If you read our previous blog Getting Started With Email Marketing, you will have worked hard to build a list of contacts to email, and you may be eager to get started! Here are a few extremely important things to keep in mind before you start emailing your precious list that you worked so hard to build.
- Choose an email marketing service.
An email marketing provider is a great resource if you're looking for any level of support while fine-tuning your email marketing efforts.
For example, Mailchimp, and Drip allow you to efficiently create, personalize, and optimize marketing emails that feel and look professional without designers or IT. There are a variety of features to help you create the best email marketing campaigns and support all of your email marketing goals.
Additionally, you can analyze the success of your email marketing so you can share the data that matters most to your business with your team.
- Use email marketing tips.
While you probably don’t think twice about the formatting or subject line of an email you send to a friend, email marketing requires a lot more consideration. Everything from the time you send your email to the devices on which your email could be opened matters.
Your goal with every email is to generate more leads, which makes crafting a marketing email a more involved process than other emails you’ve written.
Let’s touch on the components of a successful marketing email:
Copy: The copy in the body of your email should be consistent with your voice and stick to only one topic.
Images: Choose images that are optimized for all devices, eye-catching, and relevant.
CTA: Your call-to-action should lead to a relevant offer and stand out from the rest of the email.
Timing: Based on a study that observed response rates of 20 million emails, Tuesday at 11 AM is the best day and time to send your email.
Responsiveness: 55% of emails are opened on mobile. Your email should, therefore, be optimized for this as well as all other devices.
Personalization: Write every email like you’re sending it to a friend. Be personable and address your reader in a familiar tone.
Subject Line: Use clear, actionable, enticing language that is personalized and aligned with the body of the email.
- Implement email segmentation.
Segmentation is breaking up your large email list into sub categories that pertain to your subscribers’ unique characteristics, interests, and preferences.
Our subscribers are humans, after all, and we should do our best to treat them as such. That means, not sending generic email blasts.
Why should you segment your email list?
Each person who signs up to receive your emails is at a different level of readiness to convert into a customer (which is the ultimate goal of all this).
If you send a discount coupon for your product to subscribers that don’t even know how to diagnose their problem, you’ll probably lose them. That’s because you’re skipping the part where you build trust and develop the relationship.
Every email you send should treat your subscribers like humans that you want to connect with, as opposed to a herd of leads that you’re trying to corral into one-size-fits-all box.
The more you segment your list, the more trust you build with your leads and the easier it’ll be to convert them later.
Not to mention, segmented emails generate 58% of all revenue.
How to Segment Email Lists
The first step in segmentation is creating separate lead magnets and opt-in forms for each part of the buyer’s journey. That way, your contacts are automatically divided into separate lists.
Beyond that, email marketing platforms allow you to segment your email list by contact data and behaviour to help you send the right emails to the right people.
Here are some ways you could break up your list:
Geographical location
Lifecycle stage
Awareness, consideration, decision stage
Industry
Previous engagement with your brand
Language
Job Title
In reality, you can segment your list any way that you want. Just make sure to be as exclusive as possible when sending emails to each subgroup.
- Personalize your email marketing.
Now that you know who you’re emailing and what’s important to them, it will be much easier to send emails with personalized touches.
Sure, you’re speaking to 100+ people at one time, but your leads don’t need to know it.
To really drive this point home, consider this: Personalized emails have 26% higher open rates, and an improved click-through rate of 14% when compared to others.
You’ve gathered all this unique data. Your email marketing software allows for personalization tokens. You have no excuse for sending generic emails that don’t make your leads feel special.
Here are a few ways to personalize your emails:
Add a first name field in your subject line and/or greeting
Include region-specific information when appropriate
Send content that is relevant to your lead’s lifecycle stage
Only send emails that pertain to the last engagement a lead has had with your brand
Write about relevant and/or personal events, like region-specific holidays or birthdays
End your emails with a personal signature from a human (not your company)
Use a relevant call-to-action to an offer that the reader will find useful
- Incorporate email marketing automation.
Automation is putting your list segmentation to use. Once you’ve created specific subgroups, you can send automated emails that are highly targeted. There are a couple ways to do this.
Autoresponders
An autoresponder, also known as a drip campaign, is a series of emails that is sent out automatically once triggered by a certain action, for instance, when someone downloads your ebook.
You’ll use the same guidelines for writing your emails that we discussed previously to ensure that your readers find your emails useful and interesting. You should decide how far apart you’d like your emails to be sent, say every few days or weeks or even months.
The great thing about autoresponders is that you can set it and forget it. Every user that is part of your autoresponder will receive each email that you’ve added to the series.
Workflows
Workflows take autoresponders a step further. Think of Workflows like a flow tree with yes/no branches that will execute actions based on the criteria that you set.
Workflows have two key components: 1. Enrollment criteria, or the action that would qualify a user for the workflow. 2. Goal, or the action that would take a user out of the workflow.
Workflow tools are smart enough to know if a user opened an email or downloaded an offer, and it will set off a series of actions based on that behavior. That means, it can send an email series, or even change a prospect’s lifecycle stage based on what a user does.
The key difference from an autoresponder is that workflows are smart: They can change the course of your automated series based on what your prospect will find useful.
For instance, if a new subscriber receives a welcome email and the subsequent email is set up to send them an offer that they already found and downloaded on your site, the workflow tool will know and adapt. In an autoresponder, a user receives a specific set of emails at specific time intervals no matter what action they take.
Why is this important? Sending the right email at the wrong time is detrimental to your bottom line. Companies see a 20% increase in revenue when they send emails based on lifecycle stages.
- Use email marketing templates.
Email marketing templates are another great resource to help you with your email marketing.
Unless you’re a designer and developer on top of being a skilled marketer, templates will save you a ton of time — they take the design, coding, and UX-definition work out of crafting your emails.
Just one caveat: when making your selection, choose email templates that are proven to be effective. The highest-quality templates come from the most reputable email marketing sites that have tested them against thousands of alternatives. So, stick with the professionals.
Good Commerce Email Marketing Campaigns
We believe email marketing should work to enhance your overall digital marketing strategy. That’s why we take a holistic look at how you market your business, your target audience and industry. We use this data to custom build a strategy that works for you. We offer the following email marketing services to our clients:
Automated Email Design – We can design automated email campaigns that are triggered when customers perform a certain action on your site.
Email Copywriting – Let us handle the heavy lifting of crafting memorable emails your customers will interact with.
Email Campaign Design – Includes design, personalization and execution of your next campaign
Email Marketing Analytics – Custom-built URLs that allow you to measure the effectiveness of your emails
Ongoing Optimization – We analyze the impact of each email, fine-tuning our approach to maximize the open and click-through rates of your outreach
Let’s Chat
Interested in hearing how Good Commerce can elevate your email marketing? Contact us to book a Brand Discovery session and let’s start achieving your business goals together.