Email marketing is the primary marketing communication channel when measured by ROI, reach, cost, etc., and gap continues to expand. Don’t get left behind.
Before email marketing was commonplace, marketers used distributed advertisements, flyers, coupons, and other promotions to grow their audience and reach potential customers. Fundamentally every lead generation strategy, from events to discounts was simply considered “marketing”.
When the popularity of the Internet climbed into the dotcom era, marketers have adapted these practices for electronic purposes, and email marketing has become “the next big thing.” It has also led to a greater distinction between the different avenues of marketing, such as business advertising, social media marketing, and search engine optimization.
Like all of us, the internet has gotten smarter and better with age 😉, allowing marketers to send out aesthetically pleasing HTML emails en masse. Through innovative software, contacts and their behaviors can be tracked and segmented, dramatically increasing the effectiveness of a well executed email marketing strategy.
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Interesting fact about email marketing: 294 billion emails are sent every day, with an expected increase to 347 billion daily emails in 2022.
What is email marketing?
Email marketing is the strategy of sending email marketing content (such as blogs, videos, and webinars) to a specified audience, upon which 81% of small and medium enterprises like their main acquisition channel.
Audience and content will vary depending on the context, but the ultimate email marketing guideline remains the same:
- Send emails to your non-client audience this will interest them enough to turn them into engaged prospects.
- Send tactical messages to prospects that help their journey through the pipeline and help them convert into customers.
- Send resources to clients to keep them happy, engaged and informed.
Consider that, with the push of a button, an email marketer with a healthy audience can get their message across to tens of thousands of people at once, every time.
Ben Goldstein,
Head of Content and Communications at Nutshell
How are marketing emails different from commercial emails?
Marketing email and business email are similar and therefore easy to confuse. They are both sent using similar tools, mapped to a larger sequence or campaign, and can even serve similar purposes, like regain lost leads.
A sales email, however, is designed to give the impression of a one-on-one message between a seller and the recipient.
While they can be sent in bulk and it could be a single automated email in a much larger sequence, the main objective of a sales email is to establish a relationship with the recipient.
There are many creative ways that this can be done, and sales emails take many different forms. It’s not always “Click here to buy now; In fact, this is hardly ever the case.
Some smart ways used by sellers sales emails to establish a report:
- Contact a prospect to talk about something they’ve said, posted, or posted
- Invite the recipient to a webinar
- Share a relevant blog post or video
- Follow-up after a meeting
- Ask the prospect’s opinion on the competitor
While these are far from selling points, they serve to build individual relationships or understand the needs of the prospect for the sake of qualification or disqualification.
See also: The Complete Guide to Finding Prospects
Marketing emails are more diverse. The official sender can go from CEO, editor, event coordinator, etc., but they represent a spread of the brand itself.
Marketing emails can also map to various tactical objectiveslike attracting attendees to an event, driving traffic to a blog, promoting a content download, etc. At the risk of oversimplifying, these initiatives generally date back to lead generation at the end of the day.
The difference between sales emails and marketing emails: Sales emails represent one-to-one interactions between a seller and the recipient and are used to build relationships, while marketing emails represent a broadcast of anyone speaking on behalf of the brand itself and can serve various tactics. purposes.
The end goal of email marketing is to create conversations with real human beings.
Different types of email marketing
Email marketing for non-customers
Do not “blow up” this “audience”. Your non-customers are hanging on to a thread, so to speak, and it’s safe to assume that you are one of the many companies in their inbox trying to grab their attention.
Email marketers need to prove to non-customers that their product is worth their interest, and it cannot be done by disturbing them.
There should be a lot of thinking about how to turn non-customers into prospects, and it will vary from person to person, which is why market segmentation is extremely important here: different demographics have different needs, different habits, and should be addressed with emails that speak to them specifically.
In general, demonstrating value to your non-customers is a great way to get them down the marketing funnel, eventually getting them to consider buying your product or service.
Good content for non-clients should be personalized and made to measure to their needs. For example, if it’s an ecommerce business, a actionable guide on how to optimize websites for lead generation might put you on their list of businesses to watch.
It’s all about attraction here, rather than trying to attract them. As an email marketer, you can rest assured that if you do a good job of representing the value of your business in a non-invasive way, you will consistently gain conversions from non-customers to leads.
Email marketing for active prospects
Active leads are under a microscope because sales and marketing teams work together to guide them through the sales pipeline.
It’s likely that active prospects communicate with salespeople in your business regularly, spending one-on-one time with people who can answer their questions, which means a lot of your content could be redundant. even boring.
It’s important to strategize with your growth team to determine what types of marketing emails are acceptable to send to active prospects. For example, newsletters, webinar announcements, and new product features are still relevant, but CTAs to book a demo are not.
Once your team has determined a solid list of content to offer to active prospects, set up an automated drip campaign to keep their engagement high so that you don’t step on your sales reps’ toes.
Email Marketing for Existing Customers
Email marketing to your current customers is all about keeping them informed, engaged, and, ultimately, happy.
With a good CRM, prospects can automatically switch from one drip sequence to another based on their stage in the pipeline. In this case, your current customers should be segmented accordingly so that they receive content that thrills them about your products and services.
A good automated email campaign will distribute newsletters, product news, tutorials, etc., to current customers. More importantly, however, current customers should never get content from the lead pipeline, with CTAs like “book a demo.” It’s not only confusing, but also unprofessional.
Above everything else, your marketing emails to customers should constantly remind them that they are valued.
The anatomy of good email marketing
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As they say, a few high-quality emails have more impact than a barrage of bland ones. When writing for an audience, it’s impossible to overstate how important it is to spend time getting the right details.
While a few more compelling features can result in even a 2% increase in conversions, it will make a huge difference in the final metrics when multiplied against the general audience.
Most award-winning marketing emails have the same things in common, and they all adhere to roughly the same anatomy.
Subject line
The subject line of an email is its hook, one tap to grab the recipient’s attention enough to earn a click.
Good email subject lines are dynamic, because no one line guarantees high open rates across industries. Writing a good subject line takes serious thought and depends on many factors.
Keep your subject line short. Most email clients only display the first 33 to 43 characters on mobile devices.
A few things to keep in mind when writing a strong subject line:
- What is the demographics or market segment who will receive this email?
- At what stage in the pipeline are the recipients of this email?
- What information can I use to find an echo with this audience?
And while there is no one-size-fits-all solution, there are pointers and best practices that make email subject lines more clickable, along with risks that will make subject lines worse.
Subject line tips that work
Use a tasteful emoji, as long as it’s not overdone:
- Steroid Data Analysis Reports 💪
- 🎃 Cheating or treating just got a lot easier
Including recipient’s name:
- Are you trying to start a business, Ben?
- Rebekka, are you looking for a job?
Subject lines in case of sentence:
- The worst software we’ve ever seen
- 5 Ways Nutshell Outperforms CRM at Comparable Prices
Keep the tone casual:
- Wait, are there people who don’t hate their ISP?
- We are seriously improving the functionality of our products
Be specific:
- Our software has much better reviews than HubSpot
- Nutshell’s email marketing features will blow your mind
Subject line errors to avoid:
Exaggerate emojis:
- 🎇✨🎆🎊 Discover our new 👊😝 product 👊😝 demo 🎇✨🎆🎊
- 🎸🎸🎸🎸🎸🎸 The 2020 list of sales rockstars
Long subject lines cut in recipient inboxes:
- 15 Exciting Achievements On How To Improve Our Businesses That We Found From Watching Two and a Half… (Read more)
Anything remotely that looks like spam:
- FREE OFFER (Click here) you won our sweepstakes (Buy now!)
- Free member rewards with our limited time offer
Too formal tones:
- Dear Sir / Madam, we introduce you to our esteemed COO in our famous webinar series
Providing no context:
- Really great stuff here
- E-mail CRM in brief for Ron Swanson 05/12/2020
Goal
Every email marketing has a purpose and is meant to accomplish a specific thing. Sometimes your call to action is just a recently posted blog post. Other times it’s more complicated, like trying to encourage your audience to sign up for a demo.
Whatever the purpose, it must be laser focused. That means absolutely no sending emails that just blow up a bunch of different, unrelated calls to action, or none of your users will feel spoken to, and none of them will convert.
Note: some newsletters, under very specific conditions, are exceptions and may have mixed calls to action, such as those promoting upcoming events in the coming months.
Determining the purpose of an email is something that should be done well before writing. After all, marketing emails all serve their own tactical purpose, and must go directly back to the company’s overall marketing strategy.
Legitimate purposes for sending marketing emails:
- Promote a blog post
- Encourage users to register for a webinar
- Announcing a product feature
Illegitimate reasons for sending marketing emails:
- Re-engage old prospects
- Reminding the public that the business exists
- Including many CTAs in the hope that one will interest the recipient
There is a two-step hands-on brainstorming exercise for determining the purpose of a message you want to send.
The first step: Ask yourself what stage of the pipeline the current audience segment occupies. Knowing where they’re coming from, where they are now, and where you want them to end up is a great way to compose an email.
Second step: Ask yourself what messages, content, guarantees, information, and more, can move your audience up the pipeline.
From there, it’s easier to figure out a way to introduce content that will have the desired effect. Remember that all marketing emails must have a targeted and tactical purpose, otherwise they will not produce any results and may even damage the credibility of your business.
Custom fields
Custom fields are placeholders in the body of your email that allow you to vary the content from one email to another. Usually custom fields look like [First Name]and automatically add the contact’s first name, but there are two types of placeholders that typically populate email templates:
Custom fields are fields that are automatically filled with data from a CRM, a database or a spreadsheet. When sending email templates with built-in custom fields, the sender does not have to perform any manual action: the CRM or the email platform will automatically fill these fields with the correct data.
For example, “Hi [Firstname], I hope [Company] is fine ”would translate to“ Hi James, I hope Brightcorp is doing well. “
In short, custom fields at work in a link building email.
Placeholder text is part of the email template that must be filled out by the sender and was intentionally left blank. Placeholder text exists when the information is not something that can be pulled automatically from a CRM, database, or spreadsheet, so essentially unstructured information.
Lead lines, for example, are often placeholder text. The rest of the email is already drafted and the sender writes a short intro like “Hey Jim, we met at the Moonsoft conference last week and you recommended me to come back in a week.”
The orange placeholder text on this outgoing email reminds reps to paste their Calendly link into the message.
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Narrative and tone
Finding the right tone for an email marketing can be difficult, especially when that marketing email is sent to a large audience, and not one-on-one.
The tone of your marketing email will change depending on the content of the email, but there are certain elements of narrative quality that you should try to maintain consistently, regardless of the nature of the audience and the audience. content.
Made: If your audience is human, they will try to decipher the intent and tone behind your words. Make them count. 👽
Use your conversational voice
The greatest marketing tool of all is the ability to facilitate a real human connection, and this is your chance to demonstrate yours. Your audience is made up of people, after all, and it’s human nature to strive to understand yourself, even on a subconscious level.
Use expressions you would use when talking with your friends and colleagues. Sometimes it even helps to read your emails aloud to figure out how this will sound to the reader.
It’s okay to keep the tone casual in marketing emails. Relax, use a few contractions, and remember that your email is written for people like you.
Limit yourself to one exclamation mark per message to avoid the risk of sounding bogus.
Be courteous and respectful
Yes, the golden rule also applies to email marketing. Respect for your audience should be a principle that influences all your marketing tactics. For example, sending repetitive marketing emails to your entire audience is disrespectful and obnoxious.
This philosophy should also be reflected in your marketing emails. If you are asking your audience to do something, do it courteously and say “please”.
Regarding the narrative and tone, try to write your message in a way that reads sincerely, and is as little inconvenience as possible for your audience.
Avoid these common drawbacks of email marketing at all costs:
- Make assumptions: Like when someone quotes a movie because they assume you’ve seen it, the guesses can be awkward and even kill the conversation. Put simply, making assumptions will alienate everyone to whom that assumption doesn’t apply, so avoid them as much as possible.
- Not providing enough information: Nothing is more annoying than receiving an email that lacks context or paints an incomplete picture, leaving you wondering what exactly you just read. If you want your audience to continue following you, make sure they’re on the same page.
- Fail to recognize the audience: Self-centering messaging is the best way to ensure that your audience is unsubscribing from your marketing emails. Your marketing emails should look like one person is talking to another person, and if they don’t, your audience is unlikely to engage.
Related: 5 The messaging difference between a savvy seller and a serial spammer.
Don’t try too hard
It’s embarrassing that brands are trying to cash in on TikTok’s latest craziness, so put your dabs, whips, and nae-naes aside. Instead, look for ways to include humor that doesn’t focus on viral trends.
Controversial subject lines, abusive buzzwords and quick-fire jokes all seem too difficult. As an email marketer, it’s important to find the sweet spot where you let your audience know that you speak their language, but not bother to prove your relevance.
^ How the public reacts when companies try too hard.
Statistics, infographics, photos
In a marketing email, the graphic elements say more than the words alone. If you want to effectively engage your audience (that’s what you do), you’ll want to include media in addition to words so that they understand the “full picture” [knee-slap] more efficiently.
Human brain processes images 60,000 times faster than text, which means it’s definitely worth trying to find relevant photos to help you achieve a specific goal.
Reducing the size of your image files will help your email load quickly for recipients, especially on mobile devices.
Statistics are also a dynamic way to introduce ideas in a way that your audience understands. For example, if you’re talking about workflow automation, a simple statistic like “80% of businesses use some type of workflow automation” helps frame your message by adding context.
Source: Probe everywhere
Include ALT text in your images. If an email client blocks an image, the text will appear instead of a red “X”, and this is also a courtesy for the visually impaired.
Call to action
A call to action (CTA) is an invitation for your audience to take action, usually in the form of clicking on a link to a webpage, blog post, or related information.
CTAs come in many different forms in the sales and marketing worlds and serve different purposes depending on who they target and who sends them.
For example, a sales rep who speaks to a lead might use the call to action “request an individual demo”, and a marketing manager who sends out a newsletter might use “read our latest blog post”.
CTAs should be friendly and inviting. Instead of “CLICK HERE”, try “Take me there”, “KEEP READING” or “LET’S GO”.
It’s important to understand what your CTA will be before you write your marketing email. After all, your CTA is the tactical goal of your email, and writing an email with no objective in mind is just weird.
A good CTA is strong, compelling, and lets the reader know exactly why they should click on it. If your email is about cold email templates, a good CTA would link the reader to your blog post or a content upload full of cold email templates.
Remember, your email marketing is higher in the funnel than what your CTA is related to. To reflect this, your marketing email must speak usually on the topic of your CTA, and interested users will click to learn more.
The 6 most important email marketing metrics – and what they really mean
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It’s like we always say: you can’t improve what you don’t measure.
Every email marketing software platform includes reporting tools that show you the impact of your emails. But you need to fully understand what metrics are telling you – and the relative importance of those metrics – before making drastic changes to your strategy.
Here are the six most common email marketing metrics, what they actually measure, and how much weight you should give them when fine-tuning your email marketing efforts.
The opening rate
What this means: The open rate is the number of recipients who opened your email at least once, divided by the number of delivered e-mails (ie not counting rejected e-mails); Multiplying that number by 100 gives you the open rate of the email. According to a Constant Contact Fall 2020 Report, the average open rate of email marketing across all industries is 17.16%.
(By the way, an “open” is registered once the tracking pixel in your email is triggered.)
What is that really means: Traditional wisdom says that the open rate is a direct measure of the quality of your subject line. If your subject line is compelling (or just unusual enough to grab attention in an inbox), more people will click on it.
But there’s another factor that’s even more important than the success of individual subject lines: your reputation as a content provider.
When your business sends out a marketing email, are your audience excited to receive it, regardless of the subject line promises? Do you have a habit of delivering relevant content to your recipients, or do you only email your list when you need something from them?
Recipients will get into the habit of opening your emails when you’re consistently providing value, even if your subject line isn’t a boost every time.
Your audience when they see an email from you.
What is its importance: Having a large mailing list doesn’t matter much if only a few people open your posts. Knowing your open rate helps you understand the “real” size of your audience.
In other words, how many people can you expect to reach with a given marketing email? If you want to set realistic expectations for the impact of your email marketing, tracking your open rate is a must.
How to improve it: Do not send marketing e-mail unless there is a direct benefit to the recipient; over time, your readers will associate your emails with value. When it comes to subject lines, dare to be different. And you might want to consider deletion of non-committed e-mail addresses that are still active but have not interacted with your emails for a long time.
Click rate
What this means: Also known as click-through rate or CTR, Email click-through rate measures the number of people who clicked at least one link in an email divided by the number of emails delivered; Multiplying that number by 100 gives you the click-through rate of the email.
Since only a portion of the people who open an email will actually click on any of the links, your click-through rate will naturally be lower than your open rate. According to search for CampaignMonitor, the average click-through rate for all industries is 2.6%.
What is that really means: However you decide to present the links in your email, whether through CTA buttons, hyperlinked banner images, or hyperlinked text, you need to explain why clicking is worth the reader’s time.
The click-through rate reflects the quality of your argument. Did you actually make the point that there was something more important on the other side of that click?
That being said, the design is crucial for click-through rate. A prominent CTA button or attractive banner image will always attract more clicks than hypertext text saying “click here”!
The other factor that affects click-through rate is how well the content of the email matches the subject line promise. If your readers are drawn to the subject line, but the content itself is less valuable or less interesting than they expected, they’ll likely leave your email without clicking.
What is its importance: The overall goal of email marketing is to transform email addresses into buyers, and eventually you will need your readers to click Something to be able to do that. For this reason, the click-through rate is one of the most important statistics on emails. It’s just not important for each email marketing.
For example, if you are passing a short ad to your customers, you don’t necessarily need them to click a “READ MORE” button to do so.
So, pay close attention to click-through rates for all marketing emails that specifically require clicks to deliver value. Average click-through rate of all your emails give you a statistic that is too general to be useful.
How to improve it: If you provide an actual value to the recipient in your email, they’ll click. And if they don’t click, you haven’t argued enough Why they should click.
Clear, a convincing copy helps and a solid design absolutely help. The visual presentation of the email should leave the reader in no doubt as to where they are supposed to point their cursor.
Rebound rate
What this means: Bounce rate can be measured by taking the number of email addresses in your audience list that does not have receive your message, divided by the total number of email addresses in your audience; Multiplying that number by 100 gives you the bounce rate of the email. CampaignMonitor puts the average bounce rate of emails across all industries at just 0.7%.
A bounced email can be a “hard bounce, “Which means that your email has never been accepted by an email server (that is, the recipient’s email address or domain does not exist or is inactive) or “soft rebound, “Which means your email was accepté par un serveur de messagerie, mais n’a quand même pas été livré (c’est-à-dire que votre message était trop volumineux, la boîte aux lettres du destinataire était pleine ou le serveur de messagerie du destinataire était temporairement hors service)
Qu’est-ce que c’est really veux dire: Les adresses e-mail obsolètes ne sont qu’un fait de la nature; au fil du temps, de nombreuses adresses e-mail et domaines de votre liste d’abonnés deviendront inactifs.
Un taux de rebond croissant signifie vous ne faites pas le travail de maintenance approprié pour supprimer les e-mails une fois qu’ils commencent à rebondir. Et c’est un problème, comme nous l’expliquerons dans un instant.
Un taux de rebond élevé peut également suggérer un manque de normes d’acceptation des abonnés aux e-mails en premier lieu. Autorisez-vous les remplisseurs à mettre littéralement whatever dans le champ de l’adresse e-mail lorsqu’ils s’inscrivent pour un essai gratuit ou téléchargent un contenu, ou existe-t-il des mesures de protection pour détecter les adresses e-mail de spam?
«Oh mon Dieu, aucun de ceux-ci n’est adresses e-mail valides! “
Quelle est son importance: Incroyablement important. Une fois que votre taux de rebond commence à dépasser 2%, continuer à envoyer à ces adresses nuira à votre réputation d’envoi auprès des FAI et à la délivrabilité des envois futurs.
Ne pas nettoyer régulièrement votre liste de diffusion, c’est comme ne jamais changer l’huile de votre voiture. Il s’agit d’un entretien essentiel qui vous coûtera beaucoup de temps si vous l’ignorez.
Comment l’améliorer: Prenez le temps de supprimer les adresses e-mail renvoyées en dur après chaque e-mail marketing que vous envoyez. Et assurez-vous d’avoir mis en place un processus pour éliminer les fausses adresses e-mail lors de l’inscription, que ce soit à l’aide d’un outil de vérification des e-mails, ou l’envoi d’un e-mail de confirmation avec un lien sur lequel les abonnés doivent cliquer pour recevoir les futurs messages.
Taux de désabonnement
Ce que cela veut dire: Le taux de désabonnement est le nombre de destinataires qui se sont désabonnés de votre liste de diffusion après avoir reçu un e-mail, divisé par le nombre d’e-mails livrés; multipliez ce nombre par 100 pour obtenir le taux de désabonnement de votre e-mail. Les taux de désabonnement pour les e-mails marketing varient généralement de 0,1% -0,4%, selon l’industrie.
Qu’est-ce que c’est really veux dire: Dans quelle mesure vos messages ennuient-ils vos abonnés? Si vous remplissez votre liste d’e-mails marketing au-delà de la fréquence à laquelle ils s’attendaient à l’origine, de nombreux abonnés commenceront à chuter.
Les pics soudains du taux de désabonnement peuvent également suggérer que vous envoyez des e-mails qui ne sont pas pertinents pour une grande partie de vos destinataires (c’est-à-dire que vous envoyez par e-mail toute votre liste d’abonnés à propos d’une annonce qui n’affecte que les clients actuels).
Quelle est son importance: Tant que vous fournissez constamment de la valeur et de la pertinence à vos destinataires de courrier électronique, les pics de taux de désabonnement devraient être relativement rares, ce qui rend cette statistique un peu moins importante que les autres. Gardez vos taux de désabonnement inférieurs à 0,5% et vous êtes en or.
Comment l’améliorer: Faites attention aux taux de désabonnement bien supérieurs à votre moyenne pour comprendre ce que votre audience n’est pas intéressés. Et assurez-vous que vos e-mails sont correctement segmentés, ce que nous aborderons plus en détail dans Comment mettre en place une campagne marketing en 7 étapes faciles section. (La version courte est la suivante: envoyez chaque e-mail marketing uniquement aux contacts qui en bénéficieront réellement.)
Nous vous recommandons également de définir au préalable des attentes claires avec vos abonnés à la messagerie électronique concernant la fréquence à laquelle vous leur enverrez des e-mails et le type de contenu auquel ils peuvent s’attendre.
Cette information peuvent être exprimées sur vos formulaires d’inscription par e-mail eux-mêmes, ainsi que dans les e-mails de confirmation que vous envoyez pour inciter les abonnés à adhérer officiellement à votre liste.
Taux de réponse
Ce que cela veut dire: Aussi connu sous le nom Taux de réponse, le taux de réponse est le nombre de destinataires qui ont répondu directement à votre e-mail, divisé par le nombre d’e-mails livrés; multiplier ce nombre par 100 vous donne le taux de réponse de l’e-mail.
Qu’est-ce que c’est really veux dire: Vos e-mails sont-ils rédigés pour stimuler la conversation ou sont-ils uniquement organisés comme un canal à sens unique pour les annonces et les offres? Vos destinataires sont-ils convaincus que leur réponse sera effectivement envoyée à un autre être humain ou supposent-ils qu’elle arrivera dans une boîte de réception d’entreprise? Si vous écrivez vos e-mails marketing comme si vous écriviez une lettre à un ami, ce que nous suggérons toujours, d’ailleurs, vos destinataires se sentiront plus à l’aise de répondre.
Les e-mails marketing ne doivent pas simplement avoir l’air de provenir d’une personne réelle. Les réponses devraient en fait aller à une personne réelle.
À un niveau plus élémentaire, le taux de réponse indique si vous demandez spécifiquement des réponses en premier lieu. Ne vous attendez pas à recevoir un tas de réponses s’il n’y a rien dans l’e-mail auquel répondre. (C’est pourquoi nous chargeons nos propres e-mails marketing avec des questions et des demandes de commentaires et d’aide qui suscitent la réflexion.)
Quelle est son importance: Pas tous vos e-mails marketing need pour attirer des réponses pour réussir. La plupart de vos messages seront conçus pour informer votre public de quelque chose ou pour le diriger vers une page de votre site Web, et c’est parfaitement normal.
Cela étant dit, une seule réponse d’un être humain vivant et respirant peut vous donner plus d’informations exploitables que mille clics sur une page de destination.
En fait, nous pensons que l’objectif principal du marketing par e-mail est de transformer une adresse e-mail anonyme en une personne à qui vous parlez; des réponses encourageantes est le moyen le plus simple d’y parvenir.
Replies are also a great way to identify the “super fans” of your brand. If you notice that a certain subscriber is responding to your emails on a regular basis, that person might be willing to write a testimonial for your company (if they’re already a customer) or start a sales conversation (if they’re a subscriber but not yet a customer).
How to improve it: First and foremost, arrange your marketing emails to appear like they were sent by a single individual. There should be a person’s name in the “From” field (preferably the person who actually wrote the email and will be fielding the replies), and the email should be signed by that person. Write your marketing emails in first person, if possible.
Next, include one direct question in your email, which could be anything from a discussion prompt (“How is this new development in the manufacturing industry affecting your company? Please reply to this email and let me know your thoughts.”) to a request for help (“We could really use some insight on a new product we’re developing. Could you please reply to this email and tell me how often you adjust the brightness on your smartphone?”)
And finally, make sure you can respond to your email replies in relatively short order. If one of your recipients takes the time to share their thoughts with you but never gets so much as a “Thank you!” in return, it’s likely they won’t waste their time again in the future.
Audience growth rate
What it means: How many net new subscribers (i.e., total new subscribers minus unsubscribers and deleted addresses) you’ve gained over a certain period of time, compared to your total subscriber count in the previous period; multiplying that number by 100 gives you your audience growth rate. Growth rate can be tracked for your entire email list, or for individual audience segments.
What it really means: How successful are your email acquisition efforts? Are those efforts improving over time? A strong audience growth rate tells you that you’re offering website visitors and prospects content resources that are valuable enough to trade their email for, while providing your current customers and subscribers with enough value to remain in their inbox long-term.
How important is it: As with website visits and social media followers, email audience size can be a vanity metric if you over-focus on it. Growing your list isn’t the point; acquiring and retaining customers is. That being said, increasing your audience growth rate expands the potential impact of your efforts.
Unlike PPC ads (which can be very expensive) or SEO content (which won’t succeed in attracting visitors every time), email marketing is as close as you can get to a guaranteed method of reaching your audience, virtually for free.
It’s no wonder why the ROI of email marketing is crazy high. And the more legitimate names you add to your email list, the more profitable that channel becomes.
How to improve it: With so much noise in our inboxes these days, you’re going to have to offer website visitors a better reason to subscribe to your email list than “Sign up for our newsletter!“
Virtually every single page on your website should include a relevant content offer—templates, guides, checklists, ebooks, worksheets, video content—that you offer as a free download in exchange for your visitor’s email address.
As we’ve learned at Nutshell, organizing free virtual events is a great way to collect email subscribers in mass quantities. After all, an email address is a small price to pay for an experience that the attendee would normally have to pay hundreds of dollars for.
Using purchased lead lists for email marketing
With some 68% of businesses struggling with lead generation, purchasing a list for email marketing seems like a good idea. But is it really?
Well, it’s complicated.
The CAN-SPAM Act and other risks
The CAN-SPAM Act slaps a hefty $42,530 penalty per email on those who are caught breaking the rules, and the rules themselves become much easier to break when purchasing a list for email marketing. And there are a lot of rules
When sending marketing emails to a list, the CAN-SPAM Act states that you absolutely must
- Use subject lines that aren’t deceptive
- Include your company’s postal address in every email
- “Clearly and conspicuously” identify your message as an advertisement
- Include a way for recipients to unsubscribe
- Honor unsubscriptions promptly
And so on…
Furthermore, because of the many potential pitfalls outlined in the CAN-SPAM Act, most marketing email platforms require you to confirm that any contact list you upload has opted-in and verified that they want to receive emails from you.
This means that buying a lead list is strictly against their terms of service, because it is comprised of contacts that have not consented to any form of email marketing.
Most email marketing platforms will freeze your account, or even ban you from their platform if you are found violating their terms of service.
To make things even scarier, many organizations include “spam trap” email addresses, meaning they’ll register a random email address on their domain but never use it, ensuring that the only way to discover this email address is by scraping their domain for valid email addresses.
Any email that is sent to a trap is automatically flagged as spam, and a few of these offenses piling up can cause your domain to be blacklisted, which will make your company’s emails virtually undeliverable, which is the absolute worst thing to happen to an email marketer.
However, there are companies that do this type of vetting and regularly update their lists so that email marketers don’t end up sending undeliverable emails. These lists can be useful, but only if they’re used correctly.
How to use a purchased list
When using a purchased list, it’s absolutely critical to
- Do prospect research on every single contact to verify that they’re real
- Send high-quality, highly personalized emails to avoid being flagged as spam
- Not blast the entire list, but rather use it as a starting point and then select contacts tactfully
- Follow every single CAN-SPAM law at all times
So the verdict is that no, you cannot purchase a list of contacts and simply decide that they’re going to receive your newsletter from now on.
What you can do, however, is create very tactical advertising campaigns to encourage them to sign up to receive emails from you, so that you can send them marketing emails in the future.
Deep dive: The Nutshell Lead List Purchasing Guide.
Your email marketing sent to purchased lead lists, if you choose to do it at all, should be extremely limited. Again, the biggest CTA you can include on such a far reach is to ask them to opt in. From there, sending other email marketing is acceptable but only because they’ve asked for it.
But buying a lead list and treating them like subscribers? En aucune façon.
Expert opinion: Email marketing strategies at various companies
Every marketer, every company, and every platform functions differently, meaning a strategy that works wonders for a particular organization might not be feasible for another.
In order to make this guide as comprehensive as possible, we reached out to a bunch of different email marketing pros, from specialists to founders, to get their opinions.
Q: Which software tools do you use for email marketing?“
Popupsmart. It’s amaaaazing. Managing forms and pop-ups can be daunting. This tool gives you a dashboard to monitor your popups, uses AI to target your pop-ups, AND let’s you schedule them.
Have a seasonal lead magnet you want to use? Schedule it so it stops sending before it’s out-of-date.
Want to send a lead magnet to folks who visit specific pages? No problem.
Make it pretty while you’re at it? Easy peasy lemon squeezy.
Beacon. Having a lead magnet that speaks to specific industries, buyer personas, or offerings is critical. It helps you pre-qualify your leads by signaling to them with the right content. The problem is creating and managing all of these offers. Beacon helps you create a lead magnet quickly and professionally with dozens of templates. They also offer several options for helping you DELIVER those lead magnets with opt-in forms built in. Get a new lead magnet done quickly with this tool.
Stripo. Most Email Service Providers have a built-in drag-and-drop email building tool. That’s wonderful for having all of your email tools in one spot. However, many of them are limited. Using a third-party email building tool like Stripo helps you build emails JUST the way you want them without custom code.
Emily McGuire,
Owner, Chief Email Marketer at Flourish & Grit
Q. Which types of marketing emails do you send?“
My team works primarily on communicating with our existing reviewers (and sometimes new ones!) to collect authentic, high-quality feedback of software they’re using day-to-day at work. I send anywhere from two to maybe five or six emails a week, depending on who and what we’re focused on.
One of my teammates specializes in recorded video reviews and in the Q&As on each page; she’s sending somewhere from three to nine emails a week. The two of us collaborate pretty closely on segmentation and copy/design, and we have an amazing in-house design team. We’re incredibly lucky to have these resources, but we try to be scrappy whenever we can.
Carolyn Dorant.
Senior Email Marketing Manager at G2
We send a few different marketing emails: a newsletter, event announcements, community roundups and webinar recaps. We send our newsletter once a week, and nearly the whole team is involved in the process.
Since my aim is to make it a snackable version of our week’s content, team members will send me what they think we should include in the week’s newsletter across podcasts, community discussions, webinars and article content.
Brooklin Nash,
Head of Content, Sales Hacker
Q. Which email metrics are most important to you?
One metric I like looking at is the click-to-open rate. Many people tend to look at just the open rate and click-through rate independently. Click rate tells you how many people clicked a link relative to how many people the email was sent to, the click-to-open rate tells you how many people clicked-through out of people who actually opened the email.
This can give you a strong baseline understanding of how the content within your email drove traffic back to your site, sales, or overall engagement.
Kelly Forst,
Marketing Specialist at AWeber
Q. What’s your favorite email marketing pro tip?
Email data can be great for sculpting and optimizing your company’s content strategy. Read between the lines about how your open rates and CTR might be connected to the type of content you delivered.
For example, if rates are higher for your emails that contain “recommended lists of products that do x” or “resources to help you achieve x goals,” this is likely a clear indication of what your most valuable buyer personas want more of.
Derek Flint,
SEO Content Manager at Marketing Supply Company
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How to set up a marketing email campaign in 7 easy steps
Now that you know what makes a marketing email successful, let’s walk through the process of setting up and sending a marketing email campaign, from start to finish. Here we go…
Skip to sub-section:
1. Define your audience
There are very few situations where it makes sense to send an email to all of your contacts. For example, an announcement about how your company’s phone support availability will be limited over the holidays would only be relevant to current customers.
Conversely, an email offering a discount to first-time buyers would only be relevant to no-customers, and might even create hostility among your current clients. (“I just signed up last week, no discount for me??”)
So the first decision you need to make when setting up an email campaign is: Who should receive this email?
Is it your newsletter subscribers? Your current customers? A mix of former customers and lost leads? Only the people who downloaded a specific piece of content or attended your last virtual event?
Defining your audience upfront cuts down the risk of recipients unsubscribing from your marketing emails due to lack of relevance.
Audience segmentation is also very helpful to the writing process itself, because you can speak to the interests and concerns of a specific recipient type; your message doesn’t have to be for everyone.
Of course, there will be times when you have a marketing message that’s so important that you think everyone should hear it—the announcement of a major product release or a game-changing partnership, for example. Even in those situations, we recommend creating separate emails for separate list segments.
The way you speak to current customers will always be different than the way you speak to non-customers, even if those differences are very subtle.
2. Determine the goal
What do you want your email recipients to do, specifically? How are you measuring the success of this particular marketing email?
The primary goal for your email will directly impact its design and direction. For example, your goal might be…
- Clicks to a website page: Let’s say you’re sharing your latest published content or making an announcement that requires more than a few lines of explanation. To get your readers to read the “full” version of the article or announcement on your website, your email should include a few lines of compelling description and at least one prominent CTA button directing the reader to “READ MORE,” “LEARN MORE,” or “KEEP READING.”
- Form completions: If you’re promoting an upcoming webinar or event, getting your recipients to click is only half the battle. You have to be crystal clear with your reader that once they click on your CTA button (“REGISTER TODAY”, “SAVE MY SPOT!”) they’ll also need to fill out the form on the landing page in order to sign up for the event. Note: The percentage of your email recipients who A) open the email, B) click the CTA, then C) fill out the form on the landing page will naturally be fairly low. So make sure to send multiple messages to your audience any time you’re trying to get them to complete a form.
- Purchases: If you sell products on your website, email marketing can be a reliable channel to compel purchases from your buyer list. The challenge is to make sure that those purchases are attributable to the email campaign. You can do that by adding tracking links on CTA buttons (which will show how many buyers entered your site through your newsletter) or offering coupon codes that are unique to each marketing email you send.
- Replies: One thing we like to do at Nutshell is ask questions at the end of our newsletters. The replies we get often turn into longer conversations where we can offer our expertise to the respondents or refer them to our sales team. This method is also effective when you’re making a brief announcement or sharing information that doesn’t require the reader to click to a landing page. If you don’t have a strong CTA to include in your email, ending with a question gives you a concrete way to measure impact.
Multiple CTAs can overwhelm a reader. If you want recipients to do something specific, stick to a single CTA.
3. Write excellent, helpful content
At this point, you have your audience and the ideal behavior you want them to take. It’s time to put pen to paper.
There’s only one email writing best practice that we recommend to everyone, regardless of industry or reader persona: Write it like it’s a letter to a friend. Be friendly and warm, and speak to your common interests with your target audience.
Use humor to the extent that it’s appropriate. And always remember: Marketing emails are about educating and nurturing, not pressuring your readers into a sales conversation.
Focus on the recipient, not yourself. Reduce or eliminate sentences that start with “I,” “we,” or “our company.
Even with a friendly writing tone, you should still use clear, direct language to explain the value of what you’re offering in your marketing email. A reader should never have to wonder, “What is this and why am I getting it?” or “What’s in it for me?“
As long as you’re offering something of real value and can properly express the benefits of taking action, your readers will be more than happy to click the CTA button.
One more thing: Linking to relevant resources in your marketing email will help your readers learn more, feel smarter, and have the kind of positive experience with your marketing email that will make them more likely to open the next one.
These additional resources can be other pieces of content you’ve produced in the past, or even content from a third-party website. Providing your readers with the best information on a given subject—even if it didn’t come from your own site—makes you appear credible and genuinely helpful.
Beware the big block of text! Add a line break to any paragraph that’s more than three sentences long.
4. Design your email for maximum impact
Ideally, the copy and design of your message should work together to hook your reader from the moment they open the email. But keep in mind that different message types call for different visual approaches.
Some marketing emails—a “letter from the CEO”-type newsletter, for example—look perfectly natural presented mostly as text. However, if you’re plugging an exciting new product, an upcoming event, or a collection of recent blog posts, you’ll make more of an impact by including images, animation, and other bits of visual excitement.
Of course, building your emails from scratch is hard work, even for talented marketing designers. That’s why it often makes sense to use an email template to lay out your marketing email.
Most marketing automation software platforms have a number of templates built in that include spots for banner images, columns, pullquotes, CTA buttons, headlines, and sub-heds. Choose one that you think is a good fit for the overall vibe of your email and start pasting in your copy.
Emails wider than 640px might not render well on certain email clients. 600px wide is the sweet spot.
Marketing email design isn’t only about the images and styling in the body of the message, though. You also have to be aware of how your email will appear in an inbox before it’s even opened. To that end…
- Make sure to put a real person’s name in the “From” field (i.e. “Jack @ Nutshell”), even if the replies actually go to a general inbox.
- Include a line of custom preview text to accompany the subject line; think of it as an additional teaser that might interest a recipient enough to open the email.
5. Test, then test again
Just because your marketing email is written and designed doesn’t mean it’s ready to go out the door. Before adding your recipient list and hitting send, send a test email to yourself and at least one other colleague.
Give the test email a close read to find any stray typos. Click every single hyperlink to make sure the links load correctly and that any UTM parameters or tracking links you included are fully operational—especially the ones on CTA buttons. Make sure that your images are displaying properly in various email clients and on mobile devices.
If you run into any issues, fix them in your email marketing software, then send out another test. Repeat the process until your email is flawless.
6. Push the button and brace for impact
Now that your email is “terminé done,” add the proper recipient list (remember step 1?) and schedule it to go out.
There is countless research studies online that will tell you which days and times are the most effective to send an email…and if you ask us, they’re mostly hot air.
Every audience is different, and it generally takes a lot of trial and error to figure out when your email subscribers are most likely to open one of your marketing emails.
That being said, we make have one piece of universal advice to share when it comes to email scheduling: Only send a marketing email at a time when someone from your team will be around to handle the replies.
The more important your message is, the more likely it is that many of your recipients will reply with burning questions. Don’t send out a marketing email late Friday afternoon and leave your audience hanging over the entire weekend!
At Nutshell, we only send out emails on weekdays (and not too late in the day) to ensure that we can field any important replies as they come in. We suggest you do the same.
And if you’re scheduling an email to go out days in the future, set up a reminder for yourself to be available when it actually goes en dehors.
Before sending a marketing email, ask yourself: Am I actually giving the recipient something of value?
7. Learn something before moving on
One of the biggest mistakes you can make with email marketing is using the same tactics over and over again, regardless of whether they’re working or not. Every single email marketing email you send gives you an opportunity to learn the following…
- Was the subject line compelling? (i.e., what was the open rate compared to the average open rate for this message type?)
- Did you pick the right audience? (i.e., what was the unsubscribe rate compared to the average unsubscribe rate for this message type?)
- Was the offer in the email compelling? (i.e., what was the click rate compared to the average click rate for this message type?)
- Did the landing page fulfill the promise of the email? (i.e., what was the conversion rate on the landing page compared to past conversion rates for similar offers?)
All of these things can be measured, tracked, and optimized. So be sure to check the stats on every email you send and use that data to inform future email marketing campaigns. Otherwise, you’re just spinning your wheels.
Now, how do you get that data even faster: by A/B testing! If you’re ever curious about how one specific element is impacting your emails’ performance, split your audience list in half and send out two versions with only one difference between the two emails. In other words, the emails are identical except for the send-time, or identical except for the subject line.
A/B testing gives you comparative data that helps you fine-tune your email marketing strategy in a way that’s more scientific, and less based on hunches. (Not that your hunches aren’t brilliant.)
Steal these templates!
Skip to template:
“Webinar announcement” email template
TYPE: Broadcast / Announce
Concept: Announcement of a company-organized webinar or virtual event taking place in the near future, with a primary CTA to register.
Subject line: Save your spot at [event title]!
Preview text: It’s live, it’s free, and you might actually learn something.
Hi {FIRSTNAME},
Got any plans for [event date]? Well you do now.
[webinar topic] is one of the most important—and least understood—drivers of growth for businesses like yours. So we teamed up with [partner/speaker name and title] to present a [##]-minute webinar passing along everything we know on the subject: “[event title]. “
The live broadcast will kick off [day/date] at [time], and will teach you:
• [webinar sub-topic A in the form of a question]
• [webinar sub-topic B in the form of a question]
• [webinar sub-topic C in the form of a question]
We’re limiting the registration to [###] virtual tickets, so hit the button below before everyone else beats you to it.
[Button: “SAVE MY SPOT”]
The webinar will be recorded for all registrants, but live attendees will have a chance to submit their questions to the presenters and get expert insights on the spot.
Have a wonderful day, and we’ll see you on [event date]!
[sender name]
“Product news” email template
TYPE: Broadcast / Announce, Update
Concept: Announcing a new product offering or feature, with a CTA to learn more on the website
Subject line: First look: [product name]
Preview text: Our latest [product type] is a game-changer.
Hi {FIRSTNAME},
Good to see you, friend. We’ll make this quick.
Today marks the release of [product name], a [product category] that helps you [product benefit A] et [product benefit B].
Priced at [price], [product name] offers the following improvements on our previous [product category] offerings…
• [product feature A]
• [product feature B]
• [product feature C]
• [product feature D]
This new release was one of the most requested from our customers, so thank you!
To learn more about this new release, check out the full details at the link below:
[Button: “LEARN MORE”]
Big ups to our hard-working product team for making [product name] into a reality. And please reply to this email if you have any questions!
Cheers,
[sender name]
“Sales promotion” email template
TYPE: Broadcast / Promote, Sell
Concept: A one-to-many sales email, offering a discount or other promotion for a specific product offering, possibly for VIPs or customers who haven’t purchased in a while; primary CTA is to follow a link to sale items.
Subject line: For our VIPs only…take 20 percent off any [product name]
Preview text: Reply to this message with “howdy!” for a mystery coupon…
Hi {FIRSTNAME},
We’re psyched that you’ve been a longtime [your own company name] customer, and we want to make sure you stay psyched. So here’s the deal…
From now until [day/date/time], you can get any of our [product type/service category]s for 20% off…just for being you! All you need to do is hit the link below and enter the coupon code VIP2021 on the purchase page.
[Button: “LET’S SAVE SOME MONEY”]
Still here? Wonderful. If you’ve gotten this far in the email, you deserve a bonus. Reply to this email with “howdy!” and I’ll give you a mystery coupon code that will [double/multiply/increase] your savings.
Take care, and please let me know if there’s anything else I can do to support you and your business.
[sender name]
“Exciting announcement!” email template
TYPE: Broadcast / Announce, Update, Celebrate
Concept: A general purpose blast informing subscribers of something interesting that the company is doing. (A new partnership? A charitable effort? The launch of a company podcast?) Primary CTA is to learn more on the website.
Subject line: The wait is over. Brightcorp and Moonsoft are together at last.
Preview text: The long-awaited partnership that adds tons of new value for our customers.
Hey {FIRSTNAME},
While gathering around the virtual water cooler, we had this bright idea: Let’s use the bright ideas our users have given us. It may be our best thinking yet.
When our team launched Brightcorp, we weren’t really thinking about other tools like Moonsoft’s platform. We were focused, instead, on delivering brightness technology to our consumers, and giving them the most luminous experience we could.
Recently our users have been talking about Moonsoft, specifically whether or not we plan on partnering with them anytime soon.
“Hmm,” we said. “That would have be cool.”
Today, we are proud to announce that we have officially partnered with Moonsoft to deliver solar-quality virtual luminescence with adaptive void shading in a fully integrated platform.
Moonsoft [Link to company page] is a de-illumination company that was founded… [Describe the partnership company and their mission]
By joining forces, we hope to… [Describe the goals of the partnership]
This article [Link to article] goes into more detail about what a partnership between Brightcorp and Moonsoft means for our users, what will change for Brightcorp customers, and what we hope to accomplish together.
Please respond to this email and let us know what you’d love to see us do now that we have a full partnership with Moonsoft!
Sincerely, [sender name]
“Letter from the CEO/Editor” email template
TYPE: Newsletter / Educate, Update
Concept: A conversational, text-focused letter sharing thoughts and a couple of links. This might be closest to our approach with the STW newsletter.
Subject line: You know what I think, {FIRSTNAME}?
Preview text: Plus: The book that doubled my close rate in a single month.
Hi {FIRSTNAME},
It’s almost 6am, and I’m sitting at my kitchen table waiting for the coffeemaker to finish burbling. The kids aren’t up yet, but they will be soon. So I wanted to get this out of my head while it’s still quiet.
[[[[4-5 paragraphs on some recent epiphany you had]
I can go on and on about this stuff, but my youngest just came down the stairs and wants his waffles. Real quick:
– Seats to our [seminar or workshop title] are still available. Sign up by Friday with the code “[coupon code]” and get $40 off the price of your virtual ticket.
– My dear friend The Sell to Win Team wrote a book on [topic] that is going to wind up making me an extra $80,000 this year, if I’m doing my math correctly. Buy it here: https://www.nutshell.com/blog/complete-guide-to-writing-marketing-emails/ …and I promise, I will buy it back from you if it doesn’t blow your mind too.
The sun’s coming up now. The waffles are in the toaster. My dog and the neighbor’s dog are having a little conversation. Let’s all have a good morning, okay?
Best,
[sender name]
“Latest content” email template
TYPE: Newsletter / Educate, Update
Concept: Sharing the latest marketing content, via thumbnail images and short descriptions. This would be a more traditional approach for a blog newsletter.
Subject line: Everything you need to know about SEO
Preview text: What is the secret ingredient that can transform your writing from a hobby into a cash generator?
Hey {FIRSTNAME},
If you’re anything like most humans, you probably have your own unique insights and perspectives about your industry. What most humans do not know, however, is that they can earn 88% more leads simply by consistently blogging those insights.
SEO is the secret key that can unlock those marketing leads for your company by giving your writing visibility on search engines, and we just published a guide on how to make that happen.
A few of the topics we cover:
• Page titles, headings, and paragraph text, and how they function like a network of roots.
• The relationship between page-loading speed and bounce rates.
• How to build an SEO skeleton.
Simply put, it’s a great starting point for anyone who might benefit from upping their content marketing game. The article describes technical SEO from a realistic and attainable standpoint, even for people who’ve never published anything before.
[Button: “Read the full article”]
As always, if you have any questions about SEO that aren’t covered in the article, you can ask them in a reply to this email and I will Google the answers share my knowledge with you.
Cheers,
[sender name]
[Thumbnail list of recently-published articles]
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