You are probably asking yourself What Email Marketing is And What’s Benefits are. There is a very simple answer to that. Communication through email is one of the most effective ways to reach your target audience. Emails create relationships, can be personalized, and, last but not least, they convert very well.
There are tons of different email marketing tools and other hidden treasures that you can use to be successful. Are you curious to know more about how you can use email marketing and which features email marketing offers? Then I think you should read along here.
Let’s start with a basic understanding of what Email marketing is
What is Email Marketing?
Email marketing is more than just the newsletters and mailing lists you have been on before with a government guarantee.
No, Email marketing is one of the most useful tools when it comes to encouraging customers, both new and old, to interact with your content.
Email marketing is, therefore, a golden opportunity to create engagement in your follower stream and thus build a strong base of customers and followers.
In addition, it is an enormously effective tool for managing and maintaining your relationships. Email marketing can, with the help of well-planned and executed content, both entertain and inform your Email subscribers.
This means that with Email marketing, you not only create awareness among your followers and conversions among your customers but also develop and build relationships. As long as it’s done the right way,
Is email marketing a finished chapter?
Businesses have many options for marketing channels, and social media steals a lot of the limelight. Therefore, it is easy to assume that email marketing is now a finished chapter, but you must not be fooled. That is far from the truth.
Email marketing is still very effective for sales, customer care, and knowledge sharing. The conversion rate is much higher on emails than on social media. But how can it be?
We are exposed to different messages when we move around on social media. They go to great lengths to gain our attention. Therefore, many messages also end up drowning on, e.g., Facebook.
Once you’ve got a potential customer to sign up for your newsletter Through a lead magnet, you’re well on your way. If that person opens your email, you have the customer’s undisputed attention. You don’t have to fight against other messages and senders.
The ROI for email marketing is very high (Return on Investment). This means you get your money back often when you use email as a marketing channel.
Statistics show that you get your money back no less than 42 times when you throw the towel on email marketing.
Make the right template.
Your email marketing template is your virtual letterhead and is indispensable in your email marketing. The template is one of the first things you need to design.
You largely decide how the newsletter should look, but it is a legal requirement that there is an unsubscribe link. Most people tend to throw it at the bottom of the newsletter.
You also decide which visual expression your email marketing template should have. Still, I would recommend that it leans heavily on the visual expressions you have on other platforms.
In addition, it is also recommended that your newsletters have the same visual expression from time to time. If there are big changes every time a newsletter is sent out, it can give your customers a cluttered impression of your company.
At the same time, your email marketing template is also a good opportunity to flash some things that set you apart from others. It could be, for example, that you have a good score on Trustpilot, or perhaps you have exceptional shipping options.
In your email marketing template, there must also be room for your contact information, and if you can be found on social media, there must also be a logo for each of the media you are active on.
CTA buttons are also insanely important as they are the ones that get your customers to convert. Last but not least, your template must also be made to look good. It must be beautiful and inviting to look at.
Remember the mobile phone.
A lot of people use their mobile phones to check emails. According to Hubspot, approx. 46% send their emails via the phone.
Therefore, it is not just a good idea to have a mobile-friendly design – it is very close to being a requirement. Suppose your newsletter is not mobile-optimized, approx. Half of your recipients could not read your mail properly, statistically, of course.
So how do you optimize for mobile? Fortunately, most email marketing platforms allow you to view a mobile version of your newsletter before it goes out.
Often you may also be allowed to design another version for mobile devices. Regardless, it is important that you test the email and see how it looks on your phone.
Segments, segments, segments
Regardless of the type of marketing you deal with, you must know your target audience before you even touch the keyboard.
That doesn’t mean you have to get to know everyone on your list personally. However, it would be best if you had an idea of who you are talking to.
There is a big difference in what people are interested in. For instance, Anna, who has a husband, children, and a horse, is most likely not interested in gaming equipment.
Therefore, it is also not so smart if you send her a newsletter stuffed with gamer equipment and gaming terms that she has no idea about. It also makes no sense for Anna to be sent a newsletter full of women’s clothing.
If you don’t segment your target audience, at worst, it can mean that your list starts to shrink. Your subscribers unsubscribe. But this is not the only reason you should start segmenting. A study done by Mailchimp back in 2017 showed that with segmented campaigns, there were:
- the opening rate is 14% higher
- the click rate is 100% higher
- bounces 4% lower
- unsubscribe 9% lower.
Automations are the cornerstone of your email marketing
Automations are the essence of your email setup, and if you haven’t already set some up, it’s just a matter of getting started. With email marketing automation, you can set up automated triggers and flow that hit your leads and customers at just the right time.
One of the most used automation in email marketing is the welcome email. It might seem silly to welcome your new sign-ups, but it is effective.
You capture your new customers and leads while they are on fire and want to hear from you. A welcome email is also your opportunity to show who you and your company are, your values, and what you offer.
If you’re a webshop owner, the abandoned cart is an email marketing automation you can’t avoid. You are aware of the annoying tendency where your visitors throw things and cases into the basket, but they slip away again – without going through with the purchase.
No later than one hour after the customer has left the full basket, an email is automatically sent to that person with a small reminder that they have forgotten their items in the basket.
You do the same again a few days later. Lost basket automation converts well! Especially if you send a small discount code or another goodie with it.
Another effective email marketing automation is win-back automation. It can be a win-back buyer, but it can also easily be a win-back visitor. You can lure your customers or visitors to your website with win-back automation.
For example, if Karen has not visited your website for 35 days, she will automatically receive an email that she is missing. Here you can also expose her to good news or offers.
Of course, you can be unlucky enough that your welcome email, lost basket email, or win-back email is sent at really bad times. It could be that your customer is sitting in the middle of dinner or perhaps in a meeting.
It is, therefore, a good idea to set up different flows. If the customer does not respond to the first reminder, a new one is automatically sent x number of days later.
The biggest factor in whether people open your email
When you use email marketing, your recipient must open your email. Otherwise, you might pack your entire email marketing strategy away again.
What makes people open your email? It can be said very briefly: your subject line! The first thing the receiver sees when opening an email is the subject line. Thus it must be placed prominently on the page.
I can easily understand that it can be difficult to invent the deep dish every time a newsletter has to be sent out. But it’s not particularly sexy to receive an email week after week where the subject line reads like this: “News and offers of the week.”
Instead, you have to think a little outside the box and make it almost irresistible for the recipient to open your email. Here are three tips on how you can get your recipient’s curiosity bubbling:
1. Sense of urgency
Give your recipient the feeling that he or she is missing out if he or she does not open your email here and now. The recipient often intends to open your email but thinks it can easily wait until later.
After that, your email will be forgotten. If you write subject lines like “Offer rain only today! Save up to 30%”, it arouses the recipient’s curiosity. At the same time, you have set a time frame which means that the recipient cannot wait until later to open your email.
2. Use humour
If there’s one thing that captures your recipient, it’s humour. Of course, the subject line should not be anything remotely offensive.
However, if you can use a funny turn of phrase or a short joke that hits the target audience, you should probably get the magic opening click.
3. Be a little mysterious
If you mix a little mystery into your subject line, you’re something close to home safe. We, humans, are incredibly curious, and if there is something that sounds too exciting to miss, we also open the email.
An example might be: “Happy birthday – We have a surprise for you” or “Three things you don’t know about email marketing.”
Rules for email marketing
As with all other marketing, there are quite a few email marketing rules that must be followed if you want to avoid a rap on the fingers and a fine from the consumer ombudsman.
The most important, however, is the consent rule. The consent rule means that your customers must give you and your company permission to contact them via email marketing before you can do so.
It sounds very simple, but there are quite a few requirements concerning collecting consent. So when is consent valid? According to the Consumer Ombudsman, consent is valid when:
- There is no doubt for the consumer that he has signed up for the newsletter. It must be clearly stated and not be hidden between competitions or conditional upon a purchase.
- The consumer actively agrees to receive your newsletter. This means that the person concerned has to cross off the “yes please” field himself. It must not be checked in advance.
- It is clear which company is the sender. If you collect consent on behalf of another company, this must also be clearly stated.
- It is specified that the consumer receives emails.
- The consumer does not doubt that he can withdraw his consent at any time.
There are a host of other email marketing rules and legal requirements that can be worth getting a handle on. If you would like to have even more control over the rules, you should read our blog post on the law behind email marketing.
When should you send out newsletters?
If the absolutely perfect time existed, I am convinced that everyone would send out their newsletters exactly that time.
So to avoid disappointing you, I want to start by clarifying this. There is no definitive answer to when it is best to send out newsletters.
On the other hand, several large email marketing platforms have conducted studies based on millions of emails. I can give you a little advice on when you should send out your newsletters in the week. Studies based on open rates show that Tuesday is the best time to send out emails. (Source: Optinmonster)
The ideal time of day to send out your newsletter is between 9 to 12 in the morning, according to research based on open rates. (Source: Hubspot)
Which email marketing platform should you choose?
Email marketing is, as I said, a super effective and important tool in your marketing. That is why it is essential that you find a platform that works with you and not against you.
There are many types of email marketing platforms in cyberspace, which can be quite a jungle to navigate.
Here you get an overview of two popular email marketing platforms, which can help you get some air under your wings in your email marketing efforts.
Active Campaign
Active Campaign is a platform for email marketing that is deeply established in the thoughts of most business owners, and I can understand that.
With Active Campaign, you can have a CRM system and an email platform in the same system.
With the many different features that Active Campaign offers, you can more or less put your automation on autopilot.
It can be anything from slightly more basic flows, such as a welcome flow, to more complex flows triggered by certain customer behaviour.
+ Easy segmentation
+ Effective tracking
+ Good automation functions
+ High ease of use
MailChimp
A marketing automation software called Mailchimp was created for companies that utilize email to connect with their target audiences.
With this all-in-one application, you can nurture and automate your whole marketing campaign, manage your mailing lists, and make your own email templates. A solution like Mailchimp may be necessary for businesses trying to take advantage of email marketing to ensure that their campaigns execute smoothly.
Quantity vs. quality
A great many marketers mistakenly believe that the more they throw into the heads of their customers and consumers, the more sales it creates.
It couldn’t be more wrong. We have certainly all signed up for a newsletter from a company that sends emails almost every single day.
I even have several of them lying around in my inbox, which can be very annoying. It also means cleaning up when I can get my act together!
If you spam your customers and consumers with emails several times a week, it can most likely mean that more people start to unsubscribe from your newsletters.
As a marketer or email marketing specialist, you want to avoid this. When you want to send many emails as quickly as possible, this is typically at the expense of quality.
Quality is super important when sending out newsletters. That is, whether you send it out once a week or once a month.
It can be an art in itself to create a delicious newsletter, but the essential thing is that you know your target group and use your knowledge about it actively when you sit down and create your newsletter.
Apple iOS 15
Open rates have long been an important and useful tool when measuring email marketing efforts. Unfortunately, what all email marketing specialists have long feared is happening.
With Apple’s iOS 15 update, there will be changes in the way we track consumer behaviour through emails. But what exactly are some changes? And what will they mean for your email marketing efforts?
In brief, the adjustments will be significant, but thankfully, there are some viable options, and ultimately, all that will need to alter is a few routines.
When you send out newsletters, a small tracking pixel is included, which makes sure to tell the servers when an email is opened.
That data is currently available to you, but with Apple’s new update, being able to track your email marketing’s open rate is over.
The pixel will be blocked if the newsletter is opened with an Apple provider, such as Apple’s mail app. You will no longer be able to track how often your emails are opened, by whom, and by how many.
Apple accounts for just under half of the market share of all email users. Which means that your opening rate can potentially be halved.
This will mean the following for the users who are under Apple Mail Privacy Protection:
• You won’t be able to see when an email has been opened
• The receiver’s gadget won’t be identifiable anymore.
I can easily understand that you can be a little depressed by the above. Maybe you even start to doubt a little about the point of email marketing.
Finally, you mustn’t! It is still an important source of good results and high ROI. All you have to do is measure your success on other parameters.
This could be, for example, by measuring your conversions, which is the most important thing. At the same time, you can also measure your click-through rate.
Email marketing must be part of your overall content marketing strategy
By now, you probably no longer doubt that email marketing is a powerful tool, but that doesn’t mean it can stand alone.
Email marketing should be part of your overall content marketing strategy. Therefore, it is also important that you have all channels in mind when you produce content.
Additionally, it is crucial that the goal of your overall strategy serves as the foundation for your email marketing approach. What are your KPIs? What would you like to achieve? And it is also important that you clarify how it is to be done.
FAQ – Frequently Asked Questions
What is email marketing?
Email marketing is a marketing discipline based on communication and marketing via emails, including campaign emails and automation ones.
What is the best email marketing software?
Email marketing is a marketing discipline based on communication and marketing via emails, including campaign emails and automation ones. The best marketing software is Active Campaign.
How do I develop a plan for email marketing?
Start from where you are today and set goals for the three primary verticals; campaigns, automation, and lead generation.
How many campaign emails should I send per month?
You must send promotional emails when relevant. Most of our customers send between 2 and 3 campaigns per week.
Is (insert flow/automation) even legal?
We often find that the legality of. For example, a lost basket flow or the like is questioned. They are perfectly legal as long as you have collected consent for this in advance.
