Email marketing is far from dead. If executed correctly, it can become both a relationship-building and profit-enhancing tool.

If you want to reap the benefits of email marketing, you should be using emails to nurture existing relationships with your subscribers by regularly offering relevant and valuable information.

So how does email marketing actually work…?

Email marketing is the process and act of targeting the consumer with a commercial message through email with the ultimate goal of driving sales, increasing customer loyalty, or conveying important information.

To help you get started with email marketing, we have put together some of our top tips for success so that you can reap the rewards for your business.

When to Use Email Marketing

There are so reasons why you should be utilising email marketing, including:

• To build relationships with new customers
• To nurture and enhance existing customer relationships
• To reach potential customers who may be unaware of your presence
• To promote new blog content or useful information about your company
• To showcase your products and services

Create an email marketing strategy

On average your customers will receive hundreds of emails every week. If you want your email to be a success, you need to take the time to develop a strategy that is guaranteed to get the clicks.

Follow these steps to ensure that you have and email marketing plan that will succeed and generate leads.

Establish your audience

An effective email is a relevant email. As you would with any other marketing method, always begin with your audience. Understand what they want and need, then tailor your emails accordingly by providing only relevant and valuable content.

Set your goals

Before you can come up with your campaign goals, it is essential to gather some context. Research and set yourself goals accordingly.

Make it simple for people to sign up to your emails

You have an email but no one to send it to. Well, this is where an email subscriber list comes in…

This is the group of people who have given permission for you to send them relevant content. To grow this list, you must provide multiple opportunities for new people to subscribe to receive your emails. The best way to grow your subscriber list is to ask people to sign up via social media and offer them a discount or chance to win something in return.

Select an email type

With such a selection of different email campaigns, it can be difficult to decide on just one. Do you send a newsletter? Should you send out new product announcements? Which blog posts are worth sharing? Every marketer is plagued by these questions. The answer is subjective. Start by learning about every type of email that exists, then decide which is best for your audience.

Set out a schedule

How often are you planning to contact your list? When you have answered this you can inform your audience of what to expect, and thus can stick to a consistent and regimented schedule so the customers gain trust in your brand

Use lead magnets

A lead magnet is what it says on the tin: something that attracts prospects and entices them to join to your list. This usually comes in the form of an offer or discount. The offer can be taken in a number of formats, but it must remain valuable to your prospects, and should always be given away for free in exchange for their contact details.

Create an enticing opt-in form

An opt-in form is how you get a prospect’s information so that you can add them to your list. It is the barrier between your future leads and the incredible asset that you have created with them in mind.

Ensure you create an attractive design with an attention-grabbing heading. Your form must be branded, and stand out from the page and ultimately entice people to sign up.

How to Send Marketing Emails

Choose an email marketing service

An email marketing provider is an essential resource which enables you to finetune your email marketing efforts. Providers such as MailChimp, SendGrid and HubSpot all offer services that allow you to efficiently create, personalise and optimise professional-looking marketing emails.

Implement email segmentation

Segmentation is the process of dividing your email list into subcategories that pertain to your subscribers’ unique characteristics, interests, and preferences.

Remember that your subscribers are humans, we should do our best to treat them as such – so no more generic email spamming!

Why should you segment your email marketing list?

The first step in list segmentation is creating separate lead magnets and opt-in forms for each part of the buyer’s journey. By doing so, your contacts are automatically divided into separate lists ready to market to.

Personalise your email marketing

Now that you are aware of who you are emailing and what’s important to them, it will be so much easier to send them the right emails and with personalisation

Sure, you are speaking to hundreds of people, but your leads do not know that. This point is really driven home by the fact personalised emails have 26% higher open rates than non-personalised emails! 

Use email templates

Email marketing templates are a great resource to help you with your email marketing. Unless you are a designer and developer, templates will save you endless hours of work – they take the design, coding and other work out of crafting your emails.

There are many rules to remember when sending out an email, the most important is to treat your subscribers as humans!

All of your email marketing dreams can come true if you keep to this golden rule! Now go forth and prosper to generate endless leads!

As always if you need any assistance with your email marketing strategy, give us a call on 0330 380 0630!