If you’re looking for a way to skyrocket your business’ growth, email marketing is it.
Unlike other marketing channels, email has the advantage of being more direct and personal. If you are new to email marketing, however, you may be overwhelmed by all the email campaigns you see others executing so professionally.
Don’t worry, they probably started where you are now.
They most definitely started with the 4 email campaigns we’re going to be looking at in this article. But before we get to the 4 campaigns that will get you started with your email marketing (and sustain it too), let’s clear a couple of things of the table first.
What is an Email Marketing Campaign?
An email marketing campaign is a marketing strategy whereby you send a series of coordinated business email messages to a customer or prospect. These emails are sent over a period of time with each building up from the previous one.
The purpose of an email campaign is to get the recipient to take a specific action, from downloading a free report to making a purchase.
In order for the email marketing campaign to succeed, you will need to learn how to do email marketing like a pro. It’s not as hard as it may sound, that’s if you follow email marketing best practices (and use marketing email templates). Let’s quickly look at a few of them, shall we?
Email Marketing Tips Every Marketer Should Follow
Ready to start sending out killer email campaigns?
Here are a few tips to help you create emails that drive results.
Master the Subject Line
The subject line is the most important part of any email. That’s because it is the first part of your email that engages your readers. Get it wrong, and your recipient won’t open your email. Do it right, and you will enjoy high open rates.
In order to come up with email subject lines that drive engagement, your subject lines must relay a promise that you will fulfill in the body of your email.
Craft Content that Converts
After the subject line, the next important part of your email you need to get right is the copy. This is where you convey your message. However, your email must do more than pass on a message – it needs to elicit a specific action.
To craft email content that converts, you will need to understand your audience, have a solution to their problems, and word that solution in a way that they will do anything to get it. Well, almost anything.
Design a Call-to-action that Moves Subscribers to Take Action
As said, the purpose of an email campaign is to get your subscribers to take a specific action. In order to achieve that, you will have to include a call-to-action in your email. This is a phrase that moves your subscribers to act on your offer.
When it comes to CTAs, it is recommended that you use a maximum of 1 CTA per email. You may have it in different parts of your email, but it must be the same throughout your email.
Your call-to-action is the portal through which you lead your subscriber down your funnel.
The 4 Types of Email Campaigns to Get You Started with Your Marketing Strategy
Now that you know what makes for a great email let’s continue with our email marketing tips by looking at the email campaigns you need to master. These are the campaigns that will form the backbone of your email marketing.
1. Drip/Lifecycle Emails
When email marketing was still in its infancy, email newsletters were the main form of email marketing.
But they had (and still have) one major flaw.
Newsletters are sent en-masse. The disadvantage of that is that new subscribers only get the issues that are sent out after they sign up. They will most likely never get to see previous issues.
This is what drip email campaigns, also called lifecycle emails, seek to correct. An email drip campaign is a series of emails that are sent out automatically to your subscribers on a schedule.
A good example of an email drip campaign is a welcome email. After a subscriber signs up for an email newsletter or service, that triggers a series of emails to be sent out to that particular subscriber. The first email, according to email marketing best practices, should go out within the first 24 hours of the signup. After that, a series of emails will be sent out at intervals you would have predetermined.
Another great example of a drip (or lifecycle) email campaign is an email course. Upon signing up for your course, a series of lessons are sent out at intervals.
Drip campaigns have the advantage of allowing you to send a subscriber relevant and timely information – automatically. This is possible because the emails will already be prewritten. All you have to do is define the triggers that will lead to your email drip campaign being sent out.
So what’s so great about drip campaigns? Drip campaigns, because of being targeted, have been proven to increase click-through rates by 119% as compared to broadcast emails.
2. Lead Nurturing Emails
Although drip campaigns and lead nurturing campaigns are often confused and treated the same, they do have their differences.
The major difference is that drip campaigns are time-based whereas a lead nurture campaign is behavior based.
In simple words, lead nurturing emails are triggered by certain actions that a user takes.
With a lead nurture campaign, you use the data you would have gathered from your subscriber’s behavior to deliver timely and targeted messages. The messages serve one purpose – guiding your prospect through the buying process. Each email in a lead nurturing campaign should furnish the prospect with information (usually the benefits of your product or service) that will help them make a decision concerning the purchase.
The power of lead nurturing campaigns comes from the data you would have mined about your prospect. Remember, this campaign is directed by the behavior of your lead.
For example, if your prospect downloaded a whitepaper or visited a specific page on your website a couple of times, you can send out an email related to their behavior and interactions with your business or website. If they return again, it shows they are interested in what you have to offer, making them a hot lead. At this stage, you can send an email with an invitation to a free live demo with your salesperson.
Lead nurturing is a facet of marketing that you can’t keep up with manually – particularly in a growing business. This is why automation is a must. It improves your efficiency and affords you the ability to scale your efforts.
3. Onboarding Emails
Onboarding emails are an important part of your email marketing strategy. That’s particularly so if you are selling a technical tool or software. The purpose of onboarding emails, as the name suggests, is to familiarize your customer with your product and give them tips on how to make the most of it.
While it may be tempting to start upselling your customer seeing as they are highly interested in what you have to offer, it is important to slow things down and help them get started with their current purchase first. This will help you ensure that your customer gets the most out of your product or service, thus increasing the chances of them becoming a repeat customer.
The mistake that marketers make is that they are always in new lead mode. Once a customer purchases a product or service, they drop them like a hot potato and forget about them. That is bad for business.
According to research, it is 5 times more expensive to acquire a new lead than to retain a new customer. What that means for you and your marketing team is that customer retention should become an integral part of your marketing efforts. And one of the best ways to do that is with onboarding emails.
Onboarding emails like a 2 pronged fork. On the one hand, they help your customer get the best out of your offer while on the other hand, they keep you on top of your customer’s mind. It’s a win-win situation for both parties.
Unfortunately for most businesses, because they don’t invest time, effort, and resources into retaining their customers, they are quickly forgotten and end up losing revenue.
4. Cart Abandonment Emails
Cart abandonment. The 2 words every business person never wants to hear. Unfortunately, though, cart abandonment is a fact of the e-commerce life. That is especially true since research shows that cart abandonment rates are as high as 80% in some industries. Cart abandonment is said to cost businesses in the United States a whopping $18 billion annually.
All hope is not lost though, there is a way for you to recover your share of that $18 billion pie.
The answer lies in cart abandonment emails.
A cart abandonment email is simply an email sent to a customer to remind them that their cart went through part of the checkout process but never made it to the end. That is why it is sometimes called email remarketing. And while this is a simple reminder, in order for it to produce results, it has to be done well. Some cart abandonment email best practices include:
- Establishing trust with your customers. You can do this by highlighting a short testimonial in your email.
- Offer a discount. Discounts are a great incentive to get your prospect to complete their purchase.
- Highlight a single product. In the case of a customer abandoning a cart with multiple items, highlight the one with the higher value as it is most likely the one that brought them to your store in the first place.
Apart from those 3, you can also include an email in your cart abandonment email that asks your customer why they didn’t complete the checkout. A well-executed cart abandonment email campaign is a surefire way of getting customers back on board and completing their purchases.
Email Campaigns – Driving Engagement and Increasing Revenue
Email has been around for decades and is one of the oldest communication channels that marketers use to engage with their customers. And it’s not going anywhere anytime soon.
Sure there are other channels you can use such as social media, chatbots, push notifications and more. But email has one quality that they all lack – it is an open and more personal channel.
That is why, as a marketer, email campaigns have to be the core of your marketing strategy. These 4 email campaigns we have looked at are the backbone of many an email marketing strategy. Master and implement the types of campaigns that fit best with your company and you will definitely reap the rewards of greater engagement and increased revenue.
Are you already running a few email campaigns or are you about to start one?
Share with us in the comments below!
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