Looking to get email marketing started? You’ve come to the right place!
Now, more than ever, email marketing is so effective in today’s digital world. According to Hubspot, 99% of consumers check their email every day and it is by far the preferred way to receive updates from brands.
At Bold x Collective, we always tell our clients that they need an email marketing strategy. It can help your business in so many ways, such as being able to create personalized content for your consumer, collecting feedback and surveys, improving sales, communicating with your target audience, generating website traffic, increasing leads, and of course, being able to own your business’ very own contact list.
Starting email marketing from scratch can be a stressful task, but our team is here to help you get started.
1. Choose Your Email Marketing Service Provider
It is a necessity to have an email marketing service provider, if you are serious about starting the channel. This way, you can set up automations and send daily newsletters to your contacts and subscribers.
You can also benefit from their email templates and analytical tools that can help you grow. Some of our favourite email marketing providers include Mailchimp, Constant Contact, Privy and Klaviyo.
2. Gather Contacts for Your Email Marketing List
The best way to do this is through your website or a landing page. What we typically recommend is installing an email pop-up and adding an embed form to your website. And of course, when you do this, you need some sort of incentive. These days, unless you are a very well-known brand, asking people to “sign up for the VIP list” is not going to work.
There are many ways to give your customers an incentive to sign up to your email marketing list. Firstly, if you are an e-commerce brand, you can offer a percentage off your customers first order, whether it is 10% off or 15% off. If they like your products during their website visit, chances are that they will sign up.
Next, if you are a service-based business, it’s best to provide some sort of free information. This can be a downloadable PDF with an informative guide that one can only view after adding in their email address. For example, if you are a real estate agent, you can offer a guide on how to prepare for selling a brand-new home. Or, if you’re a marketing agency, you can provide your audience with the top 5 marketing trends to focus on. The options are endless!
One big thing we will always remind our clients of is to NEVER purchase an email list. Email marketing is all about building and nurturing relationships. What’s the point of having an email list with individuals that never showed interest in your brand in the first place? We always recommend to never waste time or energy on these unknown lists.
3. Set Up a Welcome Email
After you’ve set up your pop-up, embed form, and/or landing page, it’s best to create an automation, which is your welcome email.
When someone signs up, it’s always nice to follow up, as this is your first impression. Typically, if someone subscribes to your email list with the incentive we discussed above, chances are that they will be expecting it, whether it is their free PDF guide or their coupon code.
With your welcome email, you want to start with greeting your new subscriber politely, followed by the incentive, and closing with a few lines about your brand, along with a call-to-action. In addition to this, it’s important to make sure your email is on-brand, with the right colours and logo.
4. Design Your Email Template
If you’re not a designer, not to worry! The majority of email marketing providers have several templates to choose from, and they have simple drag-and-drop features.
When creating your template, it’s important to make sure you have a clean, eye-catching layout that gets your message across fast. People usually scroll quickly on their phones, so you want to make sure your design is mobile-friendly and enticing.
And as mentioned, it is important to keep your email on brand. Use your company’s logos and colors, so your viewers can get a good idea of what your brand looks like, and can get used to seeing it every time an email comes in. Consistency is key!
5. Learn How to Write Persuasive Messages
This tends to be a daunting task for many, but it can be an easy task, with practice! When writing an email, you need to make sure it is fun, not too long and straight to the point.
I recommend starting with a headline and what your offering, followed by how this product or service will help your reader, and ending with a call-to-action. This method can help you write good email newsletters.
6. Subject Lines Are Important!
Your email subject line is just as important as the content in the email, if not more. The subject line is the first thing that your viewer will see, not the email itself. With that being said, you want a fun, short and intriguing line that is going to grab your audiences’ attention and make them click the email to read more.
The last thing you want is to work so hard on an email, only to realize that your audience didn’t bother to open it. We always recommend drawing attention with a compelling question, including a deadline for urgency or announcing something very exciting.
7. Always Test Your Email Before You Send It
Proofreading is great, but we always suggest doing a test send to yourself before sending it out to your list. You never know where there can be errors, whether it is images alignment or certain text may look odd on mobile.
There is no “back” button with emails, so take the extra minute to do a test email!
8. Figure out the best time to send your email
When it comes to sending your email, you want to make sure it is at the perfect time. You don’t want to send it late at night when your mailing list may be sleeping, and you don’t want to send it on a Monday morning, where members of your list may be busy starting their day at work.
The best way to figure out ideal timings to send your newsletter is by doing various tests and sending newsletters at different times. From there, you will start to learn what times are best. In addition to this, Hubspot does a great job explaining how to figure out the best times to send an email campaign.
9. Track Your Results
Last but not least, watch the numbers! Every good email marketing tool gives you the option to see the open rate, click-through rate, unsubscribe rates and more. With these numbers, it’s important to learn how you can improve over time.
Reading through your email reports after sending newsletters will always help you and give you valuable information. Check specific links that were clicked, so you can better understand which content was most popular.