Growing your business is not an easy task. No matter how good your product, it is far too easy for it to fall under the radar and languish in obscurity. Thankfully, there are many marketing techniques that can help you avoid this fate.
One of the most reliable tools for growing your business is email marketing. In this post I’ll be telling you a bit about email marketing, what it is and how you can use email marketing to grow your business.
Quick Navigation
What is Email Marketing?
Is Email Marketing Effective?
What Tools are Used for Email Marketing?
How Can You Build an Email List?
Things to Consider When Building an Email List?
How do you Create Compelling and Engaging Email Marketing?
What Kind of Email Marketing Content Is There?
What are Some Common Pitfalls?
Should I do Email In-house or with an Agency?
How Do I Choose the Right Agency?
Why Choose Mack Media?
What is Email Marketing?
Email marketing is the process of using email to reach out directly to a customer base. This could be in the form of a newsletter, product update, or an event invitation. Emails that are sent directly to customers can raise awareness of a business or of a useful service.
It is important to differentiate email marketing from spam. We’ve all had that swarm of unwanted emails buzz into our inboxes to sell some product we have no interest in and we had never asked for. That is not email marketing but rather spam.
Unlike spam, email marketing revolves around creating valuable content for customers and potential customers, content that they have signed up for by joining a subscriber list or otherwise explicitly giving permission.
The goal of email marketing is not to simply push a product, but rather to build a relationship with consumers. Email marketing provides value to your customers, by providing interesting content and by informing customers of deals and offers.
When done correctly the sight of a marketing email should not induce interest and not dread or annoyance.
Is Email Marketing Effective?
Email marketing is an ever more important tool in our digital world. More and more people around the globe find themselves using email. According to the Radicati Group the amount of email accounts has grown close to 4.3 billion. Pew Research notes that 92% of adults use email and that 61% use it on an average day. Email is a huge part of most people’s lives.
Of course just because email is used by many does not mean it will convert. However, all evidence suggests that email does just that. Pew Research finds that 61% of American workers say that email is “very important” in their work. According to eMarketer, 80% of professionals say that email marketing is “crucial” for acquiring and retaining customers.
If you are looking to grow your business, email is a great place to start.
What Tools are Used for Email Marketing?
Most email marketing campaigns are run with the help of automated email marketing software. Three of the biggest resources, and ones that we regularly use, are EngageBay, MailChimp, ConstantContact, and GetResponse. These tools allow you to easily maintain mailing lists and send out regularly scheduled emails. In addition, these services offer analytics so you can keep track of your campaigns success and will be notified if any problems that occur.
EngageBay
EngageBay is a single, unified and affordable digital platform for small and medium businesses that combines marketing automation, sales automation, ticketing helpdesk and a free CRM for b2b, all in a single solution. Features such as Email Marketing CRM, Lead Generation tools, Contact Management, Deal Pipeline, Telephony, Email Sequences, full service Help Desk Automation and many others, EngageBay is a complete solution for a business’s marketing, sales & service needs.
MailChimp
MailChimp is generally considered the best of the three softwares as an overall package, it was PC mags editor’s choice, and is also our first choice. It offers very flexible pricing options and an excellent basic package.
GetResponse
GetResponse is a very effective software, offers some advanced tools in the basic package, and is well regarded by critics.
Constant Contact
ConstantContact is an effective tool for email marketing, but it is a bit more limited than it’s competitors.
Easysendy is the most satisfactory option for marketers to send marketing emails. An all-in-one email marketing solution that allows you to carry all your various marketing channels together and accelerate traffic, a higher conversion rate, and better ROI for online geeks, marketers, small businesses, and startups. In addition, you can easily design email templates for your campaigns.
How Can You Build An Email List?
All of the tools we recommend can use any email list that you import, but how do you get that email list in the first place? There are a variety of ways to build up a subscription base either in the tools above or separately so it can be imported.
The foundation of these efforts should be the creation of an obvious and easy place to subscribe, most commonly on your website. If you place this subscription offer on your website it is important that you make it obvious without being obnoxious. Below or above your content is generally a safe place as it will be noticeable without interfering too much with the user experience.
You could also include it as a part of the purchase process so that interested customers can sign up for more offers. Wherever you put it, try to avoid making it a popup which could be irritating and ruin your website’s user experience.
Your website is not the only option for sign ups. You could offer the option to sign up at an industry conference where you have a booth or use social media. MailChimp offers the option to add an email subscription tab directly to your Facebook business page and you can also draw attention to it through Social Media posts or even paid advertising.
Things to Consider When Building an Email List
Regardless of how you choose to build your mailing list here are a 5 tips to keep in mind:
1. Offer, Don’t Beg: Frame your subscription as an offer rather than beg for sign ups. You intend to provide value to consumers through your regular updates and should make this clear.
Be explicit as to what consumers will receive by signing up. Will it be newsletters or product updates? What kind of content and products can they expect to receive information.
2. Use Free Stuff: You can make your offer more appealing by including free materials with the subscription. Perhaps you can send them a free PDF or ebook related to your services? Remember that customers want to get something out of a subscription and free stuff is always appealing.
3. Write a Compelling Offer: While this should be pretty self explanatory, make sure that you use your best copy when asking people to sign up. You need to make the sign up request appealing, convincing, and easy to understand.
4. Be Honest: Always make sure that it is clear that signing up adds a customer to an email list. You do not want to trick or mislead people, even by accident, into subscribing when they are not interested. Even if this works in the short run, it will ultimately leave you with an email list filled with people uninterested in converting.
Additionally, these customers, not realizing they were added to an email list, may flag your emails as spam which, in sufficient quantity, can have serious repercussions for your email marketing as a whole.
5. Confirm: Follow up the subscription with an automatic confirmation or welcome response. This will help you build up a level of familiarity with your audience and make it clear that they have signed up for your email list.
How Do You Create Compelling and Engaging Email Marketing
Planning
Great email marketing starts with a great plan and vision. Your email marketing needs a purpose. Don’t write emails simply to write emails, make sure you have a relevant purpose for writing said email.
Perhaps you want to bring attention to a new event or a new product line? Whatever the reason, try to make sure that there is a reason that your subscribers will be interested in.
Your subscribers are an important part of your business and you will benefit from treating them as such. Be mindful of their time and make sure that you have a compelling reason, like a new sale or deal, for reaching out to them.
That said, don’t starve your subscribers for content. You don’t want them to completely forget you exist, or even forget that they opted in to your email list in the first place.
Direct and Personalize
Try to avoid sending every email to each one of your subscribers. Consider segmenting your audience into different groups based on their shared interests and tailoring your marketing to these different segments separately.
Similarly, try to personalize your emails whenever possible. That does not just mean use their name. In fact, the “insert name here” template may even have the opposite effect.
For example, Robert Smith Jr, who is known to all his friends and coworkers as Bob and has not been called Robert in a decade, may not be particularly impressed by an email referring to him by his full or even first name. It simply makes it more obvious that his name was inserted into a template.
A far better way to personalize is to consider the interests that he has shown. An email recommending a product based upon his past purchase history is far more personal than one simply parroting his name.
Straightforward Design
When designing your emails it is best to keep them simple and easy to follow. Don’t drown your email in pictures or complex visual elements. Make the design appealing but simplistic and the pictures a complement to, rather than a replacement for, text.
Have An Appealing Subject Line
It’s no secret that the subject line is extremely important in email marketing. Consumers are flooded by emails and a compelling subject line helps your email stand out from the crowd.
Make your subject line attention grabbing, but make sure it actually matches the content and is not too sensationalist or aggressive. You don’t want to be confused for spam or disappoint readers with a misleading subject line.
Research by Adestra suggests you might also want to avoid subject lines of 60-70 characters. They found emails with extremely short subject lines, as few as 10 sometimes, received a high open rate while longer subject lines received a higher click through rate. Subject lines of 60-70 characters showed neither advantage, making them worse than both.
Make Your Copy Concise, Easy to Scan, and Personal
Once you’ve managed to get the attention of readers you want to make sure that reading the actual email is enjoyable. Don’t let the email drone on and on, get to the point as quickly as possible.
Since people have so little time to read emails they should also be able to get the gist of your argument from a quick scan, or at least get enough to be tempted to stay longer.
Finally, make sure that the email is easy to read. Be personal and engaging in your tone. You don’t want to disengage your readers with stiff, forced copy. Consumers are people and appreciate being approached as such. Segmenting can help with this as you can personalize the email to segments based on their shared features.
What Kind of Email Marketing Content Is There?
There are several different types of email marketing content that you could create. Here are a few of the most common formats.
Newsletters
The newsletter is one of the most common types of formats. According to the Content Marketing Institute 83% of B2B marketers use newsletters in their campaigns for content marketing.
These kind of emails let you round up a variety of articles or stories in a visually appealing way and are often done on a regularly scheduled basis.
New Content Announcement
This type of email focuses on a single announcement or new offer. These might highlight a coupon, end of the year sale, the release of a new product, or another new, single offer. These focus primarily on just highlighting the offer with short but appealing copy and a direct call to action.
Event Invitation
This kind of email highlights an upcoming event you’re hosting. Since the goal is generally to promote your event, it is very important that this kind of email be visually appealing and somehow demonstrate exactly why your event might be worth attending.
Product Update
Product updates, true to their name, tend to be a way to show or remind your customers of your products. It’s important not to overdo these types of emails. They are best used sparingly as a, perhaps monthly, reminder for your subscribers of your service.
They should be written clearly and directly with a prominent image of the product in question. It might be a good idea to group your products under one catalog email to avoid causing customer fatigue.
Confirmation
These emails are designed to simply confirm to a customer that their order was received. They should be straightforward with a clear subject line and the information to be confirmed at the forefront.
Design can be simple for these emails, provided the necessary information is obvious, as they are not necessarily selling anything, but rather improving user experience.
Transactional
While not necessarily a part of email marketing, it is nonetheless worth mentioning transactional emails as they are often offered by common email marketing tools.
These are one off automatic emails, similar to confirmation emails, that confirm to customers that their order has been received or sent. If you have ever shopped online you undoubtedly have received these.
What are Some Common Pitfalls?
You should have a pretty good grasp of email marketing by this point, but there are still some common pitfalls to avoid for new email marketers. Here are some pitfalls to avoid when trying email marketing:
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- Inconsistent schedule: While you want every post to be relevant, it is also important to be consistent with your schedule. Sending 5 emails one week and none the next will leave your subscribers confused and may lead to unsubscribing. It is far better to send one a week, two a month, or some other consistent amount.
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- Overwhelming subscribers: The last thing you want is to flood your already busy subscribers with more emails than they could hope to read.That said, you also don’t want to starve your subscribers for content. It’s very important to establish a middle ground that works for your customers.
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- Not ensuring they are whitelisted: Being whitelisted is the equivalent of being considered trusted. This will prevent your emails from being lost in spam folders.While most email providers work hard to make sure your emails are whitelisted and not classified as spam, it’s a common mistake to depend solely upon them and not take other steps as well.
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- Failing to test: Tempting as it may be, you never want to send out your campaign after only viewing it on one email client. There are a variety of different types of email clients used by your potential customers and you want your emails to look as good as possible on each of them. Many email providers offer testing tools, like MailChimp, so take advantage of them!
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- Using no reply emails: Avoid using no replies. You want your subscribers to feel valued and a no reply email undermines that idea. A no reply effectively tells subscribers that you don’t value their feedback and there’s no reason for them to get engaged.
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- Not having an unsubscribe option: While you don’t want people to unsubscribe, it is crucial that you include the option. Not having an unsubscribe button is illegal in most areas under CAN-SPAM and most email providers will not let you send such emails regardless. Even if it was not often illegal, you do not want people to continue receiving your emails if they are not interested. This could lead to bad PR and get your emails marked as spam.
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- No obvious call to action: A great marketing email means nothing if there is no clear action that an interested subscriber can take. If you want subscribers to do something then make the call to action clear and prominent.
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- Not being mobile friendly: More and more people are checking their emails on mobile devices. Make sure that your emails will look good on mobile too. Don’t focus on desktop alone or you might alienate a huge portion, of your subscribers.
Should I do Email In-house or with an Agency?
Managing email marketing in-house is certainly possible, but a lot of work. For most businesses, especially smaller business, it is not really practical to conduct effective email marketing in-house.
While software like MailChimp helps, running an effective email marketing campaign requires the ability to write good copy and a familiarity with the law, email marketing software, and email marketing techniques.
Even learning the actual software, user friendly as many try to be, will take some time. Most smaller businesses can ill afford the extra manpower, effort, and training time required to make email marketing as effective as possible.
While you know your company best, we would suggest to most businesses that they use an agency. An agency should have the personnel and training to get the job done quickly and effectively, won’t need to learn the software, and should have tried and true techniques for email marketing.
More importantly, they will save your company a lot of unneeded effort and expense that can instead be spent managing the leads that come in from your email marketing efforts.
How Do I Choose the Right Agency?
Not all agencies are equal. You want to work with an agency that is tried and true, and and agency that you know will look out for your best interests. You certainly don’t want to get involved with any kind of scammy group. In order to help you find the right agency we have a few tips.
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- Look for an agency that is knowledgeable: You want an agency that can provide expertise that your team may not have, or be too busy to apply. Take a look at their website beforehand. See what they say about email marketing there. When you meet them make sure to ask them about their plans, what software they intend to use, etc.
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- Look for an agency that will work with you: This is email marketing for your company, not any company. You want an agency that cares about learning your brand, goals, and how your business works. How are they supposed to advertise for you if they don’t know what you want to say?
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- Look for an agency that is transparent: Scammers rarely want to share their work, or lack thereof, with you. Make sure that the agency you work with is happy to answer questions and can explain their processes.
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- Look for an agency with an ROI focus: You want email marketing to grow your business, not simply to have it. Make sure that the agency you work with understands this and is focused on results. Be certain that they will provide you with regular analytics data so you can understand if the advertising is working.
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- Avoid agencies that seem ignorant of the law: The last thing you want is legal hassle. Make sure that the agency you work with is aware of the law. If not they might be a scammer, unprofessional, or even get you into legal trouble.
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- Avoid agencies that make inflated promises: It is all but impossible to get a 100%, or near 100%, click-through or open rate. Avoid agencies that make inflated promises and make sure that whatever agency you work with can back up their claims.
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- Potentially look for an agency that provides other services: If you are interested in seriously growing your company then you may be interested in other forms of digital marketing. It might be worth looking at an agency that could provide you with other services so you don’t have to look at other agencies later.
Why Choose Mack Media?
You probably want an email marketing agency that is knowledgeable, transparent, ROI focused, will work with you, and preferably can provide more services down the line. You don’t want an agency that is ignorant of the law and makes inflated promises.
Mack Media is just the agency you are looking for. Here at Mack Media we pride ourselves on our transparency and dedicate ourselves to understanding our clients and making advertisements consistent with their vision and goals.
Our team is experienced and knowledgeable in the field of email marketing and focused on providing a measurable ROI. We are well aware of the laws, such as CAN-SPAM, and will never make inflated promises that we have no chance of keeping.
You can rely on Mack Media to provide you with the effective email marketing services you need to grow your business. We also provide an array of other services including other DigitalMarketing Services, Website Design, and Video Production. Call us today at 203-778-1120 to learn more!
