Are you currently utilising email as a part of your visibility and marketing strategy?

If not, it’s time to make it a priority — you could be leaving thousands in revenue on the table if you aren’t tapping into email marketing. As a digital marketing consultant, a huge part of my job is helping clients create and execute winning email marketing campaigns. But of course, the success of your emails lies within the strength of your strategy. If you’re brand new to email, don’t worry. This blog post will cover everything you need to know about how to get started and enter the new year with a winning email strategy that will sell your products or services for you!

What is email marketing?

Simply put, email marketing is the process of using email to send promotional messages to your subscribers. The goal is to typically generate new leads or sales. While email marketing is still considered one of the best, most effective forms of marketing, it also gets a bad rap for being spammy and annoying — which is why it’s so essential to nail your strategy if you want to make sales via email.

Why use email marketing?

Email marketing allows you to reach a large number of people while building credibility (through free value and information) as well as boosting sales through promotional content. There’s also the fact that the email marketing ROI tends to be much higher than social if you do it correctly.

Choosing your email marketing platform
Before you can start reaping the benefits of your email marketing strategy, you need to choose an email marketing platform that will allow you to create, send, track, and measure your marketing emails and campaigns. There are tons of options out there, but here at OJC we’re partial to Klayvio and Mailchimp, two mega-powerful email marketing platforms that will get the job done. You can learn more about which of the two is right for you here.

Identify your target audience
You may already have an idea of the demographic you plan to target with your emails, but if you don’t, it’s important to have a solid handle on who your target audience is before you start creating campaigns. To find your target email audience, think about the following:

Demographic info

• Age
• Gender
• Location
• Occupation
• Income
• Habits, personal traits, values, and attitudes

Other questions to ask yourself

• Who are your current customers?
• Who are your competition’s customers?
• Who will benefit most from your product/services?

Knowing who you are targeting with your email marketing messages makes it much easier to tailor your messages and content to appeal to them — hopefully leading to increased customer loyalty, new clients, or more sales.

Start building your list
Once you have an idea of who you want to reach with your emails, you need to actually get them on your email list — otherwise you won’t have anybody to send your emails to! The easiest way to build your list full of ideal customers is by attracting them, building trust, and making it worth their while. Here’s how you can do this:

• Give them something for free. Everybody loves a good freebie, which is why a free offer in exchange for an email address is a great way to build your list. Freebie ideas include eBooks, checklists, templates, downloadable wallpapers, discounts, etc.
  

• Remind them to opt-in. Use your social media and website to continuously remind your audience to join your email list. Keep an opt-in form on your website (either as a static header/footer or a pop-up box) and put the link to your form in your Instagram bio. When you post on Stories or to your feed, make the call-to-action to sign up for your email list. The more your audience is exposed to the idea of joining, the more likely it is that they will eventually sign up.

Create emails that your customer base will love
The behind-the-scenes of your email strategy is officially set up once you have your platform secured, your target audience identified, and a solid number of people on your email list. Your next step is to start creating the emails you know your customers will love. Here’s what to consider when planning out your email content:

• What kind of emails do you want to send and how frequently? (i.e. weekly/monthly newsletters, promotional emails, value-based content)
  
• Are there important times of the year that utilising an email campaign would be good for business? (i.e. major sales, holiday deals, special events/announcements, launch of a new product/service)
  

Once you have the planning down, here are my best tips for putting together emails that will stand out and actually get clicked on:

• A strong subject line is everything. If your subject line doesn’t make your customer interested, they won’t click on your email. The best way to make sure your subject line stands out is to use action words, address the reader directly when possible (see if your email provider allows for subject line personalisation), keep it succinct, and make it different from other email subject lines they’re likely to see in their inbox that day.
  

• Personalise your emails. Personalised copy always performs better than generic copy. Dropping your customer’s name into emails when you’re able will grab their attention from the get-go.
  
• Make your emails easy to skim. Nowadays our attention spans are shorter than ever, which is why skimmable content is a must. If your audience opens an email and sees a giant wall of text, it can feel intimidating and unapproachable. Utilise elements like smart design, bullet points, and to-the-point language to ensure your emails don’t get skipped over.

Measure your success
The only way to make sure your emails are doing what they are supposed to is to look at the hard data behind them. These are the metrics you should be checking regularly to stay on top of your email performance:

• Open Rate
  The percentage of email recipients who open your email. This metric shows you if your subject lines are getting your subscriber interested enough to actually click on and hopefully read your email.
• Clickthrough Rate
  The percentage of email recipients who clicked on one or more links in your email. This is an important metric because it gives you insight into how many people on your list are interested in and engaging with your content.
  

• Conversion Rate
  The percentage of email recipients who clicked on a link in your email and completed a desired action — like purchasing an offer, filling out a form, really anything. If your goal is to generate leads and new purchases, this is the most valuable metric to track.
  
  
• Unsubscribe Rate
  The percentage of email recipients who unsubscribed after receiving an email from you. Knowing this information can help you fine-tune your email content strategy as well as the frequency of your emails to better reach your target audience.

The bottom line about email
If you’re a business owner who is looking to expand your visibility, build trust & credibility with your community, and generate more leads and/or sales, email marketing should be an essential part of your overall marketing strategy.

While it can seem overwhelming to dive in at first, I recommend starting small and building on your email presence from there. You don’t need to have a perfectly set-up email funnel with dozens of sequences and campaigns to still see a massive ROI on email.

And of course, if you’re still not feeling 100% confident in how to plan and execute your winning email strategy, that’s what I’m here for. Learn more about booking a strategy call with me or join the waitlist for my consulting services if you’re interested in having an expert digital marketer on your side as you navigate the email marketing landscape!

The post How to Craft a Winning Email Marketing Strategy appeared first on Business + Marketing Consultant | Olivia Jenkins.