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| Email Marketing Guide |
From defining a strategy to growing a list to tracking outcomes, learn how to use email marketing best practices.
In 1978, the first marketing email was sent, resulting in $13 million in sales and launching what has since become one of the most widely utilized marketing channels. Email may not be as flashy as newer channels like texting and social media, but it is a smart approach to establish an owned audience that produces results.
Email isn't going away anytime soon. It's one of the few marketing mediums that allow us to form genuine connections with the people that keep our businesses going.
Spam isn't what email marketing is. It's also not a handwritten note from a long-lost friend. It's a hybrid. Your clients aren't willing to provide their information carelessly, and email marketing may be utilized to build both relationships and profits if done correctly.
You should utilize email to strengthen your relationship with your subscribers and leads by sending them relevant, useful information that will assist them in achieving their objectives.
That's right: email marketing isn't solely for you or your business. It all boils down to whom you're dealing with.
Your subscribers will not only read but also look forward to hearing from you if you follow this golden guideline.
Email should be your best marketing friend unless you have the (wo)manpower, free time, and capital to create a personal relationship with each of your prospects and customers personally.
So, how does email marketing work in practice?
How does email marketing work?
The technique of using email to target your audience and consumers is known as email marketing. It increases conversions and revenue by delivering important information to subscribers and customers to assist them to reach their objectives.
Let's take a look at when you should use email marketing, as well as some of the perks and statistics that back up why it's so important.
When to Use Email Marketing
Email marketing can be used in a variety of ways, with some of the most prevalent beings:
- Build relationships by engaging in personalized interactions.
- Boost brand awareness: Keep your firm and services at the forefront of your prospects' minds until they are ready to engage.
- Promote your content: Send relevant blog posts or useful materials to your prospects via email.
- Generate leads: By tempting subscribers to provide their personal information in exchange for a valuable asset, you can generate leads.
- Promote your goods: Promote your services and products.
- Nurture leads: Provide material that will assist your clients in achieving their objectives.
Email Marketing Benefits
- There are 3.8 billion email users on the planet, so if you're searching for a strategy to reach out to your consumers, email is the way to go.
- Email yields an average of $38 for every $1 spent, a 3,800 percent return on investment.
- Two-thirds of customers have purchased anything as a result of receiving an email marketing communication.
- Only 20% of prospects given directly to sales are qualified, which means they must be nurtured with email and outstanding content.
- Email is 40X more effective than Facebook and Twitter combined when it comes to customer acquisition.
- The fact that you own the channel is probably the most compelling reason to employ email marketing. There is no external entity that can influence how, when, or why you contact your subscribers, except compliance laws.
Email Marketing Stats by Industry
The standards for email marketing vary depending on your sector and the people you're trying to reach out to. Some email marketing trends for B2B, B2C, eCommerce, and real estate organizations are listed below.
Email Marketing Stats for B2B
- Action-triggered emails outperform nurture emails and drip marketing by three times.
- Email is the preferred mode of contact for 86 percent of professionals.
- 60 percent of marketers say email marketing has a positive return on investment.
- B2B emails have a 47 percent greater clickthrough rate than B2C emails.
- For 56 percent of brands, emojis in the subject line resulted in higher open rates.
Email Marketing Stats for B2C
- Because a brand was sending too many emails, 78 percent of consumers unsubscribed from lists.
- Over 90% of consumers check their emails on a daily basis.
- Email subscribers are 3X more likely than non-subscribers to share social content.
Email Marketing Stats for eCommerce
- At least once a month, 86 percent of consumers would want to get a promotional email from brands they subscribe to.
- 58 percent of corporate revenue comes from segmented emails.
Email Marketing Stats for Real Estate
- The bulk of real estate companies (53%) get their subscribers from their websites.
- Businesses that blog receives twice as much email traffic as those that do not.
- List segmentation is used by 40% of real estate firms.
Getting Started with Email Marketing
Let's break down a few important stages to get you started creating a solid email campaign that will please your clients before you become overwhelmed by the limitless possibilities of email marketing. These steps can be thought of as a blueprint for developing an effective email marketing plan.
Create an Email Marketing Strategy
Every day, over 120 emails are sent to each of your consumers. That implies that if you don't take the time to plan ahead, your emails will get lost in congested inboxes, or worse, end up in the spam bin.
You may learn how to create a strong email strategy and deliver emails that people want to read. All that is required is a strategy (one that can be broken down into a few key steps).
Consider the five steps below as a roadmap for your email marketing approach. In a moment, we'll get into more detail on a few of these.
1. Define Your Audience
A good email is one that is relevant. Start with your buyer profile, figure out what they want, then design your email campaign to meet their demands, just like you would with anything else in marketing.
2. Establish Your Goals
Gather some background information before deciding on your campaign goals. Examine the average email statistics in your industry and utilize them as a starting point for your objectives.
3. Create a Way for People to Sign Up
Are you looking for someone to email? An email list is a collection of people who have given you permission to send them relevant material (we'll cover how to establish your email list in the following section). You'll need numerous ways for prospects to opt-in to receive your emails in order to create that list.
If you just have a few people on your list, to begin with, don't get disheartened. It may take some time to construct. Meanwhile, treat each and every subscriber and lead as if they were gold, and your email list will naturally increase.
4. Choose an Email Campaign Type
It can be difficult to choose between several email marketing. Do you have a weekly newsletter that you send out? Do you think it's necessary to send out new product announcements? Which blog entries should you share?
Every marketer is plagued by these questions. The solution is a personal one. You can begin by studying the many sorts of email campaigns available, then choose which is most appropriate for your target demographic. Customers and prospects should be able to sign up for only the emails that are relevant to them by creating multiple lists for different types of communications.
5. Make a Schedule
Decide how often you'll contact your list, let your audience know what to anticipate upfront, and keep to a regular schedule to create trust and ensure that they don't forget about you.
6. Measure Your Results
This isn't surprising at all. Everything that we do as marketers are measured. Being thorough about each critical measure will enable you to make little modifications to your emails that will have a big impact. In a moment, we'll talk about the specific KPIs to track (or you can simply jump ahead).
We'll look at how to build your email list now that you've learned how to create an email marketing strategy.
How to Build Your Email List
Now comes the fun part: building an email list of interested prospects who are looking forward to hearing from you.
There are a lot of inventive ways to grow your email list (and buying emails isn't one of them). List development, from a tactical standpoint, consists of two important pieces that work together to increase your subscriber numbers: lead magnets and opt-in forms.
Here's how to begin creating and expanding your email list.
1. Use lead magnets.
Your lead magnet is exactly what it sounds like: it's something that entices individuals to join your email list by offering a free product in exchange for their email addresses. The offer can take numerous shapes, but it must be advantageous to your prospects and given away for free in exchange for an email address.
There's just one problem: people have gotten overly concerned with their personal data. You won't get an email address until you trade it for something useful.
Consider creating a lead magnet that is both relevant and valuable to your prospects.
You could make the following lead magnets:
- Ebook
- Whitepaper
- Infographic
- Report or Study
- Checklist
- Template
- Webinar or Course
- Tool
You can even repurpose your existing material to generate lead magnets if you're short on cash.
How to Make an Effective Lead Magnet
It's important to keep in mind that your lead magnet should be useful to your prospects. Here are some pointers to help you make a valuable asset for your future list.
Make your offer actionable and solution-oriented.
Provide useful knowledge that solves an issue and outlines a viable path to achieving the goal.
Make sure the asset is simple to use.
Lead magnets should be given electronically. Make it simple for your new lead to get and consume your content, whether it's a PDF, a webpage, a video, or another format.
Make your offer with the intention of including future content.
There's nothing more frustrating than signing up for a wonderful deal just to be let down by the content. If your offer isn't in line with the value you'll supply during your connection, you'll risk losing trust.
Use your lead magnet as a springboard to your paid solution.
The goal of your email list is to direct subscribers to a paid offer at some time. To demonstrate the value you bring as a firm, you offer free material, and those free offers should eventually lead to your product or service.
Make offers that are relevant to the buyer's journey at every level.
Every new lead will be at a different stage of the buyer's journey, and it will be up to you to determine which one they are. Create distinct opt-in offers for each stage of the buyer's journey to start segmenting your list from the start. The information a prospect consumes can reveal a lot about his or her mentality.
2. Create an enticing opt-in form.
Your opt-in form is where you collect information from prospects in order to add them to your mailing list. It's the link that connects your future leads to the fantastic asset you made specifically for them. Here are some pointers on how to make an appealing opt-in form:
Create a visually appealing and attention-getting header.
Your sign-up form should be branded, stand out from the rest of the page, and persuade users to fill it out. With the offer, you want to entice readers.
Make the copy pertinent to the deal.
It is not your intention to trick individuals into entering their information. Any information you give on your form should reflect the offer accurately.
Keep the form as simple as possible.
This could be one of your prospect's first contacts with you. Sending them a long-form with several fields will turn them off. Only request the most basic information: first name and email address are a good place to start.
Set up a double-confirmation opt-in form.
Customers like a verified opt-in (COI) email 2.7X more than a welcome email, according to a study on open rates.
Check to see if the flow is working.
Before you go live, walk yourself through the user experience. Check that the form works as it should, that the thank you page is active, and that your offer arrives as promised. This will be one of your new lead's first impressions, so make it a good one.
Next, let's go through some email marketing best practices for sending marketing emails that are widely recognized.
How to Send Marketing Emails
- Select a service for email marketing.
- Make use of email marketing recommendations.
- Email segmentation should be used.
- Make your email marketing campaigns more personalized.
- Using email marketing automation is a great way to save time and money.
- Make use of email template marketing.
If everything goes according to plan, you'll have a sizable list of subscribers and leads eager to hear from you. But, unless you want to end up in a spam bucket or, worse, a blocked list, you can't start emailing just yet.
Before you start emailing the valuable list that you worked so hard to build, there are a few things you should keep in mind.
1. Choose an email marketing service.
If you need any kind of help fine-tuning your email marketing efforts, an email marketing service (ESP) is a wonderful place to start.
The AWeber Email Marketing tool, for example, enables you to quickly produce, personalize, and optimize marketing emails that feel and look professional without the need of designers or IT. A number of features are available to assist you in creating the best email marketing campaigns and achieving all of your email marketing objectives.
You may also evaluate the effectiveness of your email marketing so that you can share the data that matters most to your company with your staff. What's the best part? The AWeber Email Marketing solution is Available For Free.
Consider the following characteristics that providers like AWeber give when selecting an email service provider:
- The platform for customer relationship management with segmentation capabilities
- Having a good relationship with Internet Service Providers
- As an email service provider, you have a good reputation (ESP)
- Forms, landing pages, and CTAs that are simple to create
- Automation
- Simple methods for adhering to email regulations
- Split-testing capability for your emails
- Analytics built-in
- Reports that can be downloaded
2. Use email marketing tips.
While you may not give much thought to the style or subject line of an email you send to a buddy, email marketing necessitates much more thought. Everything counts, from when you send your email to which devices it may be opened on.
Because the purpose of every email is to generate more leads, writing a marketing email is a more time-consuming procedure than writing other emails.
Let's take a look at what makes a good marketing email:
Copy: Copy in the body of your email should be consistent with your tone and focus on a single subject.
Photos: Select images that are device-agnostic, eye-catching, and relevant.
CTA: Your email's call-to-action should lead to a relevant offer and stand out from the rest.
Timing: According to a study that looked at the response rates of 20 million emails, the ideal day and hour to send your email is Tuesday at 11 a.m. ET.
Mobile responsiveness: 55% of emails are opened on mobile devices. As a result, your email should be optimized for this as well as all other devices.
Personalization: Write each email as if it were for a friend. Make your reader feel at ease by speaking to them in a familiar tone.
Subject Line: Use clear, actionable, compelling wording in the subject line that is individualized and connected with the email's body.
3. Implement email segmentation.
Segmentation is the process of breaking down a huge email list into subcategories based on the traits, interests, and preferences of your members.
After all, our subscribers are people, and we should treat them accordingly. That implies no mass mailings.
Above, we briefly discussed segmentation. The reason for repeating this issue is that if you don't, you risk sending the incorrect content to the wrong people and losing subscribers.
Why should you segment your email list?
Each person who subscribes to your emails is at a distinct stage of preparation to become a customer (which is the ultimate goal of all this).
You'll almost certainly lose subscribers if you give a discount code for your product to those who have no idea how to diagnose their problem. This is due to the fact that you are bypassing the portion when you establish trust and grow the relationship.
Every email you send should regard your subscribers as individuals with whom you wish to interact, not as a herd of leads to be herded into a one-size-fits-all box.
The more you divide your list, the more trust you'll gain from your leads, making it easier to convert them later.
How to Segment Email Lists
As the initial step in segmentation, create unique lead magnets and opt-in forms for each stage of the buyer's journey. Your contacts will be automatically divided into distinct lists as a result of this.
Furthermore, email marketing solutions allow you to segment your email list based on contact information and behavior, allowing you to send the appropriate emails to the appropriate people.
Here are some ideas for how to break up your to-do list:
- Geographical location
- Lifecycle stage
- Awareness, consideration, the decision stage
- Industry
- Previous engagement with your brand
- Language
- Job Title
In actuality, you have complete control over how your list is segmented. When sending emails to each segment, make sure to be as exclusive as possible.
4. Personalize your email marketing.
It will be much easier to send emails with personalized touches now that you know whom you're emailing and what's important to them.
Sure, you're talking to a hundred or more individuals at once, but your leads don't need to know.
Consider the following: When compared to other emails, personalized emails have a 26 percent higher open rate and a 14 percent higher click-through rate.
You've accumulated all of this one-of-a-kind information. Personalization tokens are supported by your email marketing program. Sending generic emails that don't make your leads feel special is no longer an option.
Here are a few suggestions for personalizing your emails:
- Include a field for the recipient's first name in your subject line and/or greeting.
- Include facts about a specific place wherever possible.
- Send content that is relevant to the stage in which your lead is in his or her lifecycle.
- Send emails only in response to a lead's most recent interaction with your business.
- Important and/or personal events in your life, such as regional holidays or birthdays, should be written about.
- Finish your correspondence with a real person's handwritten signature (not your company)
- Use an appropriate call-to-action to direct the reader to a useful offer.
5. Incorporate email marketing automation.
List segmentation is put to use through automation. You can send automated emails that are highly targeted once you've formed particular subgroups. This can be done in a couple of ways.
Autoresponders
An autoresponder, also known as a drip campaign, is a series of emails that are automatically sent out in response to a certain activity, such as when someone downloads your ebook.
To ensure that your emails are informative and engaging to your readers, you'll use the same criteria for writing them that we talked about earlier. You should pick how frequently you want to send emails, such as every few days, weeks, or even months.
Autoresponders are fantastic because you can set them and forget them. Each email you've added to the series will be sent to any user who is a subscriber to your autoresponder.
Workflows
Autoresponders are taken a step further with workflows. Workflows are similar to a flow tree with yes/no branches that perform activities based on the criteria you specify.
Workflows are made up of two essential elements: 1. The activity that qualifies a user for the workflow (enrollment criterion). 2. The goal, or the action that would remove the user from the workflow.
Workflow tools are clever enough to recognize when a user opens an email or downloads an offer, and they will initiate a series of tasks in response. That means it can send a series of emails or adjust a prospect's lifecycle stage based on what the user performs.
Here's an example of how you might build up a workflow:
Workflows are smarter than autoresponders in that they may adjust the course of your automatic series based on what your prospect finds valuable.
The workflow tool will recognize and adjust if a new subscriber receives a welcome email and the subsequent email is set up to send them an offer that they already found and downloaded on your site. In an autoresponder, no matter what activity a user takes, they will receive a specified sequence of emails at specific time intervals.
What is the significance of this? Your bottom line will suffer if you send the right email at the wrong moment. When companies send emails depending on lifecycle stages, they experience a 20% increase in income.
6. Use email marketing templates.
Email marketing templates, such as these from Aweber, are another excellent resource for email marketing.
Unless you're a designer and developer in addition to a talented marketer, templates will save you a lot of time because they eliminate the design, coding, and UX defining work from email creation.
One caveat: choose Email templates that have been proved to be effective when making your choices. The best templates come from the most recognized ESPs, which have compared them against thousands of other options. So, if you want to be safe, go with the pros.
While it comes to things like excellent work and a good reputation, there are a few email rules to keep in mind when writing emails and planning your marketing strategy.
Email Regulations
Consumers' desire to know how and why their information is used is reflected in email regulations. If there's one thing we're concerned about, it's meeting the needs of our customers—or potential customers.
1. CAN-SPAM Compliance
Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing (CAN-SPAM) is an acronym that stands for Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing (because sometimes the two go together).
In practice, it's a way of safeguarding your subscribers' right to get only the emails they've requested.
The law, which was passed in 2003, covers all commercial emails sent for business purposes.
Here are several techniques to guarantee that your emails comply with the CAN-SPAM Act:
- In every communication, include the name of your company and its address.
- Within your emails, include visible unsubscribe links.
- In the "From" and "Reply to" fields, use genuine email addresses.
- Create subject lines that clearly describe the email's content.
Please keep in mind that this isn't intended to be taken as legal advice. More legal information about the CAN-SPAM laws can be found on The FTC's website.
2. GDPR Compliance
"GDPR is completely in line with the inbound business model." - Brian Halligan, CEO of HubSpot
While some may consider the new email restrictions to be burdensome and unnecessary, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) really brings us closer to developing long-term and trusted connections with our clients.
Giving your customers the freedom to choose is the goal of GDPR. Your emails are chosen by them. They have chosen to be contacted by you. Your products are chosen by them. Inbound marketing is all about doing just that.
One thing to keep in mind about GDPR is that it only applies to firms that operate within the European Union and market to EU people. Noncompliance will result in hefty fines that aren't worth the risk, so read the GDPR requirements thoroughly.
Here's a quick rundown on how to comply with GDPR regulations:
- When requesting permission to store personal information, use plain and straightforward wording.
- Collect only the contact information that is required for and relevant to your business.
- Store contact information securely and only uses it for the purposes agreed upon.
- Only keep data for legitimate business reasons.
- On request, delete contact information.
- Make it simple for your contacts to unsubscribe or adjust their settings.
- Respond quickly to a contact's request for data access.
- Keep documents of your company's GDPR compliance.
Because these requirements will be taken seriously (as they should be), it's a good idea to have a GDPR strategy for your company before you begin sending emails.
3. Avoid Spam Filters
You spend a lot of time crafting the perfect email and following all of the rules, so the last thing you want is for it to land up in the spam folder.
You should stay away from the spam folder for the following reasons:
- It has a negative impact on your overall deliverability rates.
- All of your emails will almost certainly go unnoticed by your contacts.
- You won't be able to accurately gauge the efficacy of your email marketing.
- Your data will be biased as a result of this.
You can avoid being labeled a spammer if you do the following:
Getting whitelisted.
A whitelist is the polar opposite of a blacklist, and it consists of a list of approved senders who are permitted to enter the subscriber's inbox. The simplest approach to do this is to ask your new subscriber to save your email address in their address book. In your welcome email, include instructions for doing so.
Minding your copy.
Avoid spam trigger words such as "opt-in," "click below," and "order," which are easily identified and marked down by Internet Service Providers (ISPs).
Using a reliable email service provider.
Deliverability is influenced by the reputation of your email service provider, so stick with well-known companies.
Implementing a double opt-in.
Send a confirmation email to anyone who signs up for your email list. This assures that your new subscriber is truly interested in your emails and that they will be more engaged as a result.
Last but not least, you should track the results of your email marketing campaigns on a regular basis. When it comes to email marketing statistics, you have a lot of solutions to pick from.
Email Marketing Analysis
You'll be able to make smarter decisions that will favorably impact your business's bottom line, resonate with your subscribers, readers, and consumers, and justify your work to the rest of your company if you dive into your email marketing data.
Here are the most effective methods for evaluating the success of your email marketing initiatives.
1. A/B test your marketing emails.
Every email list isn't the same. Personalization is preferred by some audiences, while it is frowned upon by others. Bright, eye-catching CTA buttons will appeal to some audiences, while others will prefer a more discreet call to action.
Until you test the variables, you'll never know who makes up your email list. A/B testing is useful in this situation.
Split testing, often known as A/B testing, is a technique for determining which sort of email performs best with your audience by comparing the outcomes of email A with email B.
Here's how to do A/B tests on your emails step by step:
- Choose one variable at a time to test, such as the subject line, CTA, or photos.
- Make two different versions of the email: one with the variable and one without.
- Allow for the simultaneous sending of your emails for a set length of time.
- Analyze your findings and keep only the best version.
- Repeat the process with a different variable.
A/B testing is embedded into most email service providers' software, making it simple to compare email outcomes without having to do much manual work.
2. Set email marketing KPIs.
When measuring the efficacy of your email marketing strategy, there are four critical criteria to consider.
- The rate at which your emails arrive in the inboxes of your intended recipients is known as deliverability.
- The percentage of people who open your email once it arrives in their inbox is known as the open rate.
- The percentage of users who click on your CTAs is known as the clickthrough rate (CTR).
- Unsubscribes are the number of people who unsubscribe from your email list after receiving a message from you.
3. Adjust different email element to improve results.
Many things influence your KPIs, so it'll take some trial and error to figure out which adjustments to your emails will make the largest difference.
If you're not receiving the results you desire from your emails, consider adjusting these factors.
Deliverability
- When it comes to avoiding spam filters, make sure you're following best practices.
- To keep just engaged subscribers, remove inactive persons from your email list.
- Examine which emails bounced and eliminate those addresses from your mailing list.
Open Rate
- To get individuals to open your email, play around with the language in the subject line.
- To see what works best, change the time and day you send your email.
Clickthrough Rate (CTR)
- Examine your offer to make sure it's valuable to your segmented list.
- Rewrite your material to make sure the reader understands what you want them to do.
- Experiment with alternative CTAs, such as graphic vs. inline copy, bold vs. subtle.
Unsubscribes
- Consider whether this is a blessing in disguise, as uninterested parties are dropping off your list.
- Check to see if the email you sent is consistent with your brand.
- Make sure you haven't pulled a bait-and-switch by promising one thing and then delivering something very different.
- Before attempting to upsell, be sure your emails are giving value to your readers.
4. Use an email marketing report template.
If you can't report your data in an organized manner, it's useless.
An email marketing report is a spreadsheet where you can keep track of all of your outcomes in one place, allowing you to draw conclusions from your KPIs and take steps to improve them.
Here's how you should put your report together:
Metrics:
- Total number of emails sent
- Number of emails delivered
- Deliverability Rate
- Bounce Rate
- Open Rate
- Clickthrough Rate
- Unsubscribe Rate
Data:
- Subject line
- Length of email body
- Offer
- CTA (inline or graphic)
- List segment
Questions To Ask:
- Was your deliverability rate higher than it had been in the past?
- What was the difference between your CTR and your open rate?
- Were your unsubscribe rates constant across all of your emails?
- Is there a particular subject line that performed better than others?
- Is there a change in CTR depending on the length of the email?
- Is it possible that a different type of CTA would work better?
- Was the offer appropriate for the portion of the mailing list?
Begin Email Marketing
The most crucial thing to remember when writing a marketing email is to treat your subscribers like humans.
If you keep this golden rule in mind in every autoresponder, lead magnet, and subject line, you can achieve all of your email marketing goals.
When in doubt or in need of inspiration, look to some of the best email marketing examples available. You can also watch this HubSpot Academy video for some short extra tips:
Also, keep in mind that your subscribers want to hear from you and relate to you. Be a true resource, and they'll eagerly anticipate receiving an email from you, just as they would from a friend.
