What is Email Marketing and Why is it Important?
Email marketing remains, to this day, one of the best methods of communicating and engaging with your prospects, leads, customers, and past customers. Even though email marketing has been in existence for decades, it has not lost its’ effectiveness nor popularity.
The only thing that has changed with email marketing is the need to be more strategic in planning and implementation. Gone are the days when you could simply send out an email blast to a recipient list and easily capture their attention.
Today, consumers are inundated with emails, be it promotional or personal, and people long for a “zero-inbox” because of the email overwhelm. This means not only is capturing their attention more difficult, but so is getting them to open an email.
The Basics of Email Marketing – What Every Marketer Should Know
Today, the savviest marketers use a/b testing, email list segmentation, thoughtful copywriting, and smart calls-to-actions (CTAs). They also go one step further and use email marketing key performance indicators (KPIs) to help them make predictive decisions to help improve results.
Email marketing remains one of the most cost-effective marketing tactics, but it has become one of the most challenging as well. You can pay for ads on many platforms, but paying for email ads just isn’t a smart option, which is why companies spend time and money increasing the strength of their email marketing strategy.
Even though it is challenging, email marketing is an essential part of any successful marketing strategy. It’s a great way to reach out to potential customers, build relationships with existing ones, and promote your products or services.
To get the most out of your email campaigns, you need to understand the basics of email list building and segmentation strategies. You also need to know how to use lead nurturing techniques to effectively reach out to each customer on your list. By understanding these basics and implementing them in your email campaigns, you can maximize the success of your email marketing efforts.
How to Craft an Engaging Email Content That Drives Results
Writing copy and offers for an email marketing campaign takes time and practice. But the primary focus of the message should always be on what the recipient wants to read or has an interest in reading. Instead of what you or your company wants to talk about.
The best copy, for any marketing activity, aligns the company product or service in a way a reader finds relevant and interesting. Broadcast messages that talk “at” a customer will likely end up in the trash can instead of the inbox.
Then start creating a buyer persona, dive into which topics, interests, and solutions your customers are interested in. Also, any psychometrics, hobbies, jargon, and current problems or issues are they facing in their industry.
Start by reviewing any analytics from your current email marketing to see which emails garnered the highest open rate, click rate, and if possible, scroll data. This will help you see what is currently working in your email marketing strategy. Also note, the click rates of your CTAs can vary based on where the link is placed within the email copy.
After you have examined email marketing KPIs and built a buyer persona, it should be a little simpler to write compelling copy for an email campaign (and more).
These steps will give you baseline of:
1. What works in your current messaging
2. Possible messaging or important discussion points for future campaigns.
3. An idea of what offers you customers may be interested in or what they need help with right now.
Note, you may need the help of an experienced copywriter to take data and buyer persona to build a messaging strategy and a little trial and error.
Using Automation for Better Email Campaigns
Automation is becoming an increasingly important part of email campaigns. Automated emails are sent out based on certain triggers, like a customer’s activity or the time of day. This allows businesses to send out personalized emails that are targeted and timely, increasing engagement and conversions.
By using automation for email campaigns, businesses can ensure their messages are reaching the right people at the right time. Additionally, automation can help streamline processes and save time by automating tasks such as segmentation, personalization, and scheduling.
There are a variety of email platforms, but using a comprehensive platform that connects with your Customer Relations Management (CRM) software is necessary in order to get the most out list segmentation and email triggers. Using email marketing automation, you can streamline sales follow-up and support activities, implement a customer engagement workflow, and optimize email marketing campaigns with targeted lists and triggers.
For example, you can incorporate a detailed sales email sequence when a lead fills in a specific landing page or takes advantage of a specific offer. This hyper- targeting enables you to send targeted email messaging and follow-up offers. It also helps your sales team by creating conversation points and areas of interest for a lead.
Implementing automated emails will not only increase the overall effectiveness of your email campaigns, but also make the process more efficient and less time consuming. Make sure to follow automation best practices when setting up your workflows and email triggers and evaluate results by examining marketing KPIs every month and quarter.
Measuring the Impact of Your Email Marketing Efforts
Measuring the impact of your email marketing efforts is essential to ensure that your campaigns are running as efficiently and effectively as possible. By tracking key metrics such as open rates, click-through rates, and unsubscribe rates, you can gain valuable insights into how well your emails are performing.
Additionally, performance tracking tools such as A/B testing can be used to compare different versions of an email campaign and determine which one yields the best results. With the right metrics analysis and performance tracking tools in place, you can maximize the effectiveness of your email marketing efforts. Just be sure to only a/b test a single element at a time, lest you have inclusive data.
