Since monopoly is considered a deformity in any rational economic setting, you can use an email marketing strategy to break the thick layer of resistance and make your businesses thrive.
Getting started with email marketing lets you get across to your prospects in real time.
The strategy can help you establish a relationship that can speed up the customer journey from leads to potential customers.
If you know how to get started with email marketing, the competition and struggle for long-lasting customers can’t be the end of the road for you.
As digital marketing outperforms the traditional forms of marketing, so many strategies have emerged in the last few years.
Among the digital marketing strategies are blogging, social media marketing, Google advertising, SEO, content marketing, email marketing, and so on.
Meanwhile, you’re likely going to get a higher click-through rate (CTR) with email marketing compared to other strategies.
If email marketing can yield the highest ROI even more than paid advertising, this guide is worth your time.
By now, you must have some questions such as:
- How do I get started with email marketing?
- What are the steps to start?
- How do I develop an email marketing strategy?
- How do I grow an email list of a target audience?
Don’t worry, all your questions regarding how you can create an email marketing strategy would be answered.
At the end, you’re definitely going to learn how to get started with email marketing and increase your sales 6X more.
But first of all, let me walk you through the basics so you can clearly understand why email marketing strategy is important to your business.
What is email marketing?
OptinMonster defines email marketing as the most can’t-miss digital marketing strategy which you can use to send out emails to your customers.
This can keep your prospects informed about your new or existing services and make them be loyal to your brand.
Email marketing is however an effective way of promoting your business via email and converting your leads into potential customers.
Apart from sales and marketing of a product, you can equally use email marketing for other things on your site.
You can use it to keep in touch with your readers and subscribers so you don’t lose them to your rivals.
By implication, the more marketing emails you send to your subscribers, the more your web traffic increases.
With the use of an email marketing strategy, you will transform your first time visitors to long-lasting customers.
So, does email marketing strategy seem to be what you really need to promote your business and grow your sales?
If it is, let’s delve into the best guide on the web for beginners to get started with email marketing.
Types of email marketing you can send
The following are few of the types of email marketing that you can send to improve your marketing campaigns.
From the list, you will know the right email to send at a given time and for a specific purpose.
- Welcome emails
- Newsletters
- Persuasive emails
- Dedicated emails
- Sponsorship emails
- Re-engagement emails
- Traffic oriented emails
- Transactional emails
- Brand story emails
Each of these emails has a different timeline, format, structure, content, and goal to differentiate them.
An average audience must be able to differentiate your business-oriented email from a normal one.
So, when you’re developing your email marketing strategy, you have to choose the type of email that is proportional to the purpose of your business and its requirements.
To see which of the emails goes well with your business, let me discuss them one after the other.
Welcome emails
Welcome emails are sent immediately after an audience subscribes to your email list.
It can be used to acknowledge the subscriber and familiarize him with your services.
In this type of email, you should include the summary of the services you offer, your level of transparency, and what the subscriber should expect from your company.
Welcome emails are essentially to create a long-lasting relationship between you and your customers.
So, you should take advantage of it to build a positive impression on the mind of your customers rather than pushing sales with it.
A bad welcome email might cost you a lot to the extent of an inevitable business failure.
Newsletters
These are frequent emails you send to your audience to ensure they consider your brand.
Here, you outline everything about your existing products, and new products, as well as educating your customers.
A good newsletter must have a purpose, either to nurture the existing or attract new potential customers.
This is where the significance of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and Click Through Rates (CTR) with email marketing come in.
If you want to maintain your existing customers, then you should use email software that has CRM features.
This is to ensure you have the analytics of how the emails you send out perform.
The analytics will help you identify which of your emails that tend to engage the audience better.
With that information, you can send more of your top performing emails.
On the other hand, the CTR of your newsletter should be optimized to attract new customers and drive more leads to your pages.
A CTR works on the basis of the ratio of the number of clicks to the number of views.
To optimize your newsletter for a high CTR, the layout of the newsletter should be decent.
Choose the right images and texts and use a good content marketing strategy.
Persuasive Emails
These emails are generally sent to serve as a “Call To Action”.
You use them to convince and persuade your existing customers and prospects to perform a specific activity.
Persuasive emails can be classified into three (3):
- Specific emails
- Sponsored emails
- Re-engagement emails
a. Specific emails
The type of emails only contains information about a particular product or service.
They are majorly “call to action” since you are requesting your customers to either purchase the product or invite them for an online presentation about a new product.
b. Sponsored emails
Sponsored emails are emails you sent through another person’s email list.
It is commonly in the form of an ad and very effective way of persuading customers to buy a product.
But the service is offered to you by another person with a powerful email list that can boost your sales.
c. Re-engagement emails
This is used to persuade your customers to check out again services they have once used.
It is a sure way of re-igniting the interest of inactive subscribers and you should consider asking for their feedback to know why they have shown less concern about your products and services.
Traffic oriented emails
As the name implies, these types of email marketing are sent to get leads and attract more customers.
These emails expose everything about your company, products, and future plans and trigger that soft spot in the heart of your prospects as well as transforming them into long-lasting customers.
To make this easier, you can automate the period the emails would be sent out using your email marketing service provider or CTR platform.
Transactional emails
These are more like virtual business quotations or payment alerts.
They are sent to customers to verify that they have performed a particular action on your website such as registration, sign up, purchase a product, or cancel an active transaction.
They are very important to building your reputation and showing vividly how transparent your company is.
Hence, it promotes your relationship with your customers.
Having identified these types of email marketing, the time, and purpose of sending them, you should be able to select the right strategy for your business.
In summary, welcome emails are sent upon a successful subscription, newsletters are sent regularly, persuasive emails are sent to get more sales and leads, and transactional emails are to maintain your relationship with your customers.
How to get started with email marketing
If you want to know how to start email marketing like a pro, here is a complete ultimate guide for beginners.
You can take the following steps to begin sending marketing emails to your audiences and watch them convert into customers:
- Build your email list
- Choose an email service provider
These are the two basic required steps to start email marketing.
Step 1. Build your email list
Many beginners in email marketing make the mistake of choosing an email marketing software before building their email lists.
The implication of that mistake is “putting the cart before the horse” – a practice that can only result to waste of money and time.
If you don’t have an email list before acquiring an email marketing software, who would you be sending your emails to?
You don’t have to buy an email list or send a marketing email to someone who hasn’t shown interest in your business.
This is because list building doesn’t work with irrelevant email contacts.
If those who are on your list aren’t your target audiences, the strategy will fail.
You can’t be sending emails to someone who didn’t opt in for your service and expect him to convert.
He will rather treat your email as spam and outrightly block you.
If you don’t want that to happen to you, it’s better to create your email list from scratch and do it yourself.
Building an email list, however, involves placing a form on your website and encourage your audiences to fill the form with their email addresses.
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That practice is called leads generation and no coding skill is required.
There are companies who provide such a service and the one I recommend is OptinMonster.
All you have to do is to browse their stores and find a suitable form template for your site.
Each time your visitors fill out the form, you have their email addresses stored on your list.
Then you can start sending them your marketing emails.
The leads will treat your emails with honor because they’re aware of your business.
It doesn’t matter how many contacts you have on your email marketing list. If it’s just only one, the prospect will definitely convert.
Step 2. Choose an email service provider
Choosing an email service provider (ESP) is another step to get started with email marketing that you need to know.
An ESP can be used to automate your email marketing so the strategy won’t be overwhelming.
To get the most of your email marketing strategy, you need to segment your audience, organize your list, distribute and track your emails and check analytics.
This can’t be done manually, most especially when your list has grown.
For this reason, you need a powerful ESP to facilitate the process.
It’s important for you to consider the features of the service and make sure the one you’re choosing offers as many solutions as you need.
In the later part of this post, you’ll find the list of the best email service providers I recommend.
There are so many works to do under each of these two steps.
For clarity sake, let’s go into details here.
How to grow your email list
Having learned that building an email list is an important step in email marketing, here you will discover steps to grow your email list.
Create an optin form on your site
You must have been to a site and a form suddenly pops up when you are about to close the page.
That form is called optin form.
You can adopt the same strategy on your site to grow your email list.
An optin form is for calling the attention of the visitors to your lead magnet. So when they opt for the offer, you will be able to take advantage of that to ask for their email address.
This might not work by directly asking anyone on your site to give you his or her email address.
The information required in the form is to make the prospects register for the giveaway and claim his access.
Steps to create an optin form
- Go to your leads generation platform and login to your dashboard.
- Choose a template for your form.
- Customize the form template to suit your needs needs.
- Save all changes you make on the temple.
- Copy the code generated for the form.
- Paste the code on your site for implementation.
Your leads generation provider will deem it fit to provide you with the best step by step guide to create your optin form.
Meanwhile, you can place the code in any of the following strategic places on your site to maximize its effectiveness.
- Floating bar
- Header
- Footer
- Blog posts
- Sidebars
- Pop up page on exit or schedule
- Scroll box
- About page
- Sign up page
- Resource page etc
Important features of a good optin form
If you want your optin form to convert, the form must have following features:
- Engaging headline
- Supporting description
- Attractive visuals
- Simple form
- CTA button
Use a lead magnet
It’s much easier to add an optin form on a site than putting the form to work.
If you want your audience to see your form and hurriedly subscribe to it, you need a lead magnet.
A lead magnet is one of the best methods of generating enthusiastic leads and it’s highly recommended in email marketing.
The strategy is to gift out part of your services to your audience in an exchange for their email address and or any important contact information.
Examples of a good lead magnet
- Webinars
- Tutorials
- eBook giveaways
- Free trials
- Request for quotes
- Free consultation
- Support service
- Question and answer sessions
Within a second that your optin form pops up, the audience wants to know what’s in it for them to share their email address with you.
If the lead magnet isn’t relevant to the visitors, they will walk away.
Characteristics of a good lead magnet
A good lead magnet must have the following characteristics:
- Highly relevant
- Easily accessible
- Captivating
- Timely
- Short and precise
When you bait your audience with giveaways, the conversion rate will increase if the lead magnet is good.
How to choose an email marketing service
This is the second step to start email marketing, which involves choosing an email marketing tool.
And on the list which I’m about to show you, you can have the best email marketing service you need to get started.
Choosing the wrong tool can as well as sending emails to the wrong people end up to waste of your time.
You need to consider the features of a tool before you can opt for it.
For this reason, I have to make the work easier for you by considering email marketing software with the best CRM automation features.
With that, your entire email marketing activities can go on while you’re sleeping.
Apart from OptiMonster, which email marketing platforms are on my top list?
Here are my five (5) top picks:
- Hubspot
- Constant Contact
- SendIn blue
- ConvertKit
- MailChimp
Optimizing your email list
The following are the best email marketing strategies to optimize your email list and increase its conversion rate.
Personalize and segment your list
As stated earlier, personalization brings about positive interaction with your customers.
Personalizing your emails is to ensure that the recipients don’t ignore.
Therefore, the practice increases both your open rates and conversion rates.
Having performed the A/B test, you must already have an idea on the number of active and inactive subscribers that are on your list.
The next thing is to segment (categorize) the active ones into groups based on certain measures which may include: age, nationality, race, purchasing power, and so on as explained under the e-mail marketing strategy.
The power of personalization will then affect your segmented list.
For instance, consider the following salutations from two different email marketers:
| Mr. A | Mr. B |
| Dear Esteemed customer | Dear Customer |
| Hello Rahman | Hello |
It is of no doubt that many of us will be curious to see what Mr. A emails contain since we are certain that the emails can’t be spam due to his manner of familiarizing with the subscribers.
The above is simply an illustration of how personalization affects the curiosity of your subscribers.
Other things you can use to get more attention is the adequate use of the magic words, a high level of humour, and letting emotions flow from your words.
Once you can establish your relationship with your audience, making sales would not be a big deal anymore.
Improve your CRM and CTR
I believe by now, you should know what Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and Click Through Rates (CTR) stand for.
I just said it, didn’t I?
Personalizing and segmenting your email list is one of the way of improving your CTR or CRM.
This is due to the sense of humour I used in those sentences.
There are several ways of doing effective CRM and getting a high CTR and from your subscribers.
As a matter of fact, you can build your list today, send out your first email, and start getting results instantly.
Here are some tips to help you further:
- Do not spam: Although sometimes your emails might be wrongly regarded as spam but you should try to avoid this as best as you can.
- Ensure all your email subscribers are ready to comply. Do not send out emails to self-generated email addresses.
- Send your emails from a reliable software that can be easily identified.
- Do not send emails when using a virtual network service. Your IP address should be obvious and not hidden/masked.
- Stick to a particular email layout to ensure uniformity.
- Include the unsubscribe button in your emails.
- Teach your subscribers how to white-list your emails when they are filtered as spam.
- Frequent use of monetary terms tends to promote filtering your emails as spam. This includes; bonanza, cash, purchase, and so on.
Conduct A/B Test
Sounds like some kind of alphabet test in school, isn’t it?
Maybe not.
A/B test is not one of those difficult school examinations, rather it’s key to segment your list in email marketing.
An A/B test allows you to section your list into active members and the inactive ones in order to ensure maximum response.
You should send out re-engagement emails to seek the attention of the passive subscribers and remove those who remain reluctant to keep your list responsive.
With the A/B test, you will also be able to identify the types of emails to send to a particular set of people at a point in time.
Many email software has this feature so that their customers will not worry much about how reliable the results are.
Send the right emails at the right time
This is self-explanatory and doesn’t need much emphasis.
However, the significance of sending the right email at the right time can never be underestimated.
That is, your welcome e-mails, newsletters, and the likes should be perfectly timed and sent out when necessary.
Let your emails speak for you
From the content of your emails, your prospects should be able to derive satisfaction, hence look forward to more great content from you.
Once you can achieve this, there is a high probability that your emails will have high conversion rates.
Be friendly
Write to your customers like you are really close to them and in a tone that can expect further interactions.
You can be modest in making regards to your services, don’t be keen on selling your products.
On this note, sending birthday wishes and greetings during the festive period can ignite a strong relationship with your customers.
Make use of funny words and bring about eagerness and connections.
Use an enthralling subject line
The subject line is the first part your subscribers will see and it must make them curious as well as embedding the content of the e-mail.
Conclusion
From all that has been said on this subject, email marketing remains a vital aspect of any successful digital marketing.
With every $1 you invest in your email marketing strategy, study shows that you’ll realize an average of $42 ROI.
That is, if I spend $100 in getting an email marketing tool, there is an average of $4200 waiting for me on the investment.
So, what is holding you back from setting up your own email marketing? This guide contains the A to Z of how to get started with email marketing.
So, I can say have the best manual to work with and succeed.
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