forms to, say, print or travel.
Moving on, let’s talk about some cons of email marketing.
Disadvantages of Email Marketing
Competition
It is safe to say that you are not the only one looking to use Email marketing. For this reason, you compete with not just companies in the same industry but every company looking to use email marketing. To beat the competition, you must find ways to make your emails stand out.
Design Problems
Your email recipients are in charge of when they view your email, where they view it, and how they view it. Your customers won’t all make use of the same device. Some would use a tablet, some mobile phones, and others would use a desktop.
You have to ensure the designs you have put into your email will be compatible with all these devices.
Spam
A lot of commercial emails fall into the spamming category. You should ensure that you only send emails to customers who have shown interest. You should also ensure that your email marketing campaigns comply with the privacy and data protection rules.
Email List
The fact that you need an email list before initiating your email marketing campaign makes it a bit difficult.
Delivery
Fitting all your graphics and texts into one email without being too heavy for the recipient to open can be a problem. Another delivery issue is the instance of a wrong email address.
Finally, it is essential to avoid irrelevant, spam-associated, and redundant keywords such as ‘click this.’ If you get one of these wrong, the customer’s email service will send your email to the spam folder, which would not bode well for your email.
Finally, let us look at some tips for a successful email marketing campaign.
Tips for Successful Email Marketing
- Have a template for emails
- Set clear goals
- Understand your audience
- Imagine your buyer’s situation
- Categorize buyers
- Have a schedule
- Plan follow-ups
- Create click-worthy subject lines
- Write a copy relevant to the audience
- Have clear calls-to-action
- Always include personalized items
- Always provide an option for customers to opt-out
- Test emails to ensure they are compatible with various devices
- Create brand assets
- Pay attention to the metrics
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Final Thoughts On Email Marketing Guide
At this point, we believe we have equipped you with the right tools to plan and implement a successful marketing campaign.
Do not forget to automate as many processes as possible. That way, you can save time and take care of other things.
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Content Writer at Adilo. I love to write, asides that, I am a regular civilian
Felix is the Senior Content Editor and Strategist at Adilo, where he harnesses his expertise in social video marketing, online video platforms, video editing, e-commerce, e-learning, and marketing to to help businesses drive results. With a keen eye for storytelling and a pulse on industry trends, Felix crafts actionable content that empowers brands to elevate their video marketing strategies and thrive in the digital landscape.
