Despite the rise of social media and unsolicited spam email (which is never a good marketing strategy, by the way), email remains the most effective way to nurture leads and boost customer loyalty.
There are many reasons you should make email marketing one of your top priorities, but here are the top 3:
Email is the #1 communication channel. Did you know that at least 99% of consumers check their email on a daily basis? That can’t be said of any other communication channel.
You own your list. On any social media platform, your account (along with all your fans and posts) could be suspended or deleted at any time, for any reason, without notice. However, you own your email list. No one can take those leads away from you.
Email just converts better. People who buy products marketed through email spend 138% more than those who do not receive email offers. In fact, email marketing has an ROI (returns on investment) of 4400%. That’s huge! And if you are wondering if social media converts even better, think again: the average order value of an email is at least three times higher than that of social media.
Email is simply the best way to make sales online. Now that you know the importance of email marketing, let’s learn the best ways to go about it.
Email marketing has its own vocabulary that can sound confusing. But don’t worry! We’ve included a simple email marketing glossary to help you learn the key terms so you can plan your email marketing strategy easily.
Subscriber: anyone who has signed up or opted in to receive email from you
Opt in (verb): choosing to receive marketing emails from a person, brand, or business
Optin (noun): an incentive for people to subscribe to your list; also called a lead magnet
List: a collection of email subscribers; a list may contain multiple groups or segments
Group: a category of subscribers within a list set up by the brand or business
Segment: a category of subscribers created automatically based on their subscription activity, such as timezone, engagement rate, purchase history, and more
Automation: a series of pre-written emails that go out automatically in response to a subscriber’s actions, such as an abandoned cart automation; also known as email sequence or autoresponder
Broadcast: a one-time message you send to groups or segments on your list; also known as newsletters, announcements, promotion
Optin Form: a signup form where visitors can join your email list; optin forms can be popups, inline, fullscreen, slider, floating and more
Landing Page: a standalone page containing an optin form people can use to opt into your email list
How Email Marketing Works
Wondering how to get started with email marketing? Email marketing is made up of several moving pieces, but that doesn’t mean it has to be complicated. Here’s how it breaks down…
Social Media Marketing FreelanceStart With Your List: The bottom line is that you can’t send out email marketing campaigns if you have no one to send them to. And the other thing to remember is that email marketing won’t work if you don’t have the right people on your list.
That means you need to capture leads to grow your email list with your target audience. For that, there’s no better tool than OptinMonster:
OptinMonster is the world’s #1 lead generation software. We empower businesses to create stunning optin campaigns in a matter of minutes with zero coding skills required.
Then, using our highly advanced targeting rules, you can display these campaigns to the right people at just the right time in their customer journey.
As a result, you can drastically grow your list with quality leads and see huge increases in your company’s profits. Plus, OptinMonster integrates with over 30 of the most popular email service providers.
Add an Email Service Provider: An email service provider (ESP) lets you segment your audience, organize your list, and distribute email campaigns to your audience. You can also track the results to improve future campaigns.
A good ESP should integrate with your other marketing tools so you can turn everything on autopilot as you grow your leads.
There are a ton of email service providers out there, but we take the guesswork out and make it really easy to choose the right one for you and your goals. A big later in this guide, we’ll list out our favorite ESPs that you can choose from.
After those two steps, it’s just a matter of refining your lists and your messaging so you’re reaching your audience and really connecting with them. Plus, you’ll be able to set up some automation in your email service which will make things much easier for you.
What most people do when they want to build an email list is to put an optin form on their website and hope that people sign up. Unfortunately, this strategy usually doesn’t work very well.
To grow your email list, you need to attract people with a compelling offer. You need a lead magnet.
A lead magnet (a.k.a. an optin bribe) is something awesome that you give away for free in exchange for an email address. It doesn’t have to cost you anything to create; most lead magnets are digital materials like PDFs, MP3 audio files, or videos that you can create yourself at minimal or no cost.
It can be absolutely anything you want, so long as it provides value to your visitors for free.
For even more lead magnet ideas, check out our list of lead magnet ideas to grow your email list.
You already know that a lead magnet needs to provide value for free. But if you want your lead magnet to be highly effective, here are 5 criteria for you to consider:
Easily consumed: Lead magnets are only effective when the audience uses them, so if you deliver a 300-page manifesto, you won’t gain traction.