Effective marketing depends on knowing your current and potential customers. This means understanding and speaking to their specific interests and needs.
In the pre-internet days, companies would compile mailing lists from a variety of sources. The information gleaned from these sources (surveys, subscription lists, etc.) would hopefully indicate a person’s potential interest in a product or service. After making a list, they’d create and send out content to the people on those lists. Hopefully, this content would connect with a segment of these people, who would eventually become customers.That’s basically how marketing campaigns have always worked.
Thanks to the internet, however, you can now create and execute campaigns with much greater success.
You can get more detailed and accurate information on consumers and create more sophisticated marketing content targeted to a variety of audiences.
Email is the modern-day (arguably more effective) mail service. But it’s important to understand there are strategies and email dos and don’ts that can contribute to the success or failure of your email marketing and sales campaigns. Sending an email to a recipient isn’t quite the same as sending a mailer to someone’s address. There are rules. As long as you follow the rules and best practices, you’re on the right track to getting your content in front of potential customers.
Learn more in-depth information about email marketing below, or you can go ahead and contact our team to get more information on our email marketing services and receive an audit of your current marketing efforts to see how you measure up with current email marketing trends.
Including email marketing as part of your company’s marketing plans has numerous benefits.
EMAIL MARKETING IS MORE COST-EFFECTIVE THAN DIRECT MAIL MARKETING
With direct mail marketing, you must factor in the cost of producing and sending out your ads. You also need to consider the time it takes to deliver those physical materials.
Email marketing minimizes costs and hassles of getting your message out. Not only that, it gives you a bigger bang for your buck—according to the Direct Marketing Association, businesses that used email marketing saw an average of 4,300% return on investment.
For more on the effectiveness of email marketing, check out our blog, "The Email Marketing Equation: Low Cost + Results = High ROI."
EMAIL MARKETING CAN BE INTEGRATED WITH YOUR OVERALL MARKETING STRATEGY
Specifically, our email marketing team can integrate seamlessly with your company’s other online efforts. We very specifically choose to utilize HubSpot software to create all-encompassing web marketing strategies using the Inbound Marketing Methodology. Email marketing is part of this big picture strategy and is just one tactic we utilize. Although we choose to work with clients primarily within HubSpot because of its unique capabilities, we can work with other email marketing software to produce similar results.
REPORTING FEATURES AVAILABLE
Our email marketing services make it possible to track the activity of recipients with outstanding accuracy. You can see information such as:
- How many people opened your emails
- Which links in your emails were clicked
- Purchases made after opening an email
- Which email addresses bounced and why your messages weren’t delivered to the email inboxes of your recipients (We actually wrote a whole blog on this subject of email deliverability)
INCREASE EFFECTIVENESS OF OVERALL MARKETING STRATEGIES
We can help you develop an email marketing strategy that dovetails with an inbound marketing campaign. We can work with you to strengthen ties between your customers and your business.
We can help you make plans for sending out content like:
- Welcome emails to new customers
- Coupons and info on discounts based on past purchases
- Blogs or newsletters with info that will interest particular recipients
- Invitations for special events
- And so much more
EMAIL MARKETING BEATS SOCIAL MEDIA IN LEAD GENERATION
Email marketing and social media may serve different purposes in your overall marketing strategy, but when it comes to lead generation, one comes out on top: Email marketing.
1,000 email subscribers are not the same as 1,000 followers on social media.
To your subscribers, an email is the equivalent of a package on a doorstep. It’s more personal, and only one person is going to get their hands on it. There is an increase in value this way.
A social media post in your followers' feeds is the equivalent of someone handing out flyers on the street, where it could be just more noise if someone isn’t paying close enough attention. If you can get their attention, it may do its job, but the competition for attention is much higher, and it will likely take more tries and effort to reach your audience. This is why social media is better for brand awareness than it is for lead generation.
Email subscribers want to hear from you (that’s why they subscribed in the first place) and have given you permission to reach out to them. Make the most of that!
Read more on the differences you’ll see in lead generation through email marketing here.
If you landed on this page in search of email marketing help, you’re in luck. We understand that not every company may be in a position to pour money into their email marketing efforts at this time, so we’re happy to be a resource to at least help you get started in the right direction with the basics.
A perfect place to start is to download our Step by Step Guide to Email Marketing. It will help guide you in strategizing and creating successful email marketing campaigns for yourself or your company.
We also highly recommend that you read up on the CAN-SPAM Act to avoid major email marketing mistakes.
Your emails are going to real people doing real things in the real world. Treat them as such!
An effective email campaign offers valuable content to potential customers, nurtures leads through the buyer's journey and can serve as reliable automated internal communication.
There are three specific types of emails to include in your campaign, and each serves an important role:
MARKETING EMAILS
An effective marketing email lets your subscribers know that you have something valuable to share with them. This can include a call-to-action (CTA) that points to a blog post, gated content (requires them to fill out a form to get the content), or to inform them of an upcoming event. It is purely informative.
Segmenting your email lists helps you to be selective when it comes to marketing emails. In our blog, 10 Email Marketing List Segments for Successful Sends, we cover ten valuable segments:
- Geography
- Age
- Stage in the Buyer's Journey
- Buyer Persona
- Organization Type
- Industry
- Job Function
- Education Level
- Past Purchases
- Interests in Products or Topics
If someone subscribed to updates about your events, send them information about upcoming events. If they have expressed interest in something you offer by visiting a page on your website, you’ll want to send them content on the same topic.
NOTIFICATION EMAILS
The purpose of notification emails is pretty straight-forward. The trick to these in an inbound marketing campaign is to automate them.
Say someone registers for your event; you probably want someone in your company to know and plan accordingly. This is where a notification email comes in. With HubSpot software, you can set up workflows that send you automated internal notification emails when a user performs an action. There’s no need to go back and continuously check lists to see if someone registered. A notification is already waiting in your inbox.
You can also automate notification emails that go to those who just registered for your event. As soon as a user signs up, an automated confirmation email can be sent out to thank them for registering and can later send them a reminder email.
To have an effective inbound marketing campaign, you must create automated notification emails. The great thing is: You only have to write them once. Stick them in a workflow to send at the desired time, and you’re golden. You can kiss repetitive email creation goodbye.
NURTURING EMAILS
These are perhaps some of the most important emails in an inbound email campaign. You never want to let an opportunity go to waste, but rather capitalize on what you already know about your leads.
If someone downloaded content from you about a specific subject, and you have reason to believe that they will find another offer valuable, send it to them. This can be done through a series of emails (also known as a drip campaign) that guide them to other content and campaigns. The goal is to keep your company on a lead's radar by continually offering them content that takes them further along the buyer’s journey.
