I was the kind of person that neglected email marketing. I thought it is “just another” communication channel with your audience that you don’t need to leverage at all.
Well, never underestimate how wrong you can be. When I saw the power of email marketing for the first time, I couldn’t believe my eyes and I had to try it.
And the results were incredible.
Globally, 30% of marketers cite email marketing as having the highest ROI. This is probably because, for every $1 spent on email marketing, $44 is made in return, according to a study by Campaign Monitor, which equals a 4400% ROI.
Here are some more email marketing success statistics you can swoon over:
- 18% of companies achieve ROI greater than $70 per $1 invested.
- Email is 40x more effective at acquiring customers than Facebook and Twitter combined.
- Shoppers spend 138% more when marketed through email, as compared to those who do not receive email offers.
That is a big deal right? The problem is that you are not going to achieve that kind of results just by hitting the “send” button.
To make this happen, you have to pay a massive attention to the context and the content of your marketing email.
That’s why today I am going to give you some tips on how to get better at email marketing and how to achieve incredible results.
So, grab your favorite drink, sit comfortably in your chair, and let’s get into it.
Give Them An Incentive To Opt-In
The first thing that you need to do to become successful at email marketing is to build your own email list.
However, the days of “subscribe to this newsletter” are long gone. This is not working.
What is working is giving them an incentive to subscribe to your email list. Email marketers call it the “lead magnet”. I call it the “juicy carrot”.
Your juicy carrot is the thing that you offer them in exchange for their contact information. It can be an e-book, a checklist, a worksheet, a free webinar, whatever.
But whenever choosing what your juicy carrot is going to look like, note one thing. The more valuable it is, the more opt-ins you are going to get.
Generally, the most valuable things are bundles, webinars, or big discounts.
Here is an example of a super-juicy carrot from Dan Kennedy that will make them jump on the offer:
Well, when you see something like this, you wouldn’t question yourself twice if you are going to provide your opt-in information in exchange for this bundle.
It is impossible not to opt-in. It gives you so much value that you would pay for it.
And that is the key of creating a powerful juicy carrot. So, create it wisely and make sure that it is irresistible.
Segment Your Audience
Segmentation is the most important part of the whole email marketing. Nothing brings bigger results than segmented email marketing campaigns.
Why is that? You see, to be successful at email marketing there is a necessary formula to follow:
- Send A Right Message
- To The Right Person
- At The Right Time
And the only way you can do that is by segmenting your audience. If you have all contacts in one big “package” you will have a damn big problem with sending your marketing email to the right person.
But, if you are still on the fence, and you need to see numbers to believe in what I have to say…
Here are some statistics that you are going to find useful (and motivating):
Well, after seeing the numbers you finally understand how powerful it is. The problem you may be facing now is, “How do I segment my audience?”.
There are many ways you can segment your audience, but the most important one is segmenting based on their interests so that you can send them relevant marketing emails.
But there are also other factors that matter. Some of them are segmenting them based on their position in buyers journey, age, and the landing page they used to opt-in.
Only when you are going to do this, you can send the right marketing email to the right person at the right time.
Well, the next step is to check how you are going to gather all the data for your email marketing.
The first and the easiest thing is to ask them for it directly in the opt-in. The problem is that the more questions you ask, the lower amount of people is going to give you their information.
That’s why the juicy carrot must be absolutely irresistible. If they see that the reward is worth giving you more than just the email address and the first name, they will do it.
Here is an example of an opt-in from HubSpot:
Here you can see what an opt-in that gathers more data looks like. HubSpot also asks for website URL, phone number, company name, and the amount of employees that work there.
With that info they can make the email marketing campaigns extremely personalized as they can add additional data based on these things.
However, asking for so much stuff extremely reduces opt-in rate. Especially the phone number.
But if you want extremely high-quality leads, you can do that.
The second, much harder thing to do is to investigate every single contact in your email list.
Check where they are from, which page they used to opt-in, see if they are opening your marketingemails, etc.
This one is a bit harder, but it is definitely worth it. In short, you just have to segment your audience before even thinking of clicking on the “send” button.
Nothing is worse than sending a wrong marketing email to the wrong person at the wrong time. Doing it instantly means zero results and a high unsubscribe rate from the followers side.
Send Your Email From A Real Person, Not Your Company (Unless Its Name Is Similar To Yours)
As you already know, the more personal the marketing email is, the better. And your from name can mean a difference between a success and a failure.
People hate when the marketing email that you send to them looks like a bulk email. They want a personal experience.
Personalized emails deliver 6x higher transaction rates!
When your markeiting emails are personalized to each user, they’ll be more likely to take action and engage with your emails. But more on that later.
Now we want to take a look at the “from” field. The biggest mistake that you can do is to put your company name here (unless the name is similar to yours.)
For example, Dan Lok has built a personal brand and his company is named Dan Lok. That is why he can use the name Dan Lok in his “from” field. It’s his name and people can imagine him writing the marketing email. That way it is personal.
But if you’re not in the similar situation as Dan Lok is you never want to use your company name.
Use your own name instead. That is much more personal.
For example, instead of [Company name] use [Rebecca from “Company name”]. It is way more powerful.
Or even better use your name only.
It is essential for your email marketing success.
Include One Call-To-Action Button Per Email
Why it is so necessary to do this?
Well, you don’t want to confuse the reader about what action they should take. Confusion leads to inaction.
That means if you are going to ask for more than one thing they should do, they won’t do anything.
First, you want to set a goal for your marketing email. To be able to do that and make sure you lead down the readers towards your goal, you have to make sure you know what your goal is.
I know, this may seem like a no-brainer to you. The problem is that an incredible amount of marketers still neglect this step. And that is why they fail.
They write about something, and they don’t even know why.
You want to be different. You want to be the marketer that asks “Why am I writing this email in the first place?”.
Only when you have answered this question you can write a marketing email that converts. (And that will have only one call-to-action button.)
Second, tell them what they should do and include the CTA button. That’s it. But again, make sure that you are leading them towards only one action they should take.
Do not tell them to click a second link that will redirect them to another page in the P.S. section.
ONE CTA is the key!
Make Sure You Use A Mobile-Friendly Template
Devices like smartphones and tablets make it super easy for users to check their inboxes on-the-go, which is probably why mobile devices accounted for at least 50% of all read emails.
Checking emails on mobile is especially common with younger crowds. 40% of people 18 years old and under will always open an email on their mobile-first.
That means if your emails are going to look broken on mobile devices, you just lost half of the potential conversions.
And usually it is even more. It all depends on your audience.
But, how are you going to make sure that this won’t happen? It all starts with your ESP or Email Service Provider.
When writing a marketing email you want to make sure that you’ve chosen the right template that is going to customize for each device.
If you don’t have the option, you should seriously consider changing your ESP. If you can’t make your emails customize for mobile devices, you are losing an incredible amount of money.
That is the reality.
The next thing you want to pay attention to is your email image size. Is your email going to look good if the images are not going to load?
Is it going to hurt my conversion rates?
To prevent this you want to make sure that you are using .jpg images withe extremely low file size. Also make sure that the images are sized properly. Don’t use images larger than 1200×600 pixels.
Sticking with these tips will help you optimize your marketing emails for mobile devices and make sure that you will make the most out of every email marketing campaign you create.
Use Personalization
I already talked about this earlier. Consumers love getting messages and offers that are personalized to their needs and interests.
In fact, 74% of people hate being shown irrelevant content, which makes personalization incredibly important to a great email marketing strategy.
You can personalize your emails in a number of ways. For instance, many marketers personalize emails based on their demographics like gender and age; 66% of marketers personalize their emails based on age data.
This is exactly the point when segmentation kicks in. If you haven’t segmented your audience, you will never be able to make your emails personal.
So, if you haven’t started segmenting your audience yet, go back to that step and make sure that you have done so.
Now let’s take a look at what exactly personalization means.
Personalization is making your emails a one-to-one conversation, talking about a topic that is of interest of them, and including personalization.
The very first step is to write about a topic they are interested in.
Nobody gives a damn if you are writing a personal email to them if it is about something they don’t care about.
It must be of importance to them.
If you are writing to vegans, talk about how to prepare vegan breakfast. If you are writing to runners, talk about how to run faster and longer distances.
That is absolutely necessary. And it is one of the main reasons why segmentation is so important.
Second, you want to make it a one-to-one conversation.
Make sure that you write the way you talk. You want to be authentic, and you want to write directly to them.
Imagine that you are writing to a family member or to a friend that you know for a long time. You will see how communicative you will be.
And the third step is to include personalization.
“What the hell Filip? That’s what you’re talking about the whole time!”
Well, no. Including personalization means including their name inside the email, or subject line and using other information about your reader in the message.
You do that by using merge tags that your ESP is supporting. For example, in Mailchimp *[FNAME]* means including their first name instead of the tag. So the final message would look like this…
“Hi *[FNAME]*,” would be turned into “Hi Filip,”.
And that is much more personal than just the classic “Hi…”
But you have to make sure that you collect their name in your opt-in offer. The other side of this is that you don’t want to overuse it.
Using their name too much in the copy will make it sound like a message from a robot instead of a human. I suggest not using their name more than 2-3 times in the copy.
Filip Konecny 