Email Marketing For Dummies 2018
A Complete Guide to Online Sucess + Templates
Kevin - March 2018
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Email Marketing has been a silent success story for many years, but budget allocations often fail to reflect this. The average percentage of marketing budget focused on Email (in comparison to TV, print, social media, and internet advertising) is just over 1%; which is ludicrous when you consider the benefits.
Email marketing, on the other hand, provides a clear customer trail, just like social media marketing. Within 24 hours, you can find out exactly which messages have been opened, who opened them and who didn’t, and what happened regarding the click journey that took place afterward.
Of course, there’s the argument that email marketing yields just 5% of total sales.
But perhaps that’s just a self-fulfilling prophecy.
If companies are spending just 1% of their total budget on email marketing, that’s actually a pretty good return. Imagine how much less you might spend overall if you focused more of your time on email marketing…
Email leads to sales through other routes - some can be tracked, some can’t. If a potential customer places items in their shopping cart and never fulfills the order, you can send them an email to track it - abandoned shopping cart emails claw back 29% of lost sales, after all.
Email prompts all sorts of spending patterns - so that 5% of total sales, is, perhaps currently undervalued.
The ROI (Return On Investment) on email marketing, according to Direct Marketing Association, is - get ready for this -
4,300%!!
And think of all the trees you’ll have saved!
Make it a Value Exchange
We’ve all received marketing bumpf in our inboxes which have gone straight to the trash can. But at the same time, if the message is right - pitched at an appropriate level, providing something you need - it works.
Good email content develops a relationship, grabs the attention through effective subject heading, and uses a distinctive voice (WITH GOOD GRAMMAR!!!)
Read on for tips, tests, and trials that will get your emails popping and your audience coming back for more.
STEPS TO GET STARTED WITH EMAIL MARKETING
1
Establish Goals
Before you set about composing your campaign, it’s essential to have a clear idea of what your objectives are - what is it that you want to achieve?
Perhaps you want to:
Visits
Companies such as BuzzFeed make their money by selling prominent advertising space around their stories, articles, and interactive quizzes. Their regular email newsletter contains multiple links to their website, with the goal of increasing hits, thus maximizing the number of people who see their advertising, in turn raising their advertising revenue. It's a cyclical food-chain of attraction and pay-off that seems to work for them.
Increasing Sales
Rip Curl generates their revenue through the sale of surf-gear. They use email marketing to promote new products by enticing visits to their website via blogs and special offers.
Gather Donations
Although the charitable sector has been getting rather bad press of late, UNICEF has been running successful email marketing campaigns for years. They reach out to their donor base by educating them with regards to their current aid projects, seeking donations for their needy causes.
Momentum
A momentum is a pressure group associated with the British Labour party who used email marketing to reach beyond the powerful, vocal, British right-wing press. They created a supremely co-ordinated email campaign during the run-up to the 2017 General Election, speaking directly to their potential voters, raising social concerns that the current government and the national press were burying under slander and distraction tactics. Although Labour didn’t win the General Election, they won enough to derail the existing government - and a lot of that was achieved via their email campaigning.
Their campaigns included:
2
Gather an email list
You might be tempted to buy an email list.
Don’t!
Now that Data Protection Laws are changing, you'll face a hefty fine if you're in contact with people that haven't given you express, written permission to contact them.
Unless you're granted express permission to correspond with a user, your email will be considered spam and will most-likely end its life in the Trash Can. It could get your domain reported to your ISP; get you on a search engine blacklist; or banned by your mail provider.
No-one likes it when their personal email account gets clogged with mail that they don’t want.
That includes you, I’m sure.
People who haven’t actively opted into your email list aren’t the people who are going to buy from you. You might catch a straggler, but it’s not really worth muddying the name of your business for the sake of a couple of customers.
Use converter pop-ups on your website that aim to capture a visitor’s contact details before they leave your site. Or you can use tools such as OptinMonster that helps you set up opt-in forms.
Import the contact details of your existing client base into your chosen email marketing tool. You can usually import an Excel file or manually add them to your marketing list.
Building your mailing list from scratch
There’s a tried-and-tested 2-part formula that helps you build a list:
Offer a valuable incentive + simple subscribe opportunities = a large response and a big email list.
It’s a classic over-simplification, of course, but there’s a certain logic behind it - offer something, and get something in return. And if you’re offering a decent incentive, it needs to be super-simple for people to subscribe.
But what makes a great incentive?
If your aim is to develop your mailing list, they have some clear opportunities for your website visitors to join. Use a Header Bar that sits at the top of every page of your site, offering the chance to join your mailing list. Or use a Slider pop-up that contains a CTA, and an offer to keep them informed.
Have a clear CTA, derived from your objectives
So, once you know what you want your campaign to achieve, have some clear, totally obvious ways of getting your reader to follow through with that action.
If you want them to visit your website, have a button that takes them to the exact page.
If you want them to buy your product, make it easy - add buttons that take them directly to your product page or Shopping Basket.
It sounds obvious, but aesthetics are important - minimal word count (with perfect grammar), great images (with excellent lighting), and a CTA button. That’s all you need. Don’t oversell - it comes across as desperate and pushy. Make it feel like an opportunity and express how much you’d love them to take a bite of the apple.
3
What Type of Campaign Should you send?
Newsletter
An email newsletter is a regular correspondence, focused on a specific interest.
If you want to keep your existing mailing list up to date with industry news specific to your (and hopefully, their) business, then a regular, relevant, quality newsletter is a great way of keeping your brand at the forefront of their minds.
Become the first brand that comes to mind when someone on your mailing list needs to know something business-related. They will seek you out by visiting your website if you become an essential business-essential resource for them.
Some tips for great newsletters
1) Use a “From” name that your subscribers will recognize - if you sign up for a newsletter from Walmart, would you expect it to come from Walmart or James Briggs?
The From name is one of the first things people see when they receive a newsletter. If they don’t recognize the name, it will go straight to the junk pile.
Use an enticing Subject title - don’t just title your newsletter “September newsletter”. That’s just boring, and it doesn’t tell you anything about the contents.
"From Walmart - September newsletter"
YAWN
"From Walmart - Buy your iPhone X, get a free iPad! September newsletter"
Now we’re talking.
Of course, you don’t have to bankrupt yourself to get attention. Just make the contents of your newsletter sound exciting.
2) Don’t use big paragraphs! - Breaking your newsletter into consumable chunks is a great way to keep your reader’s attention.
Think about what people are doing when you send your mail (we’ll explore the best times to send a mail later!). They might be waiting in the queue at the supermarket, in a meeting, grabbing lunch. In other words, if it looks complicated, they’ll leave it for later.
Later never comes!
Make it glance-able. If your newsletter features more than one story, try presenting them in different boxes (we’ll look at this later).
This newsletter has a card-based design, with a headline and a CTA which sends you to specific places if you want that piece of information. It’s concise; it’s easy to glance at. It has professionally mastered images and CTA buttons.
3) Make your language proper innit
You’re presenting your brand. Take it from me - people are genuinely offended by bad grammar, bad spelling, and slack composition.
They're gonna hate it when they’re name is spelled wrong, innit.
Learn the difference between there, they’re and their. It’s easy.
We’re and were. They’re two different words.
Chips and chips. Do they belong to someone? I don’t think so.
It can’t be stated more clearly - spelling and grammar matter.
Bad spelling, clunky phrasing - they’re major turn-offs.
Those princes from Nairobi might have actually received the details of bank accounts to transfer their millions into had they have used spell-checker and Grammarly!
There really is no excuse for incorrect spelling these days. Spell-check. Grammar check. Use grammarly.com if you’re unsure. Even if you’re confident in your writing, it’s still a tremendous proof-reading tool.
And if you’re really uncertain of your own abilities, then hire someone whose job it is (sorry, I mean “whose job it is”) to make sure that you don’t look a dunce.
OK. I think I’ve made that clear.
Let’s move on!
4) Get To the Point
Here’s a great copywriting exercise:
- 1Write what you want to say in 100 words.
- 2Read it back. Underline just the important words and phrases.
- 3Rewrite it in 50 words, making sure that you focus on those underlined words and phrases.
- 4Read it back. Underline just the important words and phrases.
- 5Rewrite it in 25 words. Focus on those underlined words and phrases.
And you’ve got your paragraph.
5) Use words sparingly - like you want them to be read. Make them count.
But, if in doubt - hire a copywriter. You can try Upwork.com or PeoplePerHour.com. Your words are representing your company.
Marketing Offer
This type of mail-out aims to evoke a direct response in the reader. You could encourage people to purchase new stock or offer them a discount or special promotion.
If you’re looking to drive sales directly, then the marketing offer is a recognized way to bring your special attention. Have a CTA button that encourages an impulse purchase or visits to your site.
Again, make sure that you’re offering your services to people who have expressed an interest in them. It does nothing for your reputation if you send complete strangers special offers - it’s suspicious. And if you’re a big brand, it’s annoying, because the receiver will wonder how the heck you got their email address.
Other Types of Campaign
You might want to make an announcement or send an invite to an event. Either way, the above rules apply -
Whatever your objective, the rules are pretty simple.
Be clear and present yourself impeccably.
4
Creating Your First Campaign
You have:
now’s the fun part: building your campaign.
We’ll talk about email service providers that offer great templates (such as MailChimp, Campaign Monitor, etc) in a few seconds, but let's focus on your copy.
Build Your Campaigns for Easy Reading
People scan-read emails unless they’re of particular importance. An average adult has an attention span of eight seconds. Long, wordy campaigns don’t usually work (unless your target demographic is university professors, perhaps).
Your words and images should guide the reader towards your CTA. That’s the whole purpose of your email.
