Pipsqueak Media

For many businesses email marketing is an important part of their strategy for promoting goods and services and engaging existing customers. It’s a method of communication that has been around for a long time, but mastering this communication channel is a powerful way of targeting and creating interest in whatever you’re offering.

So what is Email Marketing, and how can you use it to your advantage?

What is Email Marketing?

Email Marketing is a powerful digital marketing channel that enables businesses to establish meaningful direct communications with customers.

Often used as part of an organisation’s wider marketing strategy to support an effective sales funnel, Email Marketing serves a variety of purposes. As well as raising awareness of goods and services, it plays a pivotal role in lead generation, brand awareness, customer relations, individual relations, survey participation and re-engaging past customers (Re-marketing).

Therefore, considering the RACE framework, Email marketing is a powerful communications channel for driving action, conversion and engagement. However, following the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations 2003 (PECR) organisations can only send marketing emails to customers who have consented. Therefore, Email Marketing cannot be used to reach new customers.

How does Email marketing work?

Email Marketing is a digital communications channel that delivers messages direct to a customer on your mailing list. And if organised and implemented effectively it can generate significant return on investment. So if you’re considering implementing an Email Marketing campaign, here are 9 steps that need to be followed.

1. Identify your audience

If you want to increase the likelihood of running a successful Email Marketing campaign you need to understand your audience first. You should start with identifying their age, gender, location, occupation and any interests that they may have. Also, consider what pain points are affecting your customers and how your business can resolve or alleviate them.

Using the data you can create customer personas, helping you to identify and picture your ideal customer. You could even choose to identify what types of customers you don’t want to help narrow your focus further.

2. Set your goals

Setting your goals from the onset is a vital step for ensuring that an Email Marketing campaign has a clear and definable purpose. By setting goals it is easier to ensure that every email sent is focused and intent-driven. It also enables the defining of what Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are important for success. Common examples of Email Marketing goals are:

• Welcoming new customers or subscribers
• Increasing website traffic
• Promoting goods and services
• Encouraging online or in-person sales
• Retargeting existing customers
• Chasing up customers who abandoned their basket
• Sharing important or interesting news with your community

Furthermore, to create effective objectives, use SMART (Specific, Measurable, Actionable, Realistic, Time-based) objectives.

3. Select an Email Marketing platform

There are many Email Marketing platforms that you can choose to manage your campaign from. However, you must understand your business and industry requirements so that you can choose a suitable platform. An Email Marketing platform is meant to streamline the process of dispersing emails whilst allowing you to the assess effectiveness of your campaigns. Ideally, you want a platform that’s user-friendly, straight forward and offers a variety of tracking features all in one place.

Some of the most popular platforms to choose from include:

• MailChimp
• HubSpot
• Adobe Campaigns
• Zoho
• Salesforce

4. Choose your campaign type

By establishing your campaign goals early on you can determine what specific type of call-to-action (CTA) your email campaign should use to motivate customers. In turn, this will enable you to determine what type of Email Marketing campaign your business needs to implement.

Knowing what type of campaign you intend to use is pivotal for ensuring that your emails are focused and purposeful. You should also coordinate targeted emails that will engage customers over time. Just some of the types of email campaigns you can use include:

• Newsletter
• Promotional
• Announcement
• Reengagement (or Re-marketing)
• Content/Blog updates
• Autoresponders (e.g. receipts and welcome emails)

5. Develop an email list

Next, you need to build an email list that you can target. This is an aspect of Email Marketing that can take time and will likely be a continuous goal. Remember, legislation now requires that customers give consent to receiving email marketing messages. You should avoid buying email lists for this reason and because they may not be the appropriate demographics for your offering.

To grow your email marketing list organically there are some actions you can take:

• Use existing email lists from your company
• Use CRM software
• Request emails to enable to subscriber/customer only content (e.g. paywalls)
• Request an email at the point of sale (POS)
• On-site email collection fields (e.g. on blogs or chatbots)

6. Segment your list

To make managing your email list easier and coordinate emails for specific purposes, consider diving your list into segments. Think about any potential differences that may exist between your customers or the types of needs which may warrant customised responses. To help get you started, here are some of the most common segments that businesses may utilise:

• Geographic
• Demographic
• Past/Existing customers
• Buying behaviours
• Interest expressive
• Email engagement (Re-marketing)

When deciding on your segments make sure that they are relevant to your email marketing goals Although trying a one size fits all approach might be tempting, differentiating your customers and tailoring your messaging can enhance campaign effectiveness.

7. Create your email

When writing your emails remember that what you write should provoke some sort of desired response or action from the recipient (e.g. click a CTA). It should also be relevant and express a point of intrigue from the start. For example, subject lines shouldn’t be too long but still be engaging and convey the value that the email provides. This will help to ensure a higher open rate.

Although approaches used vary according to the type of email being written, remember to always focus on the customer. Rather than talking about company credentials or product features, discuss customer points and consider how you can position your business as the solution. Could this even be tackled in story form?

If writing a sales-orientated email, consider what are the barriers to them accepting your offering. How can you eliminate these barriers so that the customer has less reason to refuse and is more likely to realise the benefits offered?

8. Test its effectiveness

Although Email Marketing campaigns can be relatively inexpensive compared to other forms of marketing, it’s still prudent to test email effectiveness. One of the easiest and simplest ways to your email marketing messaging is A/B testing (e.g. Multivariate Testing).

A/B test involves creating different versions of an email where you may change certain aspects, features or factors to determine which draft is the most effective. You could try using each version for a simultaneous trial run and use the resulting data to review which one got a higher open rate. For example, you try out different subject lines or CTAs.

9. Track and measure results

Measuring your results is important for being able to determine whether your email marketing campaign performed well and fulfilled the desired objectives. By setting out your goals and objectives early on you can identify what metrics you need to track throughout the campaign. Depending on your objectives, some of the most common metrics to measure are:

• Unique open rates – How many unique customers are opening your emails?

• Click-Through-Rate – How many people are clicking your CTAs?

• Bounce Rate – How often are your emails rejected by email servers? A high bounce rate may indicate an unproductive email list.

• Unsubscribe Rate – How many people have unsubscribed from your email list? A high unsubscribe rate may indicate that your emails are spammy, irrelevant or being sent too often.

Need help with your Email Marketing?

Email Marketing is a powerful way of communicating with your customers to promote your goods and services or to keep them aware of your brand. However, making sure that your emails are connecting and being opened by your customers can be challenging. So if you’re looking to run an email marketing campaign but need some help and support, give Pipsqueak Media a shout.