DO NOT send out emails before reading this post!!
As you may know Email Marketing is a very important tool when it comes to building a strong community for your business. Keeping in contact with your leads and existing clients, asking for feedback, showing that you care, getting “personal”with your clients. But If your idea of Email Marketing centers on crafting better subject lines and tweaking the design, you’re doing it wrong. It’s just that simple.
When it comes to it, Email Marketing is all about getting the basics right.
To make it simple. If you have not yet build a community with a strong marketing foundation with cycles that catch your leads and customers at the right moment, you are not yet at the stage in which you need to worry about the small details.
Of course subject lines, content and design are important. But they are certainly not the deciding factor that will push your recipient to take that split-second decision to either open your email or send it to the trash.
There’s so much more to think about than to make your email look “fancy”.
- Do your recipients understand why they are receiving this email?
- Have you done a good job guiding them through your buying process?
- Is this email the last touch point of a comprehensive, educational Marketing strategy?
- Are you taking into account the stage in the buyer’s journey in which your recipient is at the moment?
If you want to build trust with your customers, visitors, users, readers and leads, this are the things your should be worrying about when creating your Email Marketing Strategy. This is what will have your emails open. Not colorful presentations and subject lines.
Lifecycle email is a massive opportunity. It can help you increase engagement, sell more products, onboard new users, bring back inactive ones and, most importantly, earn trust.
Email Marketing is a powerful tool, and many times it can be a bit overwhelming. But, as you learn to recognize the stages and needs of your recipients you will notice that your community actually wants them. Instead of begging for attention, your message will arrive just as your recipient is wondering what istep to take next. A timely, contextual lifecycle email will become a welcomed presence in their inbox.
As you may already know, email subscribers get dozens, even hundreds of other emails. They are constantly being asked to start a new trial, download an E-Book, join a webinar, listen to a podcast. There’s an overwhelming amount of activity in their Inbox.
Cycling your email campaigns will require you to craft different types of emails for different types of recipients depending on the stage they are situated at. For example, you don’t want to send a “Onboarding” type of email to a customer that has been through your buyer journey already and require instead a “Behavioral” type of email.
Now, How do you send the right email to the right person? There is a number of steps to master how to determine what you need to send and to whom you need to send it to, but once you get use to used to using and merging different tools together your Email Marketing Strategy will be stronger than ever.
· DETERMINE YOUR AUDIENCE
Remember Inbound Marketing is all about content and context working together and getting to your audience at the right time. Using Buyer Personas will give you a clear definition of who your audience is and help you determine what type of content your audience needs based on the stage they are on the buyer journey.
· SEGMENT YOUR CONTACT DATABASE
Remember, the click through rate is 62% higher on targeted emails than non segmented lists. There are many ways to segment your contact lists, Where do they live? What is their age? What role do they play at a company?. This are some of the questions that will help you effectively segment your contact list.
· SEND THE RIGHT CONTENT AT THE RIGHT TIME
Based yourself on the buyer’s journey and decide on the type of content your recipient needs. Someone on the Awareness stage will appreciate videos, Blog Posts, E-books, Free tools and Guides for example. And someone on the Decision stage will like to receive Free trials, Product Demos, Consultations, Estimates and Quotes.
· NURTURE YOUR LEADS INTO CUSTOMERS
You CAN’T force your recipients to buy from you, but you also cannot afford to loose them. Would you be interested in reading this email? Offer your recipients information they want to hear about. Make them “Personal” take the time to personalize your email depending on your contact and consider sending said email with a persona name and not only your company’s name.
Later on we will show you what a a great Email looks like and what are the four basic steps to achieve it! Now go practice your lead segmentation come back to us to know more about how to create the perfect Email to send to your newly segmented lists.
