What is Email Marketing?
Email marketing is a digital marketing practice involving communicating with customers, followers, or leads with emails. Typical email-based marketing campaigns involve email newsletters, promotional campaigns, event announcements, or company status updates. Email marketing on average, produces a higher ROI than most other digital marketing forms such as SEO or social media. What makes this type of campaign more successful than SEO and social media is that emails are a direct line of communication with your audience.
Why Email Marketing Works
With the employment of an email marketing campaign, you own the distribution of your message. When a new subscriber signs up for your newsletter, or to receive promotional information, you now have a direct line to that person’s inbox. As a result, this direct communication tool can be more effective than other marketing campaigns at engaging with your audience.
Email marketing also tends to show higher conversion rates. Consumers don’t engage on social media to be constantly advertised to. In fact, most consumers reported feeling annoyed when shown ads on their social media feeds according to a study by AdWeek. Promotional materials are more readily welcomed by consumers in their email inbox rather than on their newsfeed or TV.
How to Build an Email Campaign
Step one in any email campaign is to build your email subscriber list. The best way to get a large percentage of your email list is to optimize your “about” page for conversions. If someone is visiting your site’s “about” page, then they clearly already like your company enough to learn more about it. Adding an email subscribe form will ultimately increase your likelihood of a visitor signing up for your newsletter.
After you’ve built your email list, it’s time to build your email:
- Begin by making a clear subject line that grabs your readers attention, and gets them to open the email to see what content is inside. For example using the subject line “How I Gained 30% More Followers in 2 Days” is interesting because it’s teaching them how to do something. It offers value to your reader which encourages them to open the email and read it.
- Next, you’ll add your content. Adding compelling content at the beginning of your email will draw in your readers so they are more likely to continue reading through to the end of your email. After the hook, you’ll add either your resources or your sales pitch to the email copy. Make sure if you’re selling something it’s clear what it is, as well as what the promotion is.
- Next is your call to action (CTA). Your CTA shouldn’t be fancy, adding a button with some strong and to the point copy is all you really need to get your audience to start converting.
- Lastly is your postsend (PS). A PS is an under utilized tactic that can easily help your conversion rates. Typically a lot of readers will just skim your email but will see the PS and stop to read it. All your PS should include is a very short summary of your email as well as another CTA.
Email Marketing Softwares
Using an email marketing software or service can make sending newsletters a breeze. When picking an email software, the best option depends on the size of your list, your goals, and features you want in the email. MailChimp is an excellent tool because it allows for the most versatility, while also keeping set up very simple. They offer you the opportunity to drag and drop content or write in code snippets for design.
Another great email software is Constant Contact. Constant Contact is ideal for drag and drop design and ecommerce integration. The functionality is great for an ecommerce business but plenty of bloggers and nonprofits use them for content emails.
P.S.
If you are thinking about beginning your company’s email marketing campaign, check out one or both of these software options to make sending your email easier. Also be sure to include relevant and compelling content so your readers will stay subscribed to your email list.
-Written by Jonah Ericksen