Email marketing is essential for your business. Many of the top marketers place email marketing at the top of their sales funnel. That’s because it’s easily trackable, extremely cost-effective, and a proven lead generation strategy for the B2B space.
In this article, we examine how to create effective email marketing strategies that will get more leads and customers.
| Takeaways |
|---|
| 1. Identify weaknesses: Assess your email marketing strategies for shortcomings. |
| 2. Focus on value: Provide valuable content that resonates with your audience. |
| 3. Personalize emails: Tailor messages to individual preferences and behaviors. |
| 4. Optimize subject lines: Craft attention-grabbing subject lines to improve open rates. |
| 5. Test and iterate: Continuously test different elements to refine your approach. |
How To Create A Polished Email Marketing Campaign That Helps You Keep More Customers
Email marketing has long been known as one of the best ways to keep in touch with your customers. Email is still a very relevant and effective way to attract and retain customers. With that said, how can you create a polished email campaign that will help you keep more customers?. Here are three tips for creating polished emails that will help you keep more customers:
- Focus on quality content. Many people who aren’t familiar with email marketing think it’s all about getting attention and driving traffic to your site or blog. In reality, it’s much more than that. Email marketing is just a way to stay engaged with your audience and the best way to do this is by providing them value through high-quality content.
- Proofread! No matter how fast you type or how thorough you think you’ve been, proofread before sending your email.
- Don’t use all caps (unless you’re shouting at them). You want to sound friendly and approachable, not like someone who’s yelling at them through their computer screen!
Enhancing your freelance business with effective email marketing can lead to significant growth. Learn the essentials of Email Marketing for Freelancers to optimize your outreach strategies.
Know Your Customers
When you have an email list, it’s important to know who is on it. There are a few ways to do this:
Send out a survey. Many people don’t enjoy filling out surveys, but there’s no better way to collect information about your customers and their needs than asking them directly. If you can provide something of value in exchange for a coupon or downloadable guide, for instance, you may find more people willing to participate.
What matters is that you get insight into who your customers are and what they’re looking for. With this information, you can tailor future content and marketing efforts specifically toward those customers’ needs and interests.
Watch how they interact with the products themselves. How long do certain items stay in their carts? Do certain products tend to go together?. If a customer buys one type of product from your store, which other types of products might they need as well?
The best way to learn what your customers want is to watch them interacting with your business as if through a window or even better, by engaging directly with them through conversations over email or social media (more on that later).
Be Where Your Customers Are
Define the problem. Before you start implementing any solutions, it’s important to first identify the problem you’re trying to solve. This seems obvious, but often this step is overlooked, and there is a tendency for people to jump into solving a problem without fully understanding what that problem is or developing an appropriate solution.
It’s easy to get caught up in doing something because other people are doing it, and not take the time to figure out whether that thing works for your specific situation. Be where your customers are. When someone is searching for information about health and fitness online, they’re going to have different search terms depending on their needs.
For example, someone who wants to lose weight will likely use search terms like ‘exercise routine’, ‘how can I drop 10 pounds in 3 months, ‘best diet plan’, etc., whereas someone who wants to train for a marathon will likely search using terms like ‘marathon training plan’ or ‘running program’. Your business needs to show up when searching for these terms.
Successful email marketing involves using the right tools and techniques. Discover the top strategies in our article on The Best Tips and Tools for Email Marketing to boost your campaign effectiveness.
Segment Your Audience
This is one of the most overlooked, yet important, things you can do for your email marketing. Segmenting allows you to send emails that are more relevant to each recipient, which will make them much more likely to convert into customers.
You can segment based on things like age, location, and spending habits. It’s also important not to go overboard here with too many segments and you’ll end up drowning in data (and sacrificing your ability to get the results you want). A few good starting points:
Age: While it would be a mistake not to send any emails at all to an older segment of your audience, millennials tend to have different interests than seniors. You could even take this a step further by segmenting by age within the millennial demographic itself, for example, those in their 20s versus their 30s.
Location: Sending tailored offers or general tips about popular destinations near your different customer segments makes sense from a business standpoint and also helps build lasting connections with customers.
For example, if you know that those in New York City enjoy dining out over going to the movies (and vice versa), then you could craft content around that instead of sending out a “one size fits all” newsletter with both options included because it wouldn’t fit anyone!
Optimize For Mobile Devices
The days of sending one email size to everyone are long gone. It’s no longer an option—it’s a requirement that you send emails optimized for mobile devices.
If the email opens on a small screen (the most popular device these days), and it isn’t optimized for that platform, chances are your subscriber will delete it without even reading it (and unsubscribe from your list). So design your emails with “mobile-first” in mind and test every campaign on multiple mobile devices.
Make It Easy To Subscribe
Your call to action (CTA) should include a reason for the reader to join your list, i.e., what’s in it for them. It should also be clear and compelling. According to the Content Marketing Institute’s 2015 Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends – North America report, “The most effective CTAs are those that create a sense of urgency and use direct language.”
You can also make email sign-ups easier by including an opt-in check box on your website. The check box should be checked by default so visitors don’t have to take any extra effort to sign up. You can also add a link to your privacy policy on the check box so people know their information is protected.
An opt-in confirmation is when you send subscribers an email asking them if they want to subscribe instead of automatically adding them to the list after they enter their email address into the form. This helps ensure only interested subscribers join your list and creates better open rates for people who want your emails.
Email marketing can play a pivotal role in the success of your business. Understand how Email Marketing Can Make or Break a Business Set-Up by exploring our insights into its impact.
Make It Easy To Unsubscribe
You can be the one in charge of sending out your emails, but that doesn’t mean you need to make it hard for people to unsubscribe. Sending an email with unsubscribe links at the bottom will make it harder than necessary for people to unsubscribe from your list, which defeats the whole purpose of giving them your email address in the first place.
That’s like putting a subscription form at the bottom of a newspaper article it isn’t going to get read by anyone. To keep people from unsubscribing, you have to do everything else right:
Put the unsubscribe link at or near the top of an email that has a call-to-action. If you have a CTA at the very top (for example, “Start Your Free Trial”), then you need an easy way for prospective customers to stop receiving emails from you and start receiving them again if they want to. But don’t put your CTA too high up to make sure they can easily see it and act on it without scrolling down through your message.
Keep lists small enough so that recipients won’t mind hearing from you now and again without feeling obligated to stay subscribed forever. Many email marketing platforms allow subscribers to opt-out and manage their subscriptions directly within their account settings, so include links there if possible (but don’t spam them!). If there’s no option for people not to subscribe through your platform, then move toward using tools like MailChimp or Constant Contact that automate their management process.
You’ll probably find that many subscribers are happy hanging on just long enough until they hear from you again before opting out altogether but when mailing lists get too large and unruly, users become frustrated with being contacted by everyone on this list and end up ignoring all of them until everything is cleaned up properly after some time passes.
Write Killer Copy
From the inbox of your subscriber, there are two things that matter: the subject line and the copy. If you haven’t gotten those right, your email won’t even be opened. To write engaging copy for your emails, follow these tips:
Don’t write too much. The rule of thumb is to keep it as short as possible without sacrificing quality or delivering value to your reader. Ideally, you want one or two lines per paragraph and no more than three paragraphs in total. Remember that most people will read your email on their phone while they’re waiting in line at Starbucks or on their lunch break. They only have a few minutes to spare, so don’t make them scroll through a lengthy essay just to get to the point.
Use a conversational tone that sounds like someone talking to another person (which is exactly what you’re doing). To do this effectively, use “you” and “your” instead of “we” and “our”.
You’ll sound more personal this way and people love personalization but if you still need to talk about yourself to get an important point across, use “I” or “my” instead of “we” or “our”. This will also help with making sure your tone is friendly, as opposed to formal or corporate-sounding!
Break up large blocks of text with bullet points, numbered lists, and/or short paragraphs that have no more than 3-4 sentences each time around this makes it easier for people who skim through stuff when reading online at work (so pretty much everyone).
Crafting an effective email opt-in page is crucial for capturing leads. Learn how to create one for your freelance venture in our guide on How to Make an Email Opt-In Page for Your Freelance Business to boost your subscriber list.
Perfect Your Timing
Want to know how to be likable?. It’s simple: Be there when people need you. No, we’re not talking about your dating life. We’re talking about email marketing. Here’s the thing: People don’t like being sold to all the time.
And they don’t want to hear from you every day or even every week. That’s why you need to find out what messaging works best for your audience and then deliver that content at just the right moment, using just the right tactic, so that it’s perfectly in tune with their needs at that exact time.
If you do this well, users will see you as a helpful resource rather than a pushy salesperson and if you follow up correctly (more on that next), they’ll even start coming back for more of your messages!
Keep Tweaking Your Strategy And Optimizing Your Campaigns – Forever
The last thing I want you to do is to execute your email marketing strategy once and then take a nap. You need to test and measure. A lot. Here’s an example:
As the owner of one of the biggest Facebook groups for real estate investing, I receive questions like this every day: “I’m going to raise my rates by $1,000/mo for rentals that are long-term furnished leases (at least 30 days). Will higher prices help me win more deals or less?”.
I have no idea. Nobody does. But here’s what I do know: While you can’t control the market, you can control your data and that’s where your power lies.”
Improving your email marketing campaigns requires strategic approaches. Dive into our recommendations with 15 Ways to Improve Your Email Marketing Campaign and implement techniques for better engagement and conversion.
Final Thoughts
Email marketing is one of the fastest ways to grow your business. When you do it correctly, email can make you money in three ways:
- Increase your customer base by attracting new customers
- Keep existing customers engaged and coming back for more
- Build a brand people love and trust
In this article, we went over how best to do email marketing in the digital age, including using automation and personalization, which are essential to effective email marketing.
We hope that you found this article helpful. If you enjoyed it and want more content like this, check out our blog for more articles on the latest topics in online business success. If you want help from the experts at UnleashCash, please reach out here for a free consultation on how we can help grow your business through all platforms of digital marketing.
Further Reading
Here are some additional resources to expand your knowledge on email marketing:
HubSpot’s Comprehensive Email Marketing Guide: Delve into HubSpot’s detailed guide covering various aspects of email marketing, from strategies to best practices.
Understanding Email Fatigue and How to Combat It: Learn about email fatigue and its effects on recipients, and discover strategies to prevent it from impacting your campaigns.
Improving Your Email Newsletter: Tips and Insights: Explore valuable advice for enhancing your email newsletter’s quality and effectiveness.
People Also Ask
How Do I Write A Good Email Marketing Campaign?
Start with the subject line. It’s the most important part of your email because if it doesn’t get opened, nothing else you’ve done matters.
Keep your copy simple, but not too simple. You don’t need to use technical jargon to impress your audience. But you also shouldn’t dumb down your message by using language that’s too colloquial or casual. The goal here is to share information clearly and concisely without being off-putting or condescending.
Include a call-to-action and make it easy for subscribers to follow through on it (i.e., include social media links; offer downloadable content; etc.).
What Are The Elements Of A Good Email?
A compelling subject line; A well-designed layout that makes information accessible and easy to find/understand at a glance (this is where graphic design software comes in handy).
Use short paragraphs; ideally no more than four sentences per paragraph and bullet points when possible for maximum readability and comprehension on mobile devices, which are typically used by more than half of all email readers.
A clear call-to-action; A clear call-to-action (CTA) button that stands out from other elements in the email so users won’t miss it or forget about what they were supposed to do after reading their messages which can happen easily when there isn’t any obvious direction provided by designers who fail at this step.
What Is The Best Email Marketing Strategy?
In general: test different approaches before settling on one course of action as “the best.” There isn’t an ideal method that works for everyone because we’re all unique individuals with specific needs based on our situations. If possible, try experimenting with several different tactics until something clicks into place, and then stick with what works best until something else comes along that’s even better.
How Can I Improve My Email Marketing Strategy?
Every company has a different strategy and process for email marketing. Here are some key tips to improve your overall campaign:
Create a schedule, including specific time slots, dates, and topics; This will not only help you organize your team in terms of how much work needs to be done at each stage of the process, but it can also help you figure out the best times to send emails based on your audience’s habits.
Make sure you have an editor who will review all copies before publishing them; This helps ensure that not only is everything grammatically correct, but it also ensures that every message stays true to the brand voice and tone.
Choose graphics that complement your writing; they should fit with both the design aesthetic of your website as well as the context of what you’re trying to convey with each piece of content.
How Do You Create An Email Marketing Campaign?
The first step is to create a list of all the contacts you would like to reach through your email marketing campaign. You can then design and write up the content of your emails to send out. You may have to hire a developer or designer at this point, but there are ways around it with no-code tools or email templates that are easy to use.
Next, you need to choose which service provider will be sending out your emails (Mailchimp and Constant Contact are popular options). Once you have set up an account with them, they will provide you with a link (known as an embed code) that can be put into your website where visitors can sign up for the newsletter. If you don’t already have one on-site, now would be a good time to add contact forms for new customers!
Costantine Edward is a digital marketing expert, freelance writer, and entrepreneur who helps people attain financial freedom. I’ve been working in marketing since I was 18 years old and have managed to build a successful career doing what I love.
