Email marketing is the ultimate art of dropping knowledge (and a bit of charm) right into your audience’s inbox. It’s the digital way to connect with your customers, win potential leads, and stay on your contacts’ radar – all through the magic of email.
NO, email marketing is not dead.
Think of it as a well-curated playlist of messages. You’ve got the transactional emails that ensure purchases and celebrations are automated, the newsletters that keep everyone in the loop, those eye-catching promos that make you want to click ‘buy,’ and the campaigns orchestrated by some tech-savvy wizards using CRM tricks.
The magic of a well-thought-out email strategy means businesses can achieve serious revenue goals. Whether you’re all about stacking up those sales and raking in cash, or you’re on a mission to keep your customers coming back for more, email marketing is the dominating marketing channel when done efficiently.
And hey, here’s the kicker, it’s like getting that high-end champagne taste on a lemonade budget. Email marketing is the secret powerhouse that works like a charm for both business-to-business champs and business-to-consumer dynamics.
With 89% of marketers claiming email marketing as their main lead-generation channel, it’s shocking this niche area of marketing doesn’t garner more attention.
More than half of consumer audiences claim they enjoy receiving thoughtful emails from brands.
The email marketing channel maintains a track record for a reason. For every dollar you invest, you’re looking at a massive $38 ROI on average.
Not getting the email marketing vibe yet?
- Emails are 6x more likely to get clicks than tweets…..ahem, X’s? Posts?
- 90% of emails hit the inbox, while only 2% of your Facebook stuff reaches your fans.
- Email snags new customers 40x better than Facebook or Twitter (X) and scores 174% more conversions.
- More folks use email than social media on average.
How to Get Started with Email Marketing
Once you have a website in place, you’ll want to see the capabilities for integrating that website with an email service provider (ESP). This might include well-known providers like GetResponse, Klaviyo, MailChimp, ConvertKit, HubSpot, etc.
If operating as an e-commerce platform, it’s essential to consider integrations between the shop and the ESP and the ESP capabilities. For a robust email marketing strategy in e-commerce, you’ll want the following flows (automations) in place:
- Welcome New Subscribers
- Post Purchase
- Browse Abandoned
- Abandoned Cart
- Abandoned Checkout
- Sunset
- Winback
For service-based businesses without online shopping, consider launching:
- Welcome New Subscribers
- Post Purchase
- Sunset
- Winback
Detailed Description of Email Automation Sequences
Welcome New Subscribers
- Greet newcomers with open arms. Show your brand’s personality, set expectations, and kick-start engagement. First impressions matter, and this automation paves the way for solid connections. Take your strategy a step further by launching an “Anniversary” welcome email thanking them for sticking around for 12 months. This should prompt the subscriber to enter a separate segment where you can deepen your relationship and tailor content to your audience veterans.
Post-Purchase
- Nurture relationships post-sale. Express gratitude, offer helpful info, and encourage reviews. It reinforces a positive experience, builds loyalty, and opens doors for future transactions. The first post-purchase email should have an opportunity to highlight additional relevant products. Emails 2 and 3 should be opportunities for your customer to leave a review or share with a friend.
Browse Abandoned
- Send tailored reminders to folks who checked out your offerings but didn’t buy. It’s like a friendly tap on the shoulder to keep them interested. Understand this automation is more invasive, so don’t be too salesy here. Remind them of the products they viewed and invite them to learn more about your brand.
Abandoned Cart
- Rescue mode activated. Remind customers about their abandoned carts, and maybe even sweeten the deal with a discount offer. This automation recovers potentially lost sales and brings hesitant shoppers back to the cart to complete their purchase at a more convenient time. Discounts are often reserved until email 2 or 3 in the series for those who need a more significant nudge.
Abandoned Checkout
- Tackle those halfway-hesitations. When someone starts the checkout process but bails, this automation steps in. It addresses concerns, rekindles interest, and guides them toward finalizing the purchase. Emails 2 and 3 may have a special offer designed to move the needle on the purchase.
Sunset
- Bid a fond farewell, but leave the door ajar. Automate goodbyes for those who’ve lost interest or unsubscribed. It’s a classy exit that keeps options open for future re-engagement. Sunset flows are a helpful automation sequence that assists in cleaning your list effortlessly. Once a contact has entered the sunset flow, the profile should be tagged and suppressed to maintain high open rates and engagement based on their activity.
Winback
- Spark excitement with inactive customers with enticing offers, tailored content, and reasons to return. This automation breathes life into dormant relationships and reactivates repeat business. Typically this is sent to a contact if they have not re-purchased in a significant amount of time. This timing will depend on the product’s lifecycle and how often a customer is expected to make a purchase.
What is an Email Marketing Strategy
An email marketing strategy is a carefully designed plan to cultivate and enhance consumer relationships through targeted email communications. It involves segmenting audiences based on interests, behaviors, and demographics, then tailoring content to provide value and resonate with recipients.
Think about your email list as a group of “friends” for your company. What kind of friend do you want to be to these individuals? How do you want your friends to engage with your company? This is a simple way to understand the dynamic at play within email marketing and helps humanize your perspective of the strategy being used.
The strategy should foster trust, engagement, and loyalty by delivering relevant information, promotions, and personalized messages to the humans on the other side of the inbox. Your audience must feel valued, heard, and connected to your brand, ultimately leading to longer-lasting and more meaningful relationships that benefit both your customers and the business.
With email marketing, there are two types of emails being sent. Transactional emails are sent automatically based on the action of an online visitor. Whether they view a product, subscribe to the newsletter, or make a purchase – there’s an email ready to nudge them along in their journey.
Newsletters are custom one-off campaigns sent to the list or segments of a list. Typically this is for updating your audience on new company happenings, events, product drops, and more. The real juice is in the campaigns! In each of the campaigns being sent to your list, you’ll want to plan to have a way for them to respond to you every time. This can be in the format of a quick embedded survey like Typeform that can automatically update the profiles with key information.
How to Develop an Email Marketing Strategy
Developing an email marketing strategy is a fancy way to say that we are conducting the planning phase of the entire strategy. This includes any research needed to address what the focus of the strategy should be. Fortunately for email marketing, once an in-depth strategy is in place, it typically only requires maintenance and optimization.
To develop an efficient plan, it’s crucial to know which aspects of your audience you want to focus on. This includes which demographics you’ll want to capture, psychographics (interests, hobbies, etc.), and sending cadences.
In this planning stage, you should plan out a rough list of what you want to capture. These will be the platforms or pillars of your email marketing strategy. Here is an example list:
- Location (geographic)
- Gender
- Age
- Occupation
- Hobbies
- Interests
Using this example list, we can then create the bridge that will become the organization of our strategy. What information or resources do you need to gather the details above? Which software will allow us to capture and integrate this information into the ESP database?
How to Organize an Email Marketing Strategy
Typically, when organizing a strategy, knowing your sending cadence is essential. In contrast to paid advertising, email marketing can only gather data each time a campaign is sent. This is different from other channels that can gather data almost daily.
We recommend planning a 12-month calendar for campaigns, A/B testing (advanced strategy), and data collection. From this 12-month calendar, it is organized from a high-level overview, and makes weekly planning for data collection simpler.
In every campaign sent, there should be a form or short 2-3 answer survey that automatically updates the user’s profile automatically (Typeform). This data will then inform how you should approach conversations or email designs to resonate with those characteristics specifically.
Watch the Video Explanation: Email Marketing In-Depth Strategy
A/B Testing for Email Marketing
With a robust machine built custom tailored for your audience, you’ll have the potential to unlock massive growth for your brand. We have worked with clients who generate 40% – 50% of their quarterly business revenue from email alone.
A/B testing and flow optimization should be planned year-round to ensure the performance is competitive and brings your business results.
You should plan to A/B test emails for a period of at least four to eight weeks for accurate data and monitoring. This helps prevent skewed data from sales, holidays, and economic shifts.
An example of a 12-month A/B testing schedule to find your email list sweet spot is this:
Month 1: A/B Test Sending Times
Month 2: A/B Test Time of Day
Month 3: A/B Test Subject Lines
Month 4: A/B Test Preview text
Month 5: A/B Test Design elements
Month 6: A/B Test Copy elements
*repeat this cycle every year to ensure you have the most optimized data for your audience
Crucial Data Collection for Email Marketing
No email marketing strategy is complete without identifying the data needed from each campaign. Email marketing is about two things only – relationships with the consumer and data.
Important information from your audience includes demographics, psychographics, and preferences for your company. Ideally, you will want to gather this information one campaign at a time, incrementally to ensure a non-invasive approach to data collecting.
Conclusion
While there is no way to address the complexity of advanced email marketing strategy adequately, this article showcased key insights for getting started. Email marketing can skyrocket revenue and deepen consumer relationships when done correctly and with purposeful intention.
The best way to build a strong foundation is to establish critical automations, identify data collection interests, and organize a schedule for A/B testing year-round.
Email marketing is alive and waiting!
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