Email marketing might seem old-school, but it’s still one of the best ways to engage with your customers, keep them engaged, and drive sales for your business. In this email marketing crash course, we’ll give you all the information and industry-leading tips you need to design, execute, and monitor your next email campaign. Let’s get started!
What is email marketing and why should you use it?
When most people think of email marketing, they think of those annoying spam messages they get in their inboxes. However, effective email marketing is anything but spammy. When done right, email marketing is an excellent way to stay in touch with your customers and keep them informed about your brand.
Email marketing can be used to promote new products, announce sales and discounts, keep customers up-to-date on your company’s latest news, and much more. It’s also a great way to build customer loyalty, increase brand awareness, and ensure that your audience never forgets about your brand.
If you’re not currently using email marketing, you should start immediately. Here are just a few of the many reasons why:
- Email is one of the most cost-effective ways to reach your target audience.
- Email is highly personal and allows you to create individualized messages for each customer.
- Email lets you reach customers anywhere in the world without having to worry about time zones.
- Email is a great way to stay on top of mind with your customers, which can lead to more sales in the future.
- Email marketing has a high return on investment (ROI). In fact, for every dollar spent on email marketing, the average return is $36! Source: Constant Contact
If you’re still not convinced that email marketing is right for your business, consider this: according to The Radicati Group’s 2020 study, there are 4 billion email users worldwide. That’s half of the world’s population at your fingertips.
How to create an email campaign that gets results
Email campaigns are a great way to reach out to your customers and promote your business. However, if you want to get results from your email campaign, you need to put some thought into it. Here are some tips for creating emails that your customers will actually open and read:
Ensure your email is well-written
Nothing ruins your chances of running a successful email marketing campaign faster than poorly written emails. If your emails are full of errors and hard-to-read text, it reflects poorly on how your audience views your business. If your messages are unprofessional, your entire business begins looking unprofessional as a result.
Your emails should be well-written and free of typos and grammatical errors. They should also be concise and to the point – most people check their inboxes first thing in the morning, so you don’t want to overwhelm them with too much fluff.
Target the right audience
Your email should be targeted at the right audience. You don’t want to send the same email to everyone on your list. Make sure you segment your list and send relevant emails to each group.
Targeting one specific market segment and optimizing your messaging for the people within it will yield much better results than sending out generic, one-size-fits-all emails. You can also take your targeting a step further by monitoring which customers are opening your emails and focusing more of your efforts on engaging with them rather than with members of your audience who aren’t paying attention.
Use a catchy subject line
Your subject line is the first thing people will see, so make it catchy! A strong subject line should be concise and to the point, while also leaving the reader wanting to find out more. When coming up with catchy subject lines, make sure you’re careful about not crossing the line into dishonesty.
A subject line should grab your audience’s attention while also accurately reflecting the content of the email. The last thing you want is your readers getting frustrated because you’re making false promises or using misleading headlines.
Keep your design clean and simple
Nobody wants to read an email that’s just a block of plain text, so don’t forget to include some graphics and visual assets in your email designs to keep them fresh and engaging. However, make sure you don’t over-design your emails to the point where the graphics detract from the content of the email. Always use a standard, legible font and limit the use of graphics and colors so that they don’t become too distracting for your readers.
Finish with a strong call to action
Emails can’t be used to grow your business unless the audience knows what action you want them to take once they’ve finished reading. Your marketing email should always include a call to action (CTA), such as a link to your website or a coupon code for discounts on your products or services. That way, if the reader enjoys your email and is interested in engaging further with your business, they won’t be left confused about which next steps to take!
Measuring your email marketing success
Email marketing is an excellent way to keep in touch with your customers and promote your products or services, but how do you know if your efforts are successful? Measuring the success of your email marketing campaigns can seem tricky and overwhelming, but by focusing on a few key metrics, you can get a good idea of how your campaign is performing.
The best way to measure your email success depends on which information you want to collect, so here are some of the most common email metrics to consider:
- Conversion rate: This measures how many people who received your email campaign clicked through to your website or took another desired action, such as making a purchase. Measures the effectiveness of your CTA.
- Open rate: This measures how many people opened your email campaign. Measures the effectiveness of your subject line.
- Click-through rate: This measures how many people clicked on a link in your email campaign. Measures the effectiveness of your email messaging and CTA.
- Bounce rate: This measures how many people received your email but didn’t open it, or how many emails were sent but couldn’t be delivered for some other reason. Measures the effectiveness of your subject line.
- Spam complaints: This measures how many people marked your email as spam. Gives insights into how people feel about receiving your emails.
- Return on Investment (ROI): This measures the amount of money you made from your email marketing campaigns relative to the amount of money you spent on them. Measures the campaign’s effect on your business’s bottom line.
To measure the success of your email marketing campaigns, you first need to identify what you want to achieve with them. Once you know your goals, you can then decide which metric or metrics will best tell you if you’re meeting your goals. For example, if you want to increase sales, then the conversion rate would be a good metric to track. If you want to see if investing in email marketing is helping your business finances, you need to take a look at your ROI.
Once you’ve decided which metric(s) you want to track, there are several ways to go about doing so. Most email service providers offer analytics that track things like open rates and click-through rates, and many third-party tools offer more detailed analytics than most providers do. Additionally, many social media platforms offer analytics that can help you measure the success of your email campaigns when compared with other channels like Facebook or Twitter.
Our Top 3 Email Marketing Tools
Ready to get started with building your email campaign empire? Here are three of our favorite providers, each with their own unique benefits:
MailChimp – Proven and Professional
MailChimp is the best-known and proven email marketing tool out there, and that’s not accidental. MailChimp gives you everything you need to create, monitor, and manage your email marketing campaigns – from pre-built email templates to industry-leading metrics and data analytics. If you’re looking for a trusted platform that you can depend on to get the job done, MailChimp is for you.
MailerLite – Easiest for Beginners
MailerLite is engineered for people who want to get started with email marketing for their business but may not have all of the know-how to effectively navigate a complex platform. MailerLite’s simple and easy-to-use interface makes designing and executing email campaigns a piece of cake. Not to mention, the platform’s free version lets you send up to 12,000 monthly emails to a thousand list subscribers, so getting started with MailerLite is easy and risk-free!
Moosend – Most Affordable
If you own a sole proprietorship or small startup, you might be worried about how much it will cost you to implement email marketing into your business. Fortunately, Moosend is the affordable solution you’re looking for. Their plans start at just $9/month and remain reasonably-priced no matter how much you want to scale your email marketing operation!
My Email Campaign is Live! What Now?
Congratulations! You’ve taken a huge step towards helping your business soar to new heights. Now, it’s time to maintain this momentum and use it for further growth. As your business continues expanding, you’ll likely want to hire an external marketing agency to help you manage your advertising operations while you focus on running the company you love.
If you’re a business owner looking to hire a first-rate, reputable marketing agency that’s been vetted for quality by the world’s leading marketing experts, click the button below to get started and find your ideal marketing partners today!