Email is still one of the best tools when it comes to marketing, despite of it being one of the oldest means of communication with leads. A good email marketing campaign can help any business attract new leads – even more so than Facebook or Twitter, for instance.
If you are an ecommerce business owner you must have wondered what this practice could do for your business as well. However, not many entrepreneurs know how to do this properly – build relationships and maintain leads through email. Here are some useful tips.
1. Use an email marketing service
Using an email marketing service can not only save you a lot of time and trouble, it can also be used to measure your success – it records open rates, click-through rates, unsubscribe rate and much more. This is great because you can use it to improve your campaigns.
You can also test your CTAs. CTA means call-to-action which is usually that button saying ‘call now’ or ‘buy now’. Testing these is important as different set ups – such as saying ‘contact now for great advice’ instead of saying jus ‘contact us now’ or using different colors – may bring you different response.
There are many popular email marketing services like MailChimp which is free and beginner-friendly, offering you plenty of themes and features. There is also Tiny Letter which is pretty much bare bones but simple and free. Both offer an option to send the emails you wrote to users automatically, allowing you to write certain emails only once.
Email marketing services also provide you with email open rates and various stats you may need.
Other than that, schedule your sending times and make your email campaign easier for you.
2. Segment your customers into targeted groups
Segmentation is a powerful tool for any entrepreneur in their marketing campaigns. Different target groups will be interested in different services and you have to make your messages to them direct and clear. You can segment your market based on some demographics like age, gender, family situation or you could segment it by frequency of engagement and so on.
The possibilities are endless and it’s all based on how much you know about your leads. In some cases, where business owners know a lot about their leads, there can be an even more specific segmentation.
Segmentation is also good for personalizing your emails – use their name in your emails, sign your emails with your name, as a person rather than a company.
3. Add an enticing Call-to-action
Each email should contain at least one call to action.
You can invest as much as you want in your marketing efforts but without a good CTA you will hardly be able to get a return of that investment. According to Wordstream, CTAs increase clicks by 371% and drive 1617% more sales.
So, include a prominent call to action in every email and test it against other CTA to see which one works best with your audience.
4. Be honest on sign up
One of the most important things that you need to do is to be honest with your audience. When they sign up, they decide to trust you that you won’t spam them endlessly with invaluable information, but that you would offer good advice, give your contact information or something similar.
To be completely transparent, you should include a schedule or at least a short list of everything that you’ll send them once they sign up. You can add it as a part of the landing page copy or include it in the sign up conditions.
5. Allow people to unsubscribe easily
This is a legal compliance that may seem a bit counter-intuitive, but it really isn’t. If people don’t want to be signed up for your email newsletter or even be on your contact list anymore it’s not a good idea to try to win them over again with flashy emails. They just want out and you should let them go.
Make the unsubscribe button – or link – small but noticeable feature at the bottom of each email and make the process as simple as possible. For instance, don’t make them enter their email once again, do the captcha and a series of other things. Always remember that a ‘block contact’ option takes just one step.
6. Send a contact form confirmation email
After your contact signs up for your email newsletter, you should send a confirmation email back to them so that they can confirm once again that they really want to be on your list. You can reiterate what you stand for and what they’ll receive by signing up for your newsletter. This will help you build a quality list.
7. Include a permission reminder
Whether it’s a new lead or a contact that has been on your list for a while, it’s always a good idea to add a permission reminder at the beginning of each email. It gives your emails context and credibility.
Upon sign up, there are a few boxes a subscriber has to check and one of them is to confirm that they want to receive emails from you. It’s required by law.
However, once in a while people can forget about this and it’s a good idea to remind them at the beginning of the email. For instance “Hello (name of the user)! Are you enjoying this newsletter? Upon sign up, you gave us permission to send you emails and updates. Would you still like to be on our contact list?” or something similar.
8. Tailor your material for each platform
Your messages will not always be seen as you want them – with great pictures and graphs. Majority of people view emails on their phones nowadays and all those features get lost. This is why you have to make sure that your messages look good and readable on all platforms.
Make your emails responsive so that they’ll work on various devices – smartphones, tablets, desktops and so on. The layout, images and text should be optimized to fit each of these screens.
Don’t rely on the visual content as much since some people will have those features turned off in their email. Instead, focus on text and good formatting for best effects. Images are recommended as they grab attention instantly, but they will be of no worth to you if a lead has the feature turned off. Focus on creating attention grabbing copy.
9. Don’t buy or rent lists
Buying or renting email lists is not a good practice. Your emails will likely reach an audience that isn’t interested in your services and they will likely block you or unsubscribe, wondering how they even ended up on your list in the first place. This is a waste of your efforts. Focus on building an organic list with your landing pages. Gaining an informed permission under the GDPR is really important – your clients should know how their data is being used, for what purposes and so on. This can really build trust and leave a better impression of your company.
Final Though
While handling an email marketing campaign along with a busy life of an entrepreneur may be difficult, the benefits of this are many. The purpose of email campaigns is that you stay present in your audiences mind and their lives and that you are the first business they think about once they are in need of such services. Make sure that your emails are honest and valuable and follow these tips to build good relationships.
Freddie Tubbs is a marketing blogger at Ukwritings. He regularly takes part in blogging and marketing events, and contributes articles to blogs and online magazines for networking, such as Essayroo and Boomessays.