Every professional who wishes to sell products online must understand how the digital marketplace works.
The entrepreneur, marketer, or small businessman who plans to expand his business while taking it to the next level must do more than simply understand how “things work”.
To be successful in today’s business environment, understanding the digital marketplace’s “dance” is the first step. The second would be to plan, strategize, and implement strategic actions that will slowly generate results and eventually momentum.
To be successful, you must work hard and smart, and you must take full advantage of the techniques that will offer you the best results.
That is exactly why you’ll need a well-though email marketing campaign for your business, no matter its size or niche. Read further to find out how to run an affluent email marketing campaign!
Why Would You Bother Starting an Email Marketing Campaign?
Lots of webmasters and businessmen fail to understand the importance of a well-established email marketing campaign, and this is the primary reason why they don’t even bother considering it.
Well, that’s a terrible mistake because thriving in today’s competitive marketplace requires smart work. Email marketing is not a complex concept – it is basic yet essential.
Here are the 3 main reasons for which email is the best distribution channel that’ll allow you to skyrocket your business results:
- Email is the best channel to sell products and develop stronger relationships with your customers. Around 91% of consumers are used to check their email at least one time each day.
- You have full control over your list. These are your contacts, and nobody can take them away. On social media, for example, your page/profile can be suspended or deleted.
- Email marketing earns & saves you money. It has been proven that email marketing can generate incredible ROI (return on investments) – up to 3800% if done right.
Therefore, there goes your question. The above reasons are just enough for you to understand that email is currently the most efficient technique for generating and improving sales.
Getting Started
First things first. In order to email your prospects, you need to ask for permission. There are two types of email marketing: intrusive email marketing & permission email marketing. Your email campaign is intrusive the moment you choose to send emails to persons who haven’t given you the permission to send them emails (those who haven’t opted in themselves).
To start a permission-based email marketing campaign, you will need two things:
- An opt-in form
- An email marketing autoresponder service
I’d like to mention one important thing: buying email lists from unknown vendors is not an effective email marketing technique. It will result in disappointments, poor results, and bans. Build your own list and “play the game” the right way.
Choose an Email Autoresponder Service
An email autoresponder is simply a digital tool/service that helps you develop everything you need to start with email marketing. Here are some of the most reliable autoresponders out there:
There are many other reliable services and if none of the mentioned autoresponders satisfies your needs, you should definitely do extra research and select the one that’s perfect for your needs.
Once you’re done reading this post, start studying each autoresponder one by one and choose one immediately.
How to Grow Your Email List
To grow your email list, you’ll need a strategy to make people subscribe to your exclusive email marketing campaign. Therefore, you’ll need to develop a lead magnet.
What is a Lead Magnet?
As Mark Cherry, Email Marketing Specialist at EssayWritingLand beautifully suggests,
“A lead magnet is a form of “bribe”. It is a great value proposition that you offer to your website visitors in exchange for their email information. When they insert their email address and opt-in, it means that they’ve given you the permission to send them further emails.”
So, once your website visitors subscribe to your email campaign and confirm their subscription, they’ll be allowed to access the “bribe” you’re offering. Here are some popular types of lead magnets that are currently effective and easy-to-develop:
- Whitepapers
- Case studies
- eBooks
- A spreadsheet with useful resources (aimed at each specific niche & audience)
- A free consultation, trial, sample, webinar, quiz, assessment, or coupon
Use your out-of-the-box thinking and figure out other ways to deliver value to your audience.
How Do You Craft an Effective Lead Magnet?
For your email marketing to generate significant results, you should ensure that you’re crafting your lead magnet as effectively as possible.
Measure the effectiveness
How do you know that your lead magnet is effective? Well, here are some key points to consider while crafting your form:
- Develop an attractive headline – it should be interesting, concise, and it should reflect the benefits that your prospects will get after clicking.
- Write the perfect description – not too short, not too long. Take advantage of bullet points to break up the text and attract more attention.
- Keep the form very simple – ideally, you should only ask for your prospect’s name and email address. Asking for too much early on will only damage your conversion rates.
- Make it visually stimulating – images speak a thousand words. Take advantage of meaningful pictures that will stimulate anyone to seek further.
- Create a compelling CTA button – your “Subscribe” button is extremely important. Choose a well-suited color, choose the proper font and size, and the proper positioning on the page.
Analyse the results
Secondly, you’ll need to analyze and measure the results you get. Use Google Analytics or other web analytics tools to get access to important statistics such as:
- The number of times your opt-in button has been clicked daily/weekly/monthly
- The number of prospects that abandon the opt-in daily/weekly/monthly
- The daily/weekly/monthly conversion rate of your email opt-in form.
- The ROI (return-on-investment)
Optimize the form placement
Where should you place your opt-in form? Again, this depends on your own website, goals, and strategy. However, there are several specific, high-converting places that may generate more opt-ins:
- Use a splash page
- Try using a floating bar
- Or use a welcome gate (pop-up)
- Place it in your site’s header
- Or place it in your site’s sidebar
- Try to put it in your site’s archive page
- Insert it in blog posts
- Add it to your “About Us” page
- Or place it on your “Resource” page
- Leverage an “exit-intent” popup
I’d recommend you use an exit-intent popup on every page of your website because this is probably the most non-intrusive way of attracting attention. Think about it – when a visitor wants to leave your website, he/she has already gone through some of your content/offers. Therefore, they’re highly to be interested in a “bonus” that is also free and easy-to-access.
List Segmentation – Basics & Strategies
Getting targeted traffic in your email list is the first phase, nurturing that traffic is the second. Therefore, you’ll need to segment your subscribers in order to personalize and improve their experience.
What is List Segmentation?
Simply put, you break your email subscribers into small & different groups that are based on established criteria.
What is the purpose?
Personalization. The more personalized your emails are the more value it will bring to each of your potential customers. When you segment your list and carefully establish which emails get sent to which customers, you are developing a complex (and automated) strategy that’ll serve you well in the long-term.
Once you “tag” your prospects into different groups, you can send different series of automated emails based on different conditions. For example, every time a subscriber turns into a customer, he will be moved into the “BUYER’S LIST” and he’ll start receiving automated emails that are relevant for 1st-time buyers. You can create hundreds of different rules of your own, based on your own business needs!
Here are some of the most effective ways to split your email list into various segments based on various criteria:
- Fresh subscribers – you can send every new subscriber a welcome email and then continue with the next emails.
- Interests – split your audience based on their interests and hobbies. E.g. people who want to invest vs people who want to learn
- Open rate – split your email list based on how many times your subscribers open emails. Your most loyal and active subscribers will open your emails daily. Reward them with some exclusive content or some prizes!
- Media Type Preferences – you can split your list based on what your subscribers want to consume – some prefer text while others prefer video and audio.
- Location – split subscribers based on their locations.
- Lead Magnet – if you use more lead magnets, you could split your list based on the lead magnet that has been used by the subscriber to get on the list.
Extra Tips
Before ending this post, I’d like to leave you with some useful tips that I believe you will find useful:
Know Your Audience
Always know your audience before writing email content, before strategizing your long-term automation, and before segmenting your list. Fully understand who you want to target & approach and focus only on that specific audience.
Be Relevant – Always
Relevancy is key. Email marketing is an exchange of value. You’re educating your audience and selling your products. Your prospects receive free education and, at one point, will purchase your products because they trust you as you’ve always been relevant.
Test, Measure, and Optimize Consistently
Always test, measure, and optimize your email campaigns. Use web analytics and email analytics (you’ll find them in every reputable email autoresponder) and identify patterns. See where your campaign goes wrong and where it succeeds. Optimize as you go!
Improve Your Content’s Quality
Only publish awesome content. If you can’t offer something new, don’t even consider developing that piece of content because it will not be useful. Look around – what are your competitors doing and offering? Can you offer more?
Takeaways
Email marketing is an art and a skill. Both of these concepts require initial knowledge, so it would be best if you’d start gathering the necessary basics before you get started. However, once you get going, you’ll be able to create an extremely unique email marketing campaign that you and your prospects can benefit from. Good luck!
Paula Hicks
