email marketing.
I have many years of experience in email marketing. Adding this tool to your existing marketing and sales strategy has the potential to rapidly increase your brand awareness, leading to increased revenue and a stronger brand identity.
I have used several different email marketing applications, including Mail Chimp, Constant Contact, Keap, Insightly, and Hubspot.
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Email Campaigns
How do you know if your email marketing efforts are effective? Historically, there was little way of telling for sure. Today, we have email marketing software such as Constant Contact, Mail Chimp, Keap, Insightly, and Hubspot that can provide you with engagement analytics data.
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Follow up with your leads faster before they cool down by knowing exactly who opened/clicked through your emails and when
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Customize follow ups based on how your customers/leads engaged previously
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Use a content management system (CMS) like Hubspot, Hootsuite, Constant Contact or Buffer to schedule your email marketing for maximum engagement
What Makes an Email Campaign Successful?
First of all, you must be sure you have a quality email list. Are the emails active? Are the recipients ones likely to open or respond to marketing emails? Are these existing customers, former customers, warm leads, or prospects?
Emails change, and contacts leave companies all the time, so to keep your email list clean, your customer relationship management system (CRM) needs to be kept up to date. This requires regular and consistent maintenance, either by sales or marketing. In my experience, having two captains to champion this ongoing effort is most effective - and everyone else simply does their part day-to-day. I have been the "CRM Captain" many times and several different companies.
Every Good Marketing Email Should:
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Have a clear call to action (CTA) and make it easy for the viewers to see and act on
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Make images clickable whenever possible
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Add hyperlinks to key points of your content
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Make sure your company logo and contact information are prominent
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Do not use 'no reply' email addresses
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Make sure that all click through points lead to the same place
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Give your leads as little work as possible
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Position yourself as the key to solving their problem
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Text-to-Image ratio of about 50:50
On average, email campaigns see about a 5-10% open rate. Of these opens, click through (CTR) sees a similar percent rate. These numbers may seem small, but they are significantly higher than average pick-up rates in telephone campaigns, which have higher costs due to significantly higher man hours to complete.
Email campaigns are a great complement to your already existing marketing strategy and give your customers and leads the opportunity to engage with your content at their pace, as well as give you further insights as to what their needs are and what stage of the buying process they are currently in.
Engaging Email Titles
You could have crafted the greatest marketing email of the century, but without an engaging email title, many of your recipients won't see it, send it to the junk folder, or even the dreaded SPAM.
DON'T
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Use special characters in you titles, like $ @ % > ^ # or use more than one exclamation point in your title
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Use all caps - this doesn't present as excitement. It makes your email look spammy
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Send emails from marketing@ or sales@. Using info@ is fine, but whenever possible, have the email come from an individual in the company/department who is already a known contact for the recipients
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Rely heavily on AI for your title (or email content for that matter)- it can be great spring board, but nothing replaces the human touch
DO
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Craft your title so that it elicits curiosity
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If you are promoting a special offer, say so in the title
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Take advantage of the fear of missing out (FOMO)
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If marketing@ or sales@ are going to be used, make sure that the name shown as the sender is a person, not the name of the department
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Sometimes certain emojis are appropriate, depending on your product/service and the demographics of you recipients - but if you have to think much about whether or not to use them, don't
Marketing Email Content & Following Up
Make sure that your marketing emails are always adding value to your brand, product, service, and customer experience. For example, if you are composing the second email in an email campaign, don't repeat yourself - especially if this is going to recipients who have already opened your first email.
With email engagement tools found in most CRMs, you can see who engaged previously (and how) and filter for those who haven't. Below is a detailed chart showing a basic email marketing workflow and the correct follow up method for email marketing campaigns.
All manners of engagement, or lack there of, must be followed up with differently and in a timely manner to maximize on conversions. All three follow up types shown here represent different stages of the buying process - so don't treat them all the same.
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Follow up 1 - Customer engaged with the email by opening it. There is no way to tell if they read the email, but we know they saw the content. Your title was strong enough to make them curious. Great job! A follow up here should be an expansion on the content already provided. Give more detail and a touch of urgency to your call to action
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Follow up 2 - Customer engaged by clicking though a link in the email. Amazing work! Not only did the customer open your email, but you made them curious (and feel safe enough) to click one of your links. A follow up here should be targeted on an expansion of the content they clicked through to
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Follow up 3 - Customer did not open the email. This is one that you will see most often. Don't worry, this does not mean you failed. It just means it's time to try something new. Your next email to these customers should be very similar to the first. Circle back to your title and try again
Depending on the software you are using, you can have your follow ups pre built into an automated workflow that triggers based on your customers' engagement type. This is a great time saver and helps maximize your results.