Digital marketing platforms are ever-evolving, and you might be questioning whether or not email marketing is worth your time and effort. You might feel the process is complicated and, simply put, boring! However, email marketing is a crucial strategy for successfully keeping your target audience in the know while boosting sales by:
- Maintaining a connection with your customers
- Keeping consumers up-to-date as 54% of your emails will be accessed quickly by customers via mobile devices
- Builds customer engagement
- Generates measurable marketing results
- Cheap way of reaching customers for as low as $0.0006 per message via tools such as SendGrid
- A simple means of implemented target messaging
- Generate brand awareness via staying at the forefront of your customers’ minds
- Enable you, as a business owner, to customize your messages for your customers – birthday emails, special anniversary coupons, etc.
- Emails are the most common means of digital marketing as 91% of customers rely upon email for staying in the know..
You should be thrilled to learn that email marketing statistically results in as high as a 4400% return on investment, so you can expect to benefit greatly when incorporating such an effective component of your marketing plan.
As in all other aspects of your business, increasing productivity is always a number one goal. Therefore, you need to utilize a marketing platform such as ActiveCampaign, MailerLite, or ConverKit which allows you to keep all of your customer info in one spot in order to generate quick, successful email campaigns which are visually appealing and relevant to your consumers. These helpful tools will allow you to generate promo emails within minutes of signing up for free or for a nominal monthly fee. You don’t have to be a Pulitzer Prize winning novelist in order to compose a brief, enticing email message in order to launch a successful marketing campaign for your audience.
- Build your target email list
- Consider your email marketing goals whether you’d like to engage new customers or nurture current subscribers
- As in all aspects of marketing, know your audience
- Create avenues by which your consumers may opt-in to receive continued email correspondence from you
- Decide how to incorporate email follow-up
- Don’t be pesky and stick to your predetermined email schedule
- Develop a subject line that is personal while avoiding spam trigger words
- Compose your own authentic message by segmenting and educating your customers as this practice can boost email rates as much as 50%
- Make it look good and focus on a design that is appealing to your customers
- Be sure to send yourself test emails before you send them to your customers
Your existing customers will form the basis of your audience. Most email marketing platforms will allow you to import customers who have purchased from you within the last one to two years; however, you should check with your preferred platform prior to importing your contacts. Once you have verified that a given platform will work for you as it should, set up at least one opt-in for customers on your website, enabling them to sign up for your email list. Opt-ins allow you to grow your audience as you implement your email marketing campaigns.
The beauty of email marketing is that you really only need your computer in order to input your ideas and launch your campaign at the press of a button. The best way to compose a great message for your audience is to sit down and type out a draft of everything that pops into your head. You will have plenty of time to refine your draft prior to sending, and striving for perfection right off the bat can leave you feeling paralyzed.
Think about your own personal stories and experiences or consider incorporating customer reviews in the body of your message. A well-thought-through email campaign can help to build bridges between customers and businesses, resulting in lifelong consumer loyalty to your brand.
Don’t forget to maintain a clean email list. While a large email list is excellent, poor quality or incorrect email addresses can disrupt deliverability and land your marketing efforts into spam folders. Be sure to perform general “housekeeping” routinely with your email list, removing expired or incorrect addresses.
As in all aspects of marketing, trial and error will come into play along with a fair amount of experimentation. Details count and clear email messages with well-thought-out marketing campaigns and a quality email list are the keys to improving performance and recruiting new subscribers.
It’s a lot of work, how about some help? ActiveCampaign is our CRM of choice when it comes to email marketing and automation. We have seen the power of this tool in the right hands transform small business marketing. Interested in chatting about it? Click here to book a no-cost 15 minute call.
