What is email marketing?
The tactic of emailing your intended audience is called email marketing. It is a top method for transforming potential buyers into customers, as well as one-time clients into devoted ones.
Sending weekly newsletters, promotional emails, and special offers to customers can be part of your email marketing strategy, which helps you establish a connection with your audience and gradually cultivate brand loyalty.
The main point to consider is that email marketing provides a direct approach to engage with your intended recipients.
What are the business benefits of email marketing?
Email marketing can produce significant outcomes for small businesses with limited marketing resources. Here are six key advantages that small businesses can obtain from implementing email marketing strategies:
1. High ROI
Email marketing provides a median ROI of 122%, four times more than any other digital marketing strategy, according to research conducted by eMarketer. By incorporating methods like A/B testing, opting for double opt-ins, and maintaining a standardized schedule, this figure can be further improved.
In order to monitor the return on investment of your email marketing campaigns, utilize this equation:
The formula to calculate the return on investment for email marketing is the net profit obtained by deducting the email marketing costs from the gross profits, divided by the email marketing costs.
One email marketing campaign earned $2,000 in sales while only costing $150.
The number 12.33 is obtained by dividing the amount of $1,850, which results from subtracting $150 from $2,000, by the value of $150.
Your campaign has an ROI of $12.33, implying that for each dollar spent, you yielded $12.33 in return.
2. Appeal to different segments of your target audience
By utilizing information about your email subscribers, email marketing permits you to develop personalized campaigns that are focused on specific groups.
When starting out with email marketing, generating customized content may seem intimidating and arduous initially. Nonetheless, personalization can be as simple as addressing the subscriber by their first name within your email. Studies have demonstrated that including the subscriber’s first name in the subject line can raise email openings by up to 26%.
When your email list expands, and your confidence in email marketing increases, you can divide your target audience into smaller groups based on their age, income, gender, or duration of being a customer.
3. Time and money savings
Email marketing is a cost-effective solution that can easily be automated, which is especially appealing to busy business owners.
After compiling your list, crafting your offer, and designing your email, the campaign will be automatically sent to your target audience. This provides an opportunity to connect with your viewers and establish fresh clientele while you focus on other aspects of business management.
Naturally, it is necessary to monitor your campaigns and make adjustments periodically, but email marketing ranks among the least labor-intensive marketing tactics available.
Compared to paid advertising, creating a professional email campaign that reaches thousands of subscribers is relatively affordable. You can achieve this with minimal expenses.
4. Stronger relationships with customers
The process of marketing requires showcasing the worth of your products or services to potential customers and educating them on the actions they can take to engage with your business. Upon receiving a subscription to your email list, there is an occasion to send informative and pertinent material to the recipient.
It is important not to constantly push your products or services in every email you send to your customers. Instead, focus on providing valuable content that will engage and interest them. By showing your customers the value you can offer, they will anticipate and appreciate your weekly communication.
It’s not necessary for that value to necessarily manifest as a sale or promotion; it can be something you believe they will benefit from, such as informative content. An instance of this could be composing an email containing a hyperlink to a recent blog post you published.
Include links to your social media accounts in your emails, and prompt your recipients to follow you on those platforms. This strategy enhances your reliability among your followers and allows them to obtain more information about your products or services if a particular email sparks their curiosity.
5. Increased sales
Small businesses have faced growth challenges in their sales last year and this year. Nevertheless, email marketing remains one of the most effective methods to boost sales, notably when foot traffic to your physical store has dwindled considerably.
Providing a timely offer can influence certain customers to make a purchase. Creating a sense of urgency in your offers, along with providing attractive discounts or free delivery, can effectively transform a subscriber into a customer.
In addition, email marketing presents an excellent opportunity to encourage current customers to make additional purchases and reignite past customers who have not made a purchase recently.
Crafting tailored and specific deals for individuals on your roster can incentivize them to buy products or services from your enterprise.
6. A strong following of subscribers
Social media marketing comes with a disadvantage whereby you have no ownership of your followers. In the event of an unexpected shutdown of your Facebook Business page (which is a common occurrence), all the following you spent months or even years building will be lost.
It is crucial to create an email list as it provides a valuable record of your clients and a means of reaching out to them. Your list of contacts belongs to you, so even if you change email service providers, you will still have access to it.
The main point to remember is that email marketing is an affordable, user-friendly and offers a substantial return on investment, thus making it an ideal option for small enterprises trying to maximize their marketing funds.
6 Reasons Why Your Blog Email Outreach Campaigns Are Failing
Developing an email outreach strategy for your blog can efficiently market your content and enhance your readership. Nevertheless, it’s typical for your emails to either get eliminated or filtered as spam.
It is fortunate that there are numerous ways to enhance your email marketing tactics. Through message personalization and the use of customized templates, you can motivate a higher number of users to open and peruse your emails.
In this post, we’ll discuss some common mistakes bloggers make when launching an email outreach campaign. We’ll also show you how to fix them. Let’s get started!
1. No personalization
If your email lacks personalization, your recipients may assume that it’s spam. Despite the fact that you’ll probably send mass outreach emails, using the recipient’s name can boost email open rates by 26%.
Incorporating personalization into your emails can give the impression that the email was created specifically for the recipient, demonstrating your concern for them as an individual rather than simply a generic name on a contact list.
By utilizing a tool like Mailchimp, it’s possible to personalize your marketing message to individual users instead of just inserting their names at the start of emails.
Mailchimp has the ability to anticipate the demographics of your audience, enabling you to divide diverse users based on their preferences. By integrating merge tags to your content, you have the capacity to communicate the appropriate message to the appropriate individuals.
2. Reusing the same email templates
Using the same email template for all your campaigns could save time, but it may be perceived as insincere by your audience, given that you’re not customizing your messages. Moreover, if your messages are heavily focused on sales, the recipients may mark them as spam.
It might be a good idea to change your content layout. ActiveCampaign provides more than 250 ready-made email templates to enhance the appeal of your campaign.
It is possible to create an eye-catching responsive email even without any prior design experience. This can be achieved by customizing templates to suit your needs, whether you are informing readers about new posts or requesting feedback during blog email outreach.
To determine the design that yields the highest number of clicks and responses, it is possible to initiate A/B tests using several templates.
3. Not optimizing for mobile devices
Optimizing your campaign for mobile devices is crucial since numerous individuals tend to check their emails on their phones rather than on a computer. Generating emails that are mobile-friendly can boost clicks by 15 percent.
Most email marketing tools will have a feature allowing for mobile format editing. Mailchimp offers the ability to tailor your email for mobile devices, including smartphones and tablets, using its mobile styles.
After making adjustments to the mobile design, you have the option to preview it for uniform formatting, either within the Mailchimp mobile application or otherwise. It is also recommended to send a test email to yourself prior to initiating your campaign.
4. The call to action is too complicated
Every email that you compose must have a defined objective. For instance, it could be to motivate the recipients to read a blog post, buy a product, or provide you with feedback about a particular area. Yet, it can be quite challenging to convince the readers to act upon your requests.
The reason for your low conversion rates in your current outreach plan may be because of the complex Call To Action (CTA). It is crucial to simplify and avoid demanding too much.
By offering a hyperlink to a recent article and asking your audience to take a look, you could prompt them to do so more readily since it is a lone step they need to take.
By keeping your requests brief, you can increase the number of conversions from your emails. You also have the option of asking a concise question that can be easily answered by readers.
5. No incentive for the reader
To enhance reader participation on your blog, it is crucial to consider the content you can provide. Although a suitable message may augment engagement, some bloggers construct their promotions around themselves, which fails to motivate readers to interact with the content.
In order to effectively communicate via email, it’s crucial to clearly state how you can be of assistance to the recipient, particularly when reaching out to someone for the first time. Without prior knowledge of your capabilities, it’s important to provide a clear incentive for the recipient to engage with you.
When you request users to peruse your most recent blog entry or examine your product, you should present how it can be advantageous for them.
Offering an incentive can tell new readers that you’re reaching out to help them, not yourself. This can be more effective than only asking for favors.
6. No follow up
To ensure that your content is viewed by readers, you may want to send a follow-up email or reminder as your initial email may be overlooked or mistakenly marked as spam.
Here are some things to keep in mind when sending follow-ups:
- Keep it short.
- Remind them who you are and why you’re contacting them.
- Avoid being too sales-oriented.
- Add value by sharing a quick tip.
- Include a call to action.
To keep this process simple, you can use Mailchimp to send automated follow-ups . With this tool, you can customize your email design and timing. You can also personalize each message to encourage engagement.
How to get started with email marketing
Some entrepreneurs are aware that they must develop a roster of email contacts but are uncertain about the location or approach to commence. Following these four steps, you will be guided through the procedure.
1. Choose your email provider.
When starting with email marketing, the primary task is to select a service provider. While assessing different providers, keep in mind the following factors:
- The provider’s deliverability rate
- Whether the provider offers templates and allows you to customize your emails
- Whether the software is intuitive and user-friendly
- Advanced features the service offers, like A/B testing, analytics and segmentation tools
- The level of customer support the company provides
After choosing a service provider, take advantage of the free trial that is offered by most providers. This allows you to try out the software and make sure it meets your requirements.
2. Create a free but compelling opt-in.
You need to give your audience a very good reason why they should join your email list. The best way to incentivize them is by creating a free opt-in.
The opt-in format you design is determined by the requirements of your customers. As an example, if your focus is on a B2B audience, you could produce an extensive white paper on a subject that piques their interest.
After completing the creation of your opt-in, you have the option to establish a form on your website. Your viewers will register by entering their email address, following which they can access your opt-in. Additionally, you can publicize your opt-in across all your social media platforms to gain more subscribers for your email list.
3. Send a weekly newsletter.
Your subscribers want to know what they can expect from you, and the best way to do that is by sending a weekly newsletter .
Your audience can benefit from your newsletter as it shares useful and appropriate content, ultimately adding value to your subscribers.
When making your newsletter, remember these tips:
- Use a template to design your newsletter.
- Keep it brief. Your audience may lose interest if your emails are too wordy.
- Personalize the subject line so subscribers are more inclined to open your emails.
- Add a compelling call to action at the end.
- Optimize your newsletter so it looks good on mobile devices.
