Introduction
Email marketing has been around for a long time and has been known as the most effective method to reach out to your customers. In fact, a study showed that about 80% of medium and small-sized businesses completely depend on email marketing for customer acquisition. Just so you know, email marketing is a great digital marketing strategy where you can send emails to your customers directly and turn them into buyers.
We believe it is an excellent way in which you can connect with the leads, convert them to customers, and nurture them. However, you will have to nail your email marketing workflow, which is precisely why we wrote this extensive email marketing guide. Not sure how to optimize email marketing? We suggest you stay with us till the very end and pen down the tips that you liked the most. Let’s jump right in!
Step 1: Build a quality email list
For you to be able to use email marketing as a digital marketing solution, you will need to build the email list first. And no, you should not purchase the email list from third parties. Instead, it is important for you to work your way towards creating a quality list for your business. “Quality” here means that the list should have those people’s emails who are actually looking for or in need of your product.
You will need to create attractive content and add it to your website so that people can easily subscribe to your email list by sharing their emails with you. And that is how you will build your mailing list. There isn’t just one way to build a mailing list. To help you out, here are some great ways to build your email list.
1. Use a subscription form
This is a simple form that people fill in and add their email to for subscribing to your email list. There are three kinds of subscription forms that you can use for this digital marketing strategy, which include
- Floating form – This form floats in specific parts of the website until the user takes an action;
- Fixed & Embedded form – This form is normally placed at the bottom of the screen, on the sidebars or footers;
- Pop-up form – This form appears in the middle of the web page covering up the rest of the content.
These forms would have
- A title to let the user know why they should join the list;
- A short description to offer more information, like the number of subscribers, email frequency, and so on;
- An image to get attention;
- Field to add the email address;
- Checkbox options for choosing the kind of emails they want to receive; and
- Sign up button, which is also the CTA (Call to Action).
These are just the basic number of fields, but you can define the ones you need based on your business type. Once you have done this, the next thing you need to do is add the subscription form to your website.
Begin with selecting the kind of subscription form you want to add and begin working on it. Just so you know, the pop-up forms are the most successful ones. And if you have a business website, it is better to have all the different kinds of forms used in your website as your digital marketing strategy. All you need to take care of is that the content you have shared on your website is attractive to visitors. For this, you can magnetize the leads.
2. Magnetize the leads
A great way to get new subscribers is to use the lead magnets. This is a piece of content or a valuable service or item that you can offer the subscribers for free. It is one of the best ways to get more subscribers easily.
3. Use Facebook
To get the best out of your digital marketing solution, add your subscription form to your Facebook page. This can be done using Woobox. You can also edit the content and adjust the design for it. And with this, you will have your email list building as people subscribe to it easily.
Step 2: Prepare the email
Now that you have your email list ready, it is time to create the email that you will be sending out to the subscribers. The email has the following parts.
1. Sender name
This lets the receiver identify who the email is coming from. So, it can be the company name, the brand name, the manager’s name, or anything else. You will need to select the option based on how popular the name is for your company and brand. You can also add two things together such as the name of an employee and the brand name, or the name of the company and the brand name, and so on.
2. Subject line
This will explain what the email is all about. In fact, it is a very important part of email marketing and digital marketing strategy. The subject should be something that hits the target immediately. It should be clear and bold. To help you with it, here are some subject ideas that you can use.
- Mention the limited availability of a product/service or state a deadline for an offer to develop a sense of urgency.
- Ask questions to provoke curiosity.
- Add numbers to your subject line to narrow the content to its key points.
- Announce new collaborations.
These things click and you will find your leads turning into customers.
3. Preheader
This is an extension of the subject you add to the email. It is used to give a little more information about the content that is in the email. You can add details like the discount number, or even just a call to action. Basically, you need to be creative with this for your digital marketing solution to work.
4. Header
The very first thing that is seen by a user after an email is opened is the header. It is the thing that would convince them to read further or check out the rest of the email. This part usually consists of a headline, menu, or just a logo. You can also add anything else based on how creative you want to get with it.
5. Email body
Obviously, this is the main part of the email that would share all the information about the email. The content and the size of the email would be completely based on the company and its goals. Start off with welcoming the audience and sharing your main message, then end it with a call to action button. You can design the overall email with images, videos, GIFs, and infographics to make it interesting.
6. Footer
This is what ends your email and it normally has the elements that are repeated in every email. These elements include the contact detail, website menu, social media links, legal information, unsubscribe button or link, and so on. What you add here is based on your business type and goal.
Step 3: Design the email
Now that you have the content of the email ready, it is time to design the email. How visually great the email looks is an important part that will help you attract customers. This is what gives the first impression of your brand and affects the purchasing decision. Hence, you need to focus on your email design as a part of your digital marketing solution. Here are some points that you should take care of.
1. Focus on the structure
Having a beautiful and transparent structure is what you need to stand out from the crowd. Every element of the email visual should help the customers understand things easily and quickly. The elements that you need to take care of include font formatting, citations, bullet lists, small paragraphs, headings, highlighted sentences and words, and so on.
Every important part of the email should be visually highlighted to make them read the email fast. In the end, add a great call to action button since it is also a very crucial part of the email visual. This button should be bold and well-visible. In fact, you can add the same button once at the top under the header and once at the footer of the email. The button should stand out and should have strong verbs that would convince the reader to click on it.
2. Responsivity & layout
A marketing email is normally created with 1, 2, or 3 columns. If you decide to use just one column, the email would work on any device. But if you select an email design with more columns, you will have to ensure that the templates used are responsive to different devices, especially mobile. If not, the email would fall apart and you will not get any return on your efforts.
3. Consistency
Consistency has to be there throughout the email design. This means that the grid, layouts, fonts, colors and any other design elements used should be the same throughout the email and through all your email campaigns. It is because consistency in email marketing is a huge part of the digital marketing strategy. By following all these points, you will be able to ace the design of your email.
Step 4: Keep track of the results
Once you have prepared the email and sent it out, you need to ensure that the email is doing what it is supposed to do. In this case, it is supposed to bring in conversions where your readers/subscribers should turn into customers.
The only way by which you can understand how email marketing is working for you is by tracking the process. And with this, you will be able to change any part that isn’t working as per your digital marketing strategy. To help you with this, here are some of the parts that you need to track.
1. Bounce rate
The bounce rate lets you know about the emails that have not been delivered.
Bounce rate = (emails returned/emails sent) * 100
An email bounces due to two major reasons.
- Soft bounces take place when there isn’t much free space in the subscriber’s inbox or if there is a DNS failure.
- Hard bounces take place when the email is sent to an address that does not exist.
You can’t do much about the hard bounces, but just delete the emails from the list. For the soft bounces, give it some time so that the problem can be rectified. If it still occurs, delete that email too.
2. Click-Through rate
The click-through rate (known as CTR) tells us the number of subscribers who have opened the emails and clicked on links inside them.
CTR = (emails clicked/emails delivered) * 100
If you see that the CTR isn’t good enough, it is time for you to edit the email content and visuals. Update your digital marketing strategy for the CTR to increase.
3. Conversion rate
This is the number of customers who completed the goal you offered in the email. To explain this, let us say a customer clicks on a link from the email you sent. But as soon as they reach your website, they exit it instead of completing the purchase, download, or whatever goal you set from the email. In this case, there is no conversion. And if the customer completes the goal, then it is counted as a conversion.
Conversion rate = (number of users who completed the action/emails delivered) * 100
For you to be able to track this, you will need the help of Google Analytics. And this is one of the most important aspects of this digital marketing solution.
4. Unsubscribe rate
This tells you about the number of users who have unsubscribed from your email list after you sent out an email.
Unsubscribe rate = (users unsubscribed/emails sent) * 100
Unsubscription is not something wrong as it would remove the people who are not interested in your product. But if a lot of people are unsubscribing, then there is trouble. The reasons for this can be as follows.
- You have a mailing list of users who didn’t subscribe to the emails.
- You are sending out emails too frequently.
- The content in your email is irrelevant.
5. Spam complaint rate
This shows the number of people who have marked your email as spam. Just so you know, it is not a good thing. It negatively influences the reputation of the sender. This means that if a lot of people are spamming your emails, it would start to automatically go into the spam folder when you send emails to new users as well.
Spam Complaint Rate = (emails marked as spam/emails sent) * 100
The acceptable spam complaint rate is 0.1% which is 1 complaint per email. Also, ensure that you have an unsubscribe link at the end of all emails so that users can unsubscribe instead of spamming it.
Final thoughts!
So, what are you waiting for? We have shared an extensive guide to help you nail your email marketing workflow and generate better results through the email campaign. We suggest you follow the tips mentioned in the guide but never resist trying new things. After all, experimentation will help you find better solutions and edge past your competition. Did you find this email marketing workflow optimization guide helpful? Let us know in the comments. Also, don’t forget to check out other informative posts on the blog!