Email marketing
Unlike marketing methods that work on complicated algorithms, email marketing is pretty simple. You’re sending emails to your audience to let them know about something you’re doing, some content you have to share, to provide a recommendation, to sell something or to add value.
It’s not always plain sailing though…
Email marketing has never been more topical and with fewer businesses sending post (because of Covid), lots of businesses are reliant on email marketing as a way of engaging with prospects and existing customers. It just so happens that recipients tend to be more suspicious of email marketing and since 2018 and the introduction of GDPR many businesses have had to rethink their strategy.
Email marketing platforms like MailChimp are able to give you average open rates dependent upon your industry. For example, within the legal industry, the open rate for email marketing is 19%. Anything above this and you’re doing well.
Of course there will be variables at play like existing customers vs unknown prospects who don’t know us, like us or trust us to consider.
Another thing to consider is the structure of your email. Again, it will depend on what you’re looking to achieve but it key things to include or consider are:
The Subject Line - tease with your subject line (but try to avoid click-bait)
Your Calls to Action - If you’re trying to drive traffic somewhere, add a link…
Your Links - add links to social media in your email, provide links to articles you refer to and make it easy for clients to travel to recommended sites.
Branding - This is KEY! Make sure your audience know its coming from you. If they are expecting the email, they won’t be put off when they see your logo and content.
I couldn’t just leave it there… I wanted to provide a few more tips that I’ve learnt over the years. These are strategies that I use myself too.
Build your list but don’t buy it
Why would you want to buy a list anymore? Prospects are in our reach and we risk purchasing data that hasn’t been rinsed, or that has been sold to hundreds of our competitors. Worse still, we will be emailing prospects who don’t want our emails.
Lead Magnets
This is a great way for people to give us their details. We give them something that they want but in return, they have to give us their email address. Take this for example. If you click on THIS LINK and email me, I will email you my 4 tips to using LinkedIn for business growth.
Make it easy for people to join your list - pop up
Better still, use a pop up when someone has been on your website for some time and invite them to join your email list. Let them know what they can expect by being added.
Get Opt-In
G-D-P-R… Do you want the ICO (Information Commissioners Office) to come knocking with a fine? No? Didn’t think so… Simply ensure you have opt-in. Then, when you have the email addresses (personally identifiable information) protect it adequately.
If you don’t get opens (regularly), scrub those people from your list.
Check out the reports on your email. If you see that there are a group of people who don’t open your emails consistently, scrub them from your list and this will mean that you will have better open rates, won’t be penalised for spamming, and will have a clear understanding of what segments like what content.
According to The Digital Marketing Association your ROI in 2019 for email marketing was 40/1. Why? - Good segmentation
Who likes what??? Unless you’re a small business it’s likely you want to segment your audience to ensure that emails are targeted to the people receiving them.
Use sequencing
Getting into the realms of customer journey or sales funnels here but it’s important to automate where you can so that the numbers game comes into play. Use email sequencing to increase the chance of a prospect becoming a customer.
Valuable content is key
The key takeaway… Make sure you provide valuable content. This is the easiest way to have people re-open your email, or open future emails. Better still, it builds on the ‘know, like and trust’ principle and adds value to your business.
