What is Email marketing? A Guide to Getting it Right!
Statistics show that email marketing is up to 40 times more effective than social media. It is considered as the most direct form of marketing. With this post, you can set up and drive a smart email marketing funnel that will send leads your way on a frequent basis.
How to build an email list?
Simply having an opt-in form on the website won’t do the job anymore for a digital agency. You need a magnet or a free giveaway for the users in exchange for sharing their email addresses. Digital assets like blogs, videos, and eBooks are valuable lead magnets that help users and enhance your email list building activity. Others may use free trials, discounts, or even coupons to lure the readers.
Any lead magnet in email marketing needs to have these crucial traits –
1 – They are crisp and to-the-point. This facilitates easy consumption of the content.
2 – The content needs to have actionable information or a tool that the reader can use.
3 – The lead magnet needs to be valuable and provide actual help to the users.
4 – Keep the opt-in form short with just one or two fields so that they get the giveaway without going for lengthy form filling.
How to optimize emails for maximum CTR?
Make sure that your emails are actually opened and read. The click-through rate needs to be high to justify the investment into an email marketing program. Utilize these pointers to ensure maximum CTR with email marketing –
1 – Ensure that the recipients have actually agreed to the opt-in…This way these emails won’t be marked as spam.
2 – Use non-spammy and genuine email address to send the mail
3 – Ensure a clutter-free template code
4 – Avoid excessive sales push and bring down the occurrences of words like ‘buy’, ‘purchase’, or ‘discount’
5 – Focus on customer problem rather than your solution
6 – Avoid non-relevant (bait and click) tactics on subject line just to improve CTR
7 – Give proper information about how the recipient can reach you to take the engagement ahead
8 – Always give a way for readers to unsubscribe/opt-out of the emails
Additionally, make sure to remove inactive subscribers and focus on those who are interacting with you. Lastly, check for the best timing to send the emails based on A/B testing.
How to automate the process?
Once you have built the list, segmented the list to personalize it further, and used amazing content on the mail and subject, it is time to automate the entire task to add ROI to your online marketing process.
Using an autoresponder is vital for this. They help in providing timely, relevant and useful information to the new prospects in order to streamline the customer onboarding process. Right from the welcome message (after agreeing to opt-in) to sending periodic helpful videos and content to their inbox is a task best left to an autoresponder.
It is important to map out your sequence to understand how many emails or how many days to pursue a lead. This will depend on your segmented list and the prospect’s preferences. Then write the email content depending on the number of emails in your sequence. Once these are sent out, monitor the emails continuously to check important metrics like CTR, open rates, and unsubscribe rates.
To conclude
With these steps, you will successfully drive a well-oiled email marketing plan that delivers amazing outcomes to your digital marketing strategies.
References: