E-mail Marketing is one of the most powerful marketing tools we have in our toolbox and yet, it’s under-utilized or most commonly, executed incorrectly.
I’m passionate about e-mail marketing because it’s the number one driver of revenue for our marketing agency. E-mail marketing works, when done correctly!
(Pardon me while I brag, but while attending Marketing United, a marketing conference in Nashville, TN, our agency was spotlighted for the strength of our e-mail marketing campaigns).
This blog post is going to take you on a deep dive on how to make your e-mail marketing campaigns come alive. This isn’t going to be your typical 750-word post… we’re going deep with multiple posts to compliment this blog so you get all the information you need in one place.
Here.we.go.
The Stats on E-mail Marketing
Unsure about the effectiveness of e-mail marketing? No problemo! Don’t take our word for it! I’ve got some data for you to consider:
Why Your E-mail Marketing Is Under Performing
Before I share how to correctly execute on great e-mail, let me tell you why your e-mail marketing feels like a waste of your time.
THE QUALITY OF YOUR E-MAIL DATABASE IS… BAD
How you’re procuring your audience is all wrong. If you’re inserting e-mail addresses into your database without people willingly signing up for it, then guess what… your e-mail is going to the trash almost as quickly as it got to their inbox. If your technique is pulling e-mail addresses from your customer’s waivers, your open rates and conversion rates will be mediocre at best.
YOU’RE TRYING TO SELL STUFF
As Gary Vaynerchuk would say, you’re right hooking way too much. In other words, you’re trying to be an operational sales person (selling for your own personal gain) as opposed to being a relational sales person (selling to actually help the end-user). In other words, you’re acting like Mike below:
YOUR LAYOUT IS POOR
Every e-mail marketing platform offers templates for you to easily create your campaigns. Don’t use them (unless you’ve got some strong graphic designer skills) because they look amateur. You’re competing against a ton of e-mail out there, so your e-mail needs to be eye-catching and professional as you have micro-seconds to capture someone’s attention as their thumb scrolling through their messages.
YOUR E-MAIL IS IMPERSONAL
We’re a marketing agency and I find the word, ‘marketing’ to be a little dirty. Replace the word marketing with the word, ‘connection.’ Figure out how to better connect with people by making your messaging more personal as well as more valuable. Can your messaging help make someone’s life better or help your audience make more money, or help to solve pain points? It’s about providing value! (This blog will be in our e-mail marketing, I can assure you!)
YOU’RE NOT DESIGNING FOR MOBILE
You read the statistics about how much we’re on our mobile devices, so why aren’t you designing for mobile? When creating e-mail, make sure it looks beautiful on mobile.
Okay, let’s get to what you came here for:
The ELEMENTS OF GREAT E-MAIL
When putting together a great e-mail marketing campaign, the following elements must be present:
AUDIENCE
The quality of your database versus the quantity is what’s most important. You can have the most beautiful and well-designed e-mails in the world, but if the quality of your database is poor, then you’re wasting your time. Click here to read how to build your database more effectively.
SUBJECT LINE
Your subject line is the first impression your audience will have of your e-mail and you need to get this right! Our friends at Convince and Convert say that 33% of e-mail recipients open e-mail based on the subject line alone. 69% of e-mail recipients report e-mail spam based solely on the subject line!
THE WELCOME SERIES
If you’re going to get serious about your e-mail marketing, then you have to build a welcome series. Marketing Sherpa reports that the average open rate for a welcome series is an incredible 50%. In the world of e-mail marketing data, this is HUGE.
STYLE
Having a well-designed template for your e-mail marketing campaign will pay off in spades. I’m a big fan of having my template feel tightly connected to my branding and my website.
Not only should the graphics be strong, but I like to include coded buttons consistent with the highest trafficked buttons used on my website.
COPY
Great copy wins the day! Poor grammar, spelling errors and plain boring language will put you in the land of e-mail mediocrity. As written, above the objective is to ‘connect’ not sell your audience. One of the best examples of great copy I’ve recently come across is a confirmation e-mail I received from Native – the makers of a natural deodorant. The copy within their e-mail both connected with me and had me smiling (thus loving their brand that much more).
In summary, when the elements of e-mail marketing are done correctly, the results can be astounding. We have a client that sold $75,000+ in gift certificates in 2017 due to a successful e-mail marketing campaign. Our own business has grown via the use of content marketing (like this blog post) and distributing valued info to our followers.
Don’t underestimate the power of e-mail marketing for your business!
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