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1. What is email marketing?
The process of targeting your potential customers or customers through emails is known as email marketing. There are multiple ways to approach email marketing, and businesses use it to achieve a variety of marketing goals. Emails are known to be a proven tool for maximizing conversions as well as revenue when used effectively.
Email marketing is a great way to generate leads and to capture the attention of potential customers. In fact, email marketing is used as a marketing tool by nearly 64% of small businesses today.
More importantly, simply using email marketing concepts to send regular updates and newsletters to your customers can do wonders in keeping them engaged and reminding them of your ongoing association.
2. Email marketing types
Email marketing can be done in a number of ways, and while there isn't a single type of email marketing that works for businesses, strategies can be broadly classified into the following types:
Welcome emails
Whether you're a B2B SaaS business or an online store, how you welcome your customers paves the way for them to journey with you.
Nearly 86% of people say they are more likely to continue doing business with a brand that welcomes and educates them after the purchase. So it's clear that the most effective way to increase the quality of your service is to make your customers feel welcomed and taken care of - right from the start.
Some businesses prefer to send personalized emails to welcome and guide the user through the onboarding process, while others attempt to provide information about the benefits customers are likely to get now that they have purchased the product/service.
Although there is no definite formula for writing your welcome email, the best way to approach it is to adapt it to the customer and ensure that you are there to help them if they have a problem or question.
Here is an excerpt from my welcome email series created under Mailerlite.
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Newsletter
When your motivation behind email marketing is to connect with your audience without being directly promotional, newsletters can be ideal.
Newsletters can be great for keeping your subscribers up to date with recent developments and news related to your business. At the same time, if you're sending out newsletters, you need to work proactively to add value to the lives of your subscribers. It is not surprising that more than 81% of businesses say that newsletters are one of the most used types of email marketing.
Additionally, newsletters can also be a great way to redirect potential customers and subscribers to your website. Additionally, email newsletters can be an ideal tool for increasing sales, even if they are non-promotional in tone. For example, you can share a detailed case study of one of your recent success stories with a customer to encourage more customers to use your services or buy your product.
Your newsletters can also be automated in part thanks to the connection of your RSS feeds.
This is especially what I do to automatically send my Growth Hacks every week to subscribers with Mailerlite.
Lead nurturing emails
One of the most common challenges sales teams around the world face is tracking their prospects and helping them move through the pipeline. This process can be accelerated and made more effective by using an arrival tactic such as a series of lead nurturing emails.
The fact that you need to create buyer personas to effectively target customers is irrefutable. This approach can also help you design your email marketing campaigns more effectively. The trick to creating lead nurturing email campaigns is that they should follow a consistent objective.
With this in mind, marketing managers and managers can explore different formats, designs, and content forms for their email marketing campaigns.
Transactional emails
Transactional emails are one of the most common forms of marketing email series sent by businesses. If you use emails for business purposes, chances are you've encountered transactional emails several times.
For example, if you're organizing a webinar or an event that a customer has registered for, you'll need to send them the itinerary and any forms they need to fill out. Transactional emails are therefore follow-up emails that you send to customers after any type of transaction.
One of the main differences between transactional emails and other types of email series is that the former have the potential to generate a higher CTR, mainly because these emails are highly anticipated by customers, who need additional advice or details to go further.
Re-engagement emails
If you notice that your subscriber or customer base is increasingly inactive, now is a good time to use re-engagement emails to your advantage.
Re-engagement emails can help you build goodwill and rekindle relationships with customers, even if they have been negatively affected. For e-commerce businesses, re-engagement emails are essential for attracting customers who have left their website. Even for SaaS businesses, re-engagement emails are great for guiding potential customers through the sales funnel.
Re-engagement emails can also be structured in the form of a feedback form that allows you to get actionable feedback from customers. You can use an evaluation link builder to generate a direct link to your page Google My Business, which you can then integrate into your email series.
For me, emails are sent when the subscriber does not meet a certain number of engagement rates for my emails.
Here is another excerpt from my series with Mailerlite :
3. How effective is email marketing? [Statistics]
As 2020 brought changes in the way the world communicates and works, email marketing has taken on even more importance. While 59% of marketers say that email is one of the main channels they use to generate revenue. In fact, for 89% of B2B marketers, newsletters are one of the most common forms of content marketing.
In addition, brands can generate stronger engagement through emails, as evidenced by the fact that brands generate nearly 3.9 times more impressions on social networks thanks to their email marketing. Another study found that emails generate a greater return on investment of 28.5% to that of direct mail. To put it in perspective, for every dollar spent on email marketing, you're likely toget a return on investment of 42 dollars.
If you are not yet convinced, did you know that nearly 91% of consumers open their email every day? This includes your customers and those of your competitors. You will therefore lose the interest of your customers if you do not invest in email marketing while your competitors do.
Of course, email marketing can seem tedious compared to other forms of digital marketing that are starting to deliver direct results. But remember that it does not always have to be manual, since nearly 86% of businesses say they use a email marketing software to manage their email campaigns.
In fact, email marketing is considered to be the ideal marketing strategy for nurturing leads and driving sales through conversions. Just look at the image below to understand how effective email marketing is in achieving various goals:
4. How does email marketing work? Who should use it?
Email marketing works just as well and is similar to other marketing tools. digital marketing important ones that are used in a preponderant way today. If you are one of those who think that email is a tool of yesteryear, know that the population that uses emails the most was in fact the one who was born between 1981 and 1996.
Email marketing is based on the principle of distributing information to your target audience in a format that makes them easily accessible and assimilable. You can schedule individual emails at regular intervals or even create a series of emails as part of the campaign to reach your goals.
So, if you're running a growing business and your target demographic is in this age group, you're going to need to intensify your email marketing efforts. Additionally, emails are still considered to be theOne of the preferred ways to share updates and news about your business, right after social media.
If you manage an online store, email marketing is an essential part of your marketing strategy.
If you're running a SaaS business, you'll need emails to manage your lead generation and lead nurturing process. If you have other types of activities that don't fall into this category, you'll need email marketing to target customers who operate in these verticals.
5. Why is email marketing important?
The importance of email marketing can be described in many ways, as it is a tool that can be used to achieve a variety of marketing goals. For businesses of all types, the benefits that can be derived from email marketing are multiple.
Some of the most important include:
- Stay in touch with potential customers and the customer base
- Engage with customers in real time
- Send timely updates and reminders to customers
- Inform customers about products, services, or offers.
- allows you to implement targeted marketing messages
The true potential of email marketing can be truly unleashed when businesses can implement the strategy effectively based on the goals they want to achieve.
6. What is an email marketing strategy and how do you create one?
Now that we've established the importance and role of email marketing for businesses, it's time to find the best way to turn email marketing into a strategy. Email marketing strategy is the process of finding the right way to target your emails in line with your marketing goals. Essentially, your email marketing strategy will be your plan of action for creating successful and beneficial email marketing campaigns for your business.
Again, when it comes to designing email marketing strategies, there's no one way to go. Depending on your business, goals, and budget, your email marketing strategy can vary from a simple series of scheduled emails to carefully designed campaigns for specific events and periods of time.
Creating an email marketing strategy will include the following steps:
- Create email marketing goals in addition to your predefined marketing goals.
- Define the target audience of your emails
- Decide what forms of content you'll use based on the resources you have.
- Align your goals with the type of content you want to send to your target audience.
- Deploy any additional resources as required and take advantage of technology for automation.
With these measures in place, businesses of all sizes and across industries can take advantage of email marketing and everything it has to offer.
Once an email marketing strategy is in place, the next step for any business is to determine the audience that will receive these emails. It also brings us to the next topic of discussion in this guide.
7. How to create a high quality email list
For most marketers, sending marketing emails isn't the hardest part of their email marketing strategy. For them, the real challenge is finding the right people to target and building an email list. Setting up a quality list will allow you to send targeted emails and tailor-made offers that your target audience can get the most out of.
If you're wondering why creating an email list is so important, here are the top reasons email marketing campaigns fail:
With that in mind, here are some tried and tested ways to create a high quality email list and focused on the goals:
Create high-quality and compelling lead magnets
All the traffic you can generate using SEO efforts will be wasted if you don't have lead magnets in place to convert them. Lead magnets have been an essential marketing tool for decades, but of course, like anything else, they only work if you implement them effectively.
Lead magnets are essentially offering customers something in exchange for their email address or registering on your website.
Many websites do this by offering free detailed guides, access to a limited number of materials on the site, and in some cases, ebooks. However, the secret to designing engaging lead magnets lies in the text that should encourage users to share their email addresses with you.
Figure out what your audience is looking for most in your area of expertise, then create and give a useful free gift in exchange for their email address. The popular Zero Price Effect suggests that the word “free” automatically encourages people to take action, making your lead magnet all the more powerful.
Optimize your membership forms
One of the main mistakes businesses make when creating an email list is not having an appropriate mechanism for registration forms. Successful email marketers realize that signup forms can only be effective if they're presented and optimized properly.
Registration forms cannot appear on random pages and at random times while the user is on your website. At the same time, it is essential to make your registration form easily visible. An effective way to do this is to integrate the registration form into the navigation. To do this, it may be a good idea to hire a freelancer on Fiverr because they will have the expertise to do it easily.
The next consideration when optimizing your signup form should be to balance the lucrative nature of what you're offering with what you're asking of your users. If your signup form is long and all you're offering is a $5 cashback, there's a good chance users won't take you at your word. Finally, be sure to provide your credentials and establish your legitimacy before asking users to give their information. Your users should know that they can trust you and that their information won't be misused in any form.
Create Squeeze Pages
A list that discusses the various ways to encourage users to share their email addresses would not be complete without including Landing pages. Squeeze pages are a type of landing page designed to encourage users to share their email addresses. It goes without saying that it is one of the most effective ways to ensure the growth of your email list.
A squeeze page Ideal will contain an offer that is irresistible and irrefutable for your users. It should be black and white in the sense that it should let users know that you are offering them a useful product in exchange for their email address. It should suggest that the offer will be invalidated if the user does not take the action or skips it.
Here's an impressive example of a powerful Squeeze page:
You can create Squeeze pages manually by yourself, or choose to opt for a plugin or a specialized page builder. While many businesses still use squeeze pop-up pages, they are known to annoy the reader trying to access your content, making creating a page much more effective.
Use exit pop-ups
The pop-up windows with intent to leave are exactly what they seem to be. They are pop-up windows that are designed to appear on the screen and invite the user who has indicated their intention to leave the web page or website. A good exit intent pop-up should adapt to the user experience that the website has offered up to now, and should strive to gather email addresses.
This is the case with Mic.com, where every time a reader comes across a Trump-related article and attempts to leave the page, the exit pop-up was designed to be contextually accurate. Have a look here:
The main thing? Adapt your exit-intent pop-ups based on user behavior and actions on your website. This will make your website seem much more intuitive and you will be more likely to get your customers to give you their email addresses.
Strategically place content updates
Content updates are by far one of the most revolutionary tools that have proven to be effective in growing email lists. But like any other tool, content updates can only offer you a lot of benefits if you use them effectively. Content updates are lead magnets that are added to your blog posts or content.
Content updates can take the form of a PDF version that users can download to read later, or additional resources that would be useful for readers to read when reading your blog posts. They can also take the form of additional podcasts or checklists that can help customers take action.
These content updates should be placed at a time when the reader absolutely needs them. If you offer it too early or too late, the reader may completely ignore it.
Optimize your website pages for email signups
Optimizing web pages to increase email signups is an aspect that, in theory, seems simple, but it is the aspect that most websites overlook. With this in mind, businesses need to ensure that each web page is associated with a business objective and that it is designed to achieve that objective.
For example, landing pages should be used to establish business credibility and authority. Once this is done, it becomes easier to request registrations by email. Likewise, for blog sections on the website, it is absolutely essential to have a pop-up or sliding form to encourage users to sign up at the right time.
But don't forget that it's important to optimize the information and design of web pages for your message to be truly effective.
Offer attractive incentives for email signups.
As with content updates or high-quality lead magnets, a very effective way to increase your email list is to offer attractive incentives. Email signups become easier when you offer the right incentives to your website visitors - the ones they won't be able to ignore.
One of the most common cases is in the e-commerce sector, where brands offer discounts and cashback offers in exchange for registering for an email address. This allows the brand to retarget customers in case they bounce back from the website and continue to send them updates aimed at redirecting them back to the website.
Create contests and lotteries
Another great way to increase your email list is to organize contests and giveaways for customers. Let's be real: organizing contests or sweepstakes can cost you a lot less than other methods like Facebook or Google Ads.
Promotional gifts can be beneficial for promoting your products to customers and for getting registrations by email. Refer to the discussion we had earlier about the effect of zero pricing, which is also the underlying principle behind giveaways. Users and website visitors are more comfortable sharing their email addresses with you when they know that the reward will include free products.
Likewise, think about every time you have participated in a competition in your life. You would have shared your email address with the organizers without thinking twice. So, it can produce great results while expanding your email list.
Offer exclusive content
In addition to offering benefits, discounts, or offers that can influence the growth of your email list, brands should consider multiple forms of content to effectively target customers. For example, why not offer a highly informative course to a reader who has scoured your website looking for educational content.
The key factor behind offering exclusive content is that you can make it accessible in exchange for email signups and grow your email list in a very effective way. Plus, when you present content as exclusive, it automatically triggers a psychological response that makes people want to access it.
Use quizzes and surveys
If you're an agency or business that thrives on research reports and white papers, conducting surveys is the perfect way to kill two birds with one stone. You can use the survey to add value to your content and, at the same time, gather the email addresses of people who want to participate.
In addition, you can also offer quizzes to better understand your audience and then encourage registration by email. This helps to pique the interest of customers and motivates them to provide their email addresses so that they can access more of this type of content.
8. How to do email marketing
Email marketing can be implemented in a variety of ways and there are several technologies and tools that can help you do it effectively. With this in mind, it is necessary to implement effective strategies so that your email marketing services can achieve the goals you want to achieve for your business.
Now that you know how to create a high-quality email list, here are a few other considerations you should keep in mind:
How to choose the best email marketing service
Initially, an email marketing service may seem like an addition to your traditional email marketing strategies, but that's not the case. Numerous professional agencies Of digital marketing offer services that can facilitate your email marketing efforts. Email marketing software is designed to align your business goals with the approach you take to email marketing. These software can be very effective when you want to manage your email marketing campaigns and, above all, automate them.
Most email marketing services have features like email list segmentation, A/B testing, contact management, and other robust marketing automation tools. Some of the best email marketing services include GetResponse, HubSpot and Mailerlite.
How to improve the open rate of emails
The email open rate is the percentage of people who open your email compared to the total number of subscribers on your email list. It is one of the most important metrics for evaluating the performance of your email marketing campaigns and the reach they can reach.
One of the most important things you can do to increase the open rate of your emails is to refresh your email list regularly. By ensuring that your list doesn't run out, you can continuously filter out inactive emails. To do this, you can send regular emails to all subscribers and update the list according to the number of people who check their email boxes.
Another key factor you need to consider is segmenting your email list and ensuring that the emails you send are actually relevant to your subscribers. Segment your parent list into several segments and send tailored emails to increase email opening rates.
How do you write a marketing email that boosts conversion rates?
If designed carefully, email marketing can be used as a weapon to reach your business goals.
Conversion rates can increase dramatically thanks to highly creative marketing emails. The creation of marketing emails requires taking into account multiple factors and can be designed in several forms. Here are a few of them:
Newsletter
Newsletters are marketing emails designed to provide subscribers with updates and news about the brand. Newsletters can use a combination of text, images, or videos, giving you a lot of creative freedom to communicate your message.
You can even reallocate these newsletters and blogs to get better SEO performance.
You can assess the current SEO performance of your website by doing a full SEO audit.
Lead nurturing emails
Lead nurturing emails are important because they offer businesses the opportunity to connect with potential customers and maintain communication with them.
adverts
For some businesses, especially large businesses, it can be very important to post ads frequently.
Announcement emails can be as creative as you want them to be and can even be converted into high-converting campaigns.
Marketing offers
Marketing offers are one of the most common forms of email marketing. These emails can help businesses re-engage customers, and even bring back lost customers through tailored offers and discounts.
E-commerce emails
E-commerce emails are an essential element for businesses operating in this sector, as these emails can range from welcome emails to transaction emails, and even post-transaction emails.
E-commerce businesses generally invest a lot in personalizing these emails because they can serve a variety of purposes.
Email content best practices
Once you understand the type of emails that can help you increase your conversions, the next step is to look at the best practices you can follow to create highly effective email content. Here are a few that you should consider for your next email campaign:
Email subject line
The email subject line generally provides the first impression of any email, making it one of the most crucial parts of your email content. Subject lines should have a strong impact, be detailed, and communicate the idea in a limited number of characters. Customizing the subject line can also add an extra layer of credibility to your emails.
Relevance of content
This is probably one of the most important preliminary tasks you need to do when writing the content of your email. Research the users you are targeting thoroughly and adapt your content to meet their needs or add value to the segment. Irrelevant emails help to reduce the open rate of emails and can even make your email campaigns useless.
Content quality
The quality of your email marketing depends on the quality of the content that you are able to integrate into your email. That said, you should review and edit your content until it meets the required standards. Additionally, you may need to proactively add images and videos to accentuate the quality of your content and its impact on the target audience.
Test the content
Like any other online marketing effort you're considering or investing in right now, you need to do some testing before you even start sending emails to your subscribers. Always be sure to thoroughly test emails by sending them to yourself before distributing them to a wider audience.
Email design best practices
Creating an exceptional design for your emails is just as important as creating quality content. You need to incorporate the right elements into your email that can enhance the aesthetics as well as the quality of the message in your email. Here are some of the best practices email marketers can follow to take design to the next level:
Incorporate visual content
A very effective way to improve the design of your emails is to integrate visual elements. These could be custom graphics, colorful icons, or even videos, depending on what fits the context of your email.
A/B Testing Your Design
Perform A/B tests Determining if your email design is working and how well it works is critical to ensuring the quality of your email. In this phase, you need to assess the colors, CTA placement, fonts, and images, among other things, that you included in your email.
Have a responsive design
When designing an email to meet the needs of a modern audience, you need to have a responsive design. This essentially means that the design of your email adapts to the screen on which it is viewed. For example, if your email contains a lot of images but they don't load properly on a mobile device screen, you're going to lose a lot of potential engagement.
Implement email segmentation
We've already briefly touched on the importance of email segmentation, but it's time to go further. The process of segmenting your subscriber list so you can share messages that are specifically tailored to sections of your target audience is known as email segmentation.
To do this effectively, you need to define criteria for different subscriber segments and then develop a strategy for the specific types of content that you should use to target each of these segments. By doing so, you eliminate the possibility of sending irrelevant messages to your audience, which can reduce unsubscribes and increase your email engagement rate.
Personalize your email marketing
Email marketing is certainly one of the best marketing tools that are now part of online marketing strategy campaigns undertaken by businesses. However, email marketing depends heavily on how you structure and present your message. Personalization is one of those aspects that any email marketer should strive to incorporate into their campaigns.
Nearly 82% of marketers say that the open rate of personalized emails increases significantly compared to that of generic emails. What's more, these personalized emails are also known to generate transaction rates. at least 6 times higher.
In addition, personalized emails can also have a significant impact on your customer acquisition costs by reducing them by 50%. That means you'll spend a lot less and earn a lot more just by making sure the emails you're sending are personalized and tailored to your recipients.
For starters, actions as simple as including the recipient's name in the subject line can go a long way in increasing the impact of your marketing campaigns. You can also go further by customizing email content based on the recipient's transaction history and association with your business.
Email marketing templates
Now you know how to approach your email marketing efforts and what to consider when designing a winning email marketing strategy. And yes, it's certainly hard work. But don't worry, because not everything has to be manual and tedious.
The advent of email marketing has created the need for automation and models that can be reused by businesses. If you're wondering what your next step should be, opt for a email marketing template can help you navigate the process in an efficient and trouble-free manner. For more information, take a look at this email template:
These email marketing templates include holistic designs that meet the needs of different types of marketing emails and sample content, which you can then replace with your own high-quality content and elements.
How to improve email deliverability
Even without this guide, you should be able to appreciate the importance of ensuring email deliverability. It can be evaluated in three steps:
Identification
This step is to identify the frameworks and standards that you should follow when assuring your subscribers of your identity. These protocols include verification through Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance (DMARC), and Sender Policy Framework (SPF).
Reputation
You need to get a better reputation score to signal that you are a trustworthy email sender.
Although organizations and Internet service providers have different approaches to measuring this aspect, one of the best ways to get a better score is to create positive behavior among subscribers through emails.
Contents
The third parameter is of course the quality of the content and elements that you include in your emails. This includes making sure you're not providing low-quality content or poor formatting in emails.
By conducting tests, you need to ensure that emails are delivered correctly to all recipients. One of the surest ways to do this is to refresh email lists and ensure that all subscribers' email addresses are active.
Another effective way toimprove email deliverability is about offering effective unsubscribe options. By giving your subscribers the option to unsubscribe, you will be able to narrow down your email list to only those who want to receive this type of communication.
Email marketing tools
One of the most effective ways to approach your email marketing campaigns and strategy is to deploy the right technology and tools to help you. The features offered by some of these tools are so advanced and user-friendly that designing email campaigns can become easier and hassle-free than you think.
ActiveCampaign
ActiveCampaign is a great email marketing software that can potentially automate all of your email marketing campaigns and processes. The software offers features to help you every step of the process, including email list segmentation, email marketing text creation and design, email personalization, and finally, automating all the steps included in email marketing campaigns.
The company promotes salient features that can help different types of businesses, including B2B, B2C, and e-commerce businesses. ActiveCampaign offers four pricing plans for businesses to choose from - Lite ($15/month), Plus ($70/month), Professional ($159/month), and Enterprise ($279/month), and Enterprise ($279/month).
GetResponse
GetResponse is a great tool for businesses and individual brands, as it offers features that can help you create landing pages, email signup forms, and even implement the integrations and automation you want to add to your business website. The email marketing module is just one addition to these features, making it an ideal tool for holistic online marketing strategies.
The versatility and quality offered by this comprehensive toolkit make it a great choice for all sorts of businesses, brands, and even celebrities and artists. GetResponse offers three pricing plans: Free (with limited features and access), Creator ($29/month), and CreatorPro ($59/month).
HubSpot
For most marketers, HubSpot is synonymous with digital marketing automation. The company provides a broad range of tools to facilitate various online and digital marketing efforts for businesses of all sizes and types. HubSpot offers a complete all-in-one software for all kinds of activities of inbound marketing. This includes landing page creation, SEO, social media, lead management, marketing automation, and email marketing, among others.
In terms of email marketing, businesses can personalize emails, choose from ready-to-use templates, and run A/B tests to ensure the effectiveness of their campaigns. HubSpot offers three main plans for marketers, namely Starter ($45/month), Professional ($800/month), and Enterprise ($3200/month).
MailerLite
MailerLite is a great tool for businesses and individual brands because it offers features that can help you create landing pages, email signup forms, and even implement the integrations and automation you want to add to your business website.
The email marketing module is just one addition to these features, making it an ideal tool for holistic online marketing strategies.
The versatility and quality offered by this comprehensive toolkit make it a great choice for all sorts of businesses, brands, and even celebrities and artists.
Omnisend
Omnisend offers a comprehensive platform that allows businesses and individual brands to automate their online communication, including SMS and email. Omnisend aims to automate all processes that lead to transparent communication between businesses and their customers.
Trusted by some of the most popular brands like Inglot, Hallmark, and Samsung, Omnisend is a great tool for automating and managing your communications effortlessly. Omnisend offers four pricing plans, including one free plan and three paid plans. Paid plans include Standard ($16/month), Pro ($99/month), and Enterprise (custom pricing).
9. What is email marketing automation and how do you implement it?
So far, we've covered the different ways to plan and develop strategies for your email marketing campaigns.
Email marketing is as easy or difficult as you make it, and for it to be implemented effectively, automation is crucial. By automating emails, marketers can send scheduled or triggered emails to their customers with minimal effort.
Email automation requires businesses to invest in email marketing platforms or tools that can automate every step of the process.
Even so, you need to have a predefined email marketing strategy, based on which you can then automate the frequency, timing, content, and design to follow for your email marketing campaigns.
Some of these automation tools also offer detailed information and analytics that can help businesses develop strategies and optimize their campaigns for optimal results.
10. Email marketing analysis and testing
Analyzing and testing your email marketing strategies is essential for creating high-impact and successful campaigns. Essentially, this process allows you to compare and contrast the various elements and metrics associated with email marketing efforts. These analysis and testing processes can be carried out in the following way:
Understanding email analytics
So what is email analysis and what does it consist of?
Simply put, it's the process of tracking how subscribers on your mailing list interact or engage with your emails. By monitoring and analyzing the analytics data associated with your email marketing campaigns, you can ensure that they're producing the results you want.
Here are some of the common analytics metrics businesses use to track email marketing performance:
Opening rate
This measure refers to the number of emails that are actually opened out of the total emails that have been delivered. Marketers should strive to add intriguing subject lines to their emails to improve open rates.
Unsubscribe rate
This metric shows the number of people who unsubscribe or remove themselves from your email campaigns. Although the average unsubscribe rate is 0.05%, marketers should proactively reassess email quality and frequency if it exceeds this rate.
Conversion rate
The conversion rate is the percentage of subscribers who turn into customers. This metric is calculated by evaluating the actions that your subscribers perform on your email. For example, clicking on an event registration link provided in your email.
Email deliverability
This metric defines the number of emails delivered to the designated recipients among those you sent. This is an important indicator because it allows you to know who your active subscribers are.
Click-through rate
This metric is important for understanding how your customers are engaging with your content. To be exact, the click-through rate actually suggests the number of people who clicked on the links in your email.
Bounce rate
This metric shows the number of emails that have not been delivered. The bounce rate can be classified into hard or soft bounce depending on the reason for that bounce.
These measures can be monitored and managed using email analytics tools or platforms, such as Google Analytics or other popular email marketing software.
Define and monitor email marketing key performance indicators
Key performance indicators (KPI) of email marketing are those that allow you to align your team with the business goals you want to achieve and improve your performance on the parameters mentioned above.
Defining email marketing key performance indicators can be a strategic activity and should be done in the initial stages of your email marketing campaigns.
Among the above parameters, the open rate, the click rate, and the unsubscribe rate can be defined as key performance indicators in order to be managed in order to obtain optimal results for your email marketing campaigns.
Use A/B testing for better results
Each marketer has specific goals with their email marketing campaigns and seeks to achieve them by constantly improving their quality and performance. In the context of email marketing, A/B testing requires you to create two versions of an email and send each to a subset of your subscribers.
Once you've done that, you'll need to monitor and analyze which version works best for your campaign. It will also give you an idea of what elements or designs work best to achieve your email marketing goals. A/B testing can of course vary depending on what aspects you want to focus on. Using email automation tools makes it easy to run A/B tests because you can easily create two different versions of the same email and automate the process of sending to both subscriber segments.
11. Advanced email marketing strategies
Email marketing strategies can vary in terms of complexity and the goals you want to incorporate into your campaigns. While some email marketing strategies are fairly simple, logical, and easy to implement in your email marketing campaigns, others are advanced. These strategies can be put forward in terms of scope or, in some cases, in terms of the details needed to achieve better results.
Use the right font
When it comes to email marketing, the first impression counts a lot. While many experts suggest that brands opt for fonts that align with their brand image and organizational philosophy, others say readability is the most important factor to consider.
Remember that when you send emails in plain text, they appear in the default font set by the recipient. So it's always a good idea to use fonts that are safe for the web, meaning fonts that you can be sure will appear the way you designed them. Fonts like Times New Roman, Verdana, Georgia, Georgia, Garamond, or Arial are perfect for emails and ensure neutrality and readability.
Optimize CTAs for maximum conversions
CTA or Call-To-Action elements are perhaps one of the most important elements you add to your marketing emails. The general rule of CTA buttons is that they should be placed according to the progress of the narration.
When it comes to emails, most people read them starting at the top left corner and then working their way up to the right. So it makes sense to place CTAs at the bottom right of your message. Remember that buttons tend to be more effective than links or images. In addition, responsive design and compelling text are critical to the effectiveness of CTAs.
Reducing unsubscriptions through user surveys
When subscribers start withdrawing from your email campaigns and your unsubscribe rate increases, it's naturally hard to recover. But as a brand, you should try to take advantage of every touchpoint your followers have with you.
So even if they unsubscribe from your email list, create a user survey to understand the problem and identify areas you can improve. It will also help you understand whether you need to adjust the frequency or quality of your content to control your unsubscribe rate.
Experiment with designs and layouts
While some marketers thrive on innovation, others stick to what worked in the past and repeat it until it continues to deliver results. While there's nothing wrong with sticking to a tried and true approach, it's always a good idea to experiment with designs and layouts so that your emails are always professional and unique.
It will also help you draw attention to your emails and have a greater impact on your email marketing campaigns. By changing your layouts and designs, you will also discover multiple options that could be the most effective in generating positive results for your email campaign.
Be as personal as possible
Nobody likes letters sent to Jean Dupont.
You can try, but a predefined email template that isn't personalized won't have the impact you want.
In addition, personalization is the key to the success of campaigns whose commercial objective is defined. While it's good to include personalization in your subject line, the copy of your email should reflect the same principle. Email personalization is a phenomenon that dates back to yesterday, and emails with personalized subject lines have 26% more chance to be opened by the recipients.
Additionally, a Salesforce study revealed that more than 52% of customers are likely to go elsewhere if the emails are not personalized. Personalization is therefore the key to improving the opening rate and engagement.
12. Bonus email marketing tips
So far, this detailed guide has given you a comprehensive overview of email marketing and possible approaches. There are proven ways to ensure that your email marketing campaigns are not only effective in providing information, but also have a big impact in generating sales and revenue for the organization.
In that regard, here are some additional tips that can help you set up the most successful email marketing campaign for your business:
How to get email addresses for marketing
Obtaining emails to build a quality email list is at the heart of successful email marketing campaigns. Building a list of subscribers who would be interested in receiving your emails is the first step in designing effective email marketing campaigns. One of the easiest ways to get email addresses is to offer high-impact magnets.
To do this, you can also use registration forms that include content that encourages users to enter their email addresses. In addition, offering content updates as well as offers and discounts is also a great way to get more emails for your campaigns.
How to maintain a clean email list
One of the biggest challenges email marketers face is maintaining a clean email list. To do this effectively, marketers need to constantly and regularly send emails to their subscribers and monitor email deliverability. They should also assess the bounce rate to ensure that the subscribers on the list are active on the addresses they shared.
Another way to ensure a clean email list is to have unsubscribe forms so you can manage and control the number of unsubscriptions.
Best time to send emails
If people use email every day, it's understandable that they don't open and engage with marketing emails as frequently. Finding the ideal days and times to send emails allows you to benefit from a higher open and click rate.
According to numerous studies, the ideal days to send emails are Tuesday and Thursday. Also, the ideal time to send emails is 10 am on Tuesday or 8 pm on Thursday. If you plan to send your emails on a different day, the ideal time is late morning or early or late evening, as these are the hours when people are likely to be most interested in your email.
Optimize emails to get a better click rate
Email optimization is one of the most proven ways to ensure that you get the click rate you want in your email campaigns. Whether it's a CTA button that you placed in the email or a link that redirects users to additional information, increased click rates define the success of your email campaigns.
Proven ways to improve your click rate include effectively segmenting your email list, constantly refreshing your email templates, highlighting rarity and therefore urgency, and finally, personalizing and effective messages. A higher click-through rate can increase the organic traffic that you drive to your website.
Plain text emails and stylized emails
Plain text emails are exactly what they are. They only contain plain text and are devoid of any additional images or graphics. The benefit of plain text emails is that they load easily and exactly the way you want them to load on any browser and email platform. The downside is quite obvious: the absence of images or graphics to attract attention or maintain user interest.
On the other hand, stylized emails have a high HTML content and contain visual and graphic elements to guide the reader through the email content. The advantage of styling your emails is that they have more impact and generate greater interest from the audience. The only downside to stylized emails is that they can often take longer to load or appear differently on mobile devices.
How to manage email replies
Your responsiveness to emails can often define the proactive and professional nature of your communication with your audience. It goes without saying that email responsiveness can be decisive for the quality of your service.
A recent HubSpot study even revealed that more than 90% of customers expect to receive a response to their emails in 10 minutes or less, which they define as an “immediate” response.
If your business receives a large number of emails, the best solution is to automate the initial response so that the customer can be assured that their email has been received and that action is taken. However, to ensure that your customers are happy with the response, try to personalize the emails as much as possible and maintain communication until the issue is properly addressed.
Email regulations and compliance
Like all other segments of digital marketing, emails are governed by regulations and compliance requirements. Compliance, as you know, is the need for email client providers to adhere to specific rules and regulations. These regulations have a lot to do with ensuring the security and privacy of users, as well as with moderating the nature of the content delivered by emails.
Email providers should ensure that they comply with national regulations and sector-specific laws that have been established accordingly. Examples of these regulations include the SOX (Sarbanes Oxley Act) for businesses in the United States.
Other considerations that need to be taken into account are international provisions that include regulations such as EU directives or the GDPR. The third layer of compliance occurs at the corporate level, where compliance with internal policies must be ensured. Finally, compliance with data and consumer privacy laws must be achieved.
How to integrate email marketing and social networks
The combination of email marketing and social media can truly take your online marketing to the next level. With this in mind, the integration of the two platforms should be considered by all marketers.
Integrate social media buttons into your emails so that recipients can directly and easily navigate to your social media channels. Many prefer to do this by adding social buttons to their email signatures. Additionally, you can also add your email address on social media channels so visitors know where to contact you.
Pro tip: You can also add a Facebook Messenger widget to your website to redirect email subscribers and effectively answer some of their detailed questions. In this way, your Facebook Messenger becomes a dialog box on your website, allowing you to respond effectively to the needs of your customers.
How to keep your email subscribers happy
There are multiple ways to ensure that your email subscribers are happy and satisfied with your marketing campaigns. One of the most proven methods is to segment your email list so that your subscribers receive messages that are useful to them. Another way is to clean up your mailing list regularly and write subject lines that are very concise and focused.
To go further, you can also allow your users to decide how often and what type of content they want to receive. This way, they will have control over the content of the emails they receive and will be more involved in the emails you send them.
In addition, always think about mobile and optimize your emails so that they load and display correctly on mobile devices.
How to make money with email marketing
All email marketing campaigns are designed to make money in one form or another - whether you are an individual or a business. One of the most effective ways to monetize your marketing emails is to place your CTAs carefully to encourage purchases. Another good way to do this is to automate your email campaigns, which can help you actively communicate with your subscribers and generate sales.
You can also take advantage of email marketing to promote your products and services, which can then lead to better performance.
13. Email marketing FAQ
How often should I send marketing emails?
The frequency of your marketing emails depends on the sector in which you operate. For most industries, starting by sending a few emails per month and then increasing the frequency up to once a week can be very effective. For e-commerce businesses, the frequency of emails should be much higher and between 2 and 4 emails per week.
What is a hard bounce in email marketing?
The bounce rate is defined as the number of emails that were not delivered to the intended subscribers. In this context, we speak of hard bounce when your email cannot be delivered to a recipient for a permanent reason. This can happen if the recipient's email address no longer exists, or if the recipient has permanently blocked the receipt of your emails.
How much does an email marketing campaign cost?
Email marketing can cost as little as $9 per month and up to $1000 per month for small and medium businesses. For businesses, the cost can be much higher because the volume of emails tends to be greater.
What is a good open rate for email marketing?
According to a study, the average opening rate of emails in different sectors is 21.33%. The open rate of your email marketing campaigns must be above this sector average to be considered ideal.
How can email marketing fuel your global inbound strategy?
Email marketing can take many forms, including newsletters or lead nurturing emails. These marketing emails tend to generate higher engagement and conversions, which can strengthen your inbound strategy.
How do I charge for email marketing services?
To find out how much you should charge to provide email marketing services, you need to research email marketing automation platforms and tools, as well as the pricing plans they offer. Based on these rates and the extent of the work you are going to undertake, you can then find a good rate that can range from 8 to 250 dollars for a campaign.
How do I get email lists for marketing?
Email lists can be created by obtaining email addresses from lead magnets on your website or by optimizing your web pages to get more email signups. You can also give gifts, content updates, and other incentives to your website visitors in exchange for their email addresses.
When should I send marketing emails?
Once you have a highly segmented email list with a considerable number of subscribers, you can start sending marketing emails frequently. For most businesses, sending emails a few times a month can do the trick, and for others, it may be more expensive, depending on their business goals.
When it comes to email marketing, what do you mean by “A/B testing”?
A/B testing for email marketing involves creating two different versions of the same email and sending them to different subscriber segments. Based on this experience, you will be able to identify the best performing version and send it to the rest of your email list.
What are the rules of email marketing?
Email marketing follows a simple set of rules. Basic rules include creating compelling subject lines, customizing content for your recipients, and creatively designing emails to keep the reader interested. You should also place CTAs and links intelligently in order to generate traction as a result.
How do I prevent my newsletter from appearing in the Promotions tab in Gmail?
To avoid having your newsletters end up in the Promotions tab in Gmail, you need to make sure that your emails don't use too much promotional language. To do this effectively, avoid embedding dollar signs or trigger words in the subject line as well as in the body of your email content.
How can I prevent the newsletter from being sent in spam?
If your emails have a low engagement rate, and if your frequency is too high, your newsletters can often end up in the spam folder in your recipients' inboxes. You can avoid this by authenticating your emails with the required protocols (DMARC, SPF, etc.) and by using spam checkers. You also need to ensure that your content is relevant to recipients by effectively segmenting your email lists.
14. Conclusion
By now, you should have a detailed understanding of how email marketing works and how you can use it to achieve your business goals. Email marketing was and remains one of the most effective ways to run an inbound marketing campaign and can make it easier for you to optimize your marketing strategies for consistent success. Be sure to follow the best practices prescribed when designing and implementing your email marketing campaigns in order to achieve the expected results.
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