Here’s an interesting fact: 79% of millennials prefer brand communication via email.
Put simply: email marketing still works.
Email marketing is one of the most effective ways to reach out to your customers. All you need is the right email marketing strategy to reap the benefits.
More than 333 billion emails are sent regularly, which is expected to increase to 376 billion. The power of email is only growing.
It’s high time to use email marketing to increase your profits and optimize sales funnels. But if you don’t know the best way to do it, yours will be part of the millions of emails that go unread.
This article will teach you how to create the perfect email marketing strategy for your business. You’ll learn about the different email marketing types and some key principles to optimize your email marketing for increasing open rates and conversions.
You’ll be ready to create converting emails for your brand at the end of this email marketing strategy tutorial.
2 Types Of Email Marketing Strategies
“Email has an ability many channels don’t: creating valuable, personal touches—at scale.” – David Newman.
There are several email marketing strategies that you can leverage in your business. Today, we’ll share our 2 best email marketing strategies that have worked great for Scaling With Systems. You can easily model this method and make it work for your business.
These two strategies are:
- Email Campaigns
- Email Automation
Email Campaigns
Email campaigns can be one or a series of correlated emails sent out to your readers to achieve a goal. That goal can be awareness, nurturing relationships with the customer, or promoting your services.
This email marketing strategy is essentially an “ad hoc.”
Ad hoc refers to emails created for a specific purpose and not pre-planned. Suppose new feedback came in from one of your happy clients. You’ll make a campaign in your email marketing software and send this testimonial to your audience. It’ll help you increase awareness and excitement about your offer – social proof is gold!
More examples of ad hoc:
- Case studies
- Videos
- Training
This email marketing strategy plan is also suitable for testing. You can automate the “winning” email campaigns. One of the best email marketing tips is to segregate your email campaigns. What does that mean?
Segregation means separating from others. The idea is that not all leads are created equal. Not all clients are the same.
For example, imagine you’re organizing a new small event at your headquarters in the USA. It isn’t so relevant to your clients in UK or Europe. For an effective email marketing strategy, you’d consider the uniqueness of each client and how they would benefit from each campaign.
Active Campaign is a great customer management platform. We use it Scaling With Systems to automate our email marketing.
Email Automation
Email automation is another marketing strategy you can leverage to reap benefits and save time. ‘Email automation’ is self-explanatory. It works based on triggers and actions (if this happens, then that’ll happen). You can quickly achieve email marketing automation within your campaign as every email marketing software provide many automation features.
Here’s how it works: You want to automatically send a series of emails (or one email) once someone becomes a lead.
You’ll create a new automation in your email marketing software, and the next time someone becomes a lead (trigger), the software will start sending those emails (action) based on the rules and preferences you set.
Email automation works even better when you apply them to successful email campaigns. What do we mean by this?
Suppose an email campaign you sent out earlier has generated good revenue. You’re confident it can do the same for new leads. You can create email automation and make this email marketing strategy work.
Segregation also works with automation email marketing strategy. The ideology remains the same: your automated emails should be targeted and sent to the relevant audience.
Email Campaigns | Email Automation |
Ad Hoc (Case Studies, videos, training etc.) | Based on triggers and action (If this, then that) |
Use for testing | Use on “winner” email campaigns to create repetitive results |
Segregation improves open rate | Segregation improves open rate |
How To Create A Perfect Email Marketing Strategy (7 Top Tips)
Whether you’re doing B2B or B2C email marketing, you must create a thoughtful email marketing strategy based on your audience persona and goals.
Learning how to plan your email marketing strategy is not rocket science but an art. Here are some top tips that you should keep in mind to hone in on this art:
Personalization
“Personalization—it is not about first/last name. It’s about relevant content.” – Dan Jak.
This is crazy: personalized emails bring in 6x higher transaction rates.
By using personalization, you can seamlessly increase your revenue.
It’s a psychological fact that our attention is piqued we see or hear our names. It may be why personalized emails have 26% higher open rates.
How do you send personalized emails? Is it just the first and last name of your client?
Personalization is much more than that. It’s about sending out relevant emails, so the user on the other side of the screen feels understood.
You can boost your personalization game by segregating and sending to your email list as per the customer data you have.
Personalization is one of the email marketing best practices that’s easy to apply since most email marketing software today provides this feature as well. Continue to the next tips while also considering how each element can be personalized.
Subject Line
“When you have written your headline, you have spent eighty cents out of your dollar.” – David Ogilvy.
The subject line is the most crucial factor that decides whether the reader will open your emails. It’s the “gate” of your property; it has to be strong.
Good subject lines:
- Invoke curiosity
- Convince people to open the email
- Aren’t vague or generic
- Give a taste of what the email comprises.
Common, bland subject lines like “Hey, have you seen this?” get ignored as it doesn’t give much information. Try to be specific and creative with your subject lines (and yes, you can use song lyrics if they fit the content and grab attention!)
Mailchimp, a widely-used email marketing software, says that you should keep your subject line at most 9 words or 60 characters. Short subject lines have better open rates.
Example: [Case Study] $3k in ad spend > $54k cash in 7 days
It’s always a good idea to A/B test your subject lines and figure out what works with your audience to create a perfect email marketing strategy. Check your data regularly and notice patterns so you can make decisions based on facts.
Preheader Text (Hook)
Hooks are vital in crafting a successful email marketing strategy. Preheader text, essentially the hook of your email body, is the first 7-10 words.
Why are they crucial in an email marketing plan? The answer is simple: your client doesn’t have time and attention to give to unnecessary stuff. Unless you can prove to them that your email is worth reading within the first few seconds, they will likely move on.
With so many stimuli coming into people’s inboxes, you need to stand out.
The preheader text is often shown below the subject line – like a sneak peek into the email.
Context And Proof
In copywriting, every line you write decides whether the reader will keep reading. The same is true for emails.
For instance, if you include a fact or figure in the hook but fail to back it up with proof and context, your reader will doubt you. The Internet is full of liars and scammers – we all know that.
As soon as you create a hook or include anything in the email body that demands additional information, provide it with a simple link or explanation.
Call To Action (CTA)
A CTA will convert your leads into paying customers. That’s what we want from our emails.
But where do you include CTA in your emails? And can you insert it more than once?
When it comes to CTA, finding the correct position is crucial, as irrelevancy annoys people. For example, it makes sense to insert a CTA there when you’re done writing an email body and showing proof that your service has helped people. Don’t just fluff it without context.
A good call to action gives a clear picture of what the user can expect after clicking that link. An example:
Okay-ish: Download Blueprint Now
Incredible: Get Step-by-step Processes for Generating $1M in 6 Months
Email Signature
An email signature is a part of branding. While it may not directly help your email marketing strategy, a good-looking email signature helps your prospects connect with you on other channels.
You can nurture them with your content, and they might become paying customers later. Also, email signatures create brand trust and help show your brand personality to your email list subscribers.
Important: it’s necessary to keep email signatures professional, concise, and visually appealing.
What to include:
- Your name and job title
- Your contact information (phone, email, and website)
- Social media links
- Professional headshot or logo.
Mobile-Friendly Emails
Apple iPhone’s Mail application is ranked #1 in email client market share as of August 2021. It’s a mobile email client that comes pre-installed on iPhones.
Marketers can no longer ignore mobiles and tablets while creating email marketing strategies. Right from the moment people wake up until they return for a good night’s sleep, they have their mobiles with them. Most of them check their emails on mobile.
It becomes necessary that your emails look good on desktops and also on mobiles. People are likely to ignore an email that doesn’t load properly on mobile devices.
You can use email marketing templates that most email marketing software provides to create mobile-friendly emails.
Qualities of mobile-friendly emails:
- They use responsive email design and can adjust according to the device’s resolution.
- Their design elements, like font size and buttons, are large enough for viewability on mobile devices.
- They have fast-loading and optimized images.
- They have a simple layout and clear CTAs.
FAQs: Email Marketing Strategy Tutorial
What Are The 5 T’s Of Email Marketing?
The 5 T’s represent email best practices for creating a perfect email marketing strategy. They are targeting, testing, timing, triggers, and tracking.
What Are The Types Of Email Marketing?
There are several types of email marketing that you can use according to the type of your email marketing campaigns. Email marketing includes newsletters, promotional emails, welcome emails, and transactional emails.
What Are The Steps Of Email Marketing?
Seven steps are involved in creating a successful email marketing strategy in 2023. Start by defining your goals, build a list, and do the segmentation (or segregation). Then, create an email campaign, perform A/B testing, send it to your email list and start tracking your results.
Key Takeaways: How to Plan Your Email Marketing Strategy
These are some of the best email marketing tips to craft a successful email marketing strategy in 2023. You learned why email marketing is a crucial part of your sales funnel and how it can help you generate more profit by landing more clients.
These email marketing strategies are time-tested and work flawlessly. You can deploy them in your business and start doubling your revenue.
At Scaling With Systems, we build client acquisition systems that bring new business like clockwork. We have helped hundreds of companies and individuals build this machine, free up more time, and bring in millions. If you’re serious about growing your business, book a free consultation call, and one of our advisors will reach out to you.