Chances are, you already know a lot about email marketing through personal experience. In 2015, the Radicati Group calculated that the average office worker sent or received 121 email messages each day, and this number has certainly grown since then. So, you probably already have lots of exposure to email marketing.
We’re going to take a closer look at email marketing for beginners in this series and explore some ways you can use it to promote your small business or nonprofit.
In this post, we’ll talk about:
Later in this series, we’ll also talk about:
- How to Build Your List
- What to Put in Your Newsletter
- Writing Tips
- Segmenting Your Mailing List
- Complying with Anti-Spam Legislation
- Analytics and Conversion Tracking
- Apple’s Mail Privacy
Ready? Let’s get started.
Benefits of Email Marketing
Email marketing has many practical advantages, which Yieldify outlines in its guide to list building strategies:
- You own your emails, which means you control them completely.
- You decide the content and the timing of your messages.
- Your messages will never be impacted by Google’s penalties or algorithm changes.
The financial benefits are also large. In 2019, the DMA Marketing Email Tracker pegged the ROI on email marketing at £42 for every £1 of marketing spend. According to Salescycle, 59% of survey respondents say that marketing emails influence their purchasing decisions, while 50% buy from marketing emails at least once a month.
Email Marketing Requirements
It takes surprisingly little to start an email marketing campaign. You need only the following:
- A list of emails (preferably with some additional user data)
- An email marketing tool like MailChimp, Constant Contact, or a host of others
- Content that is relevant to your subscribers
I won’t try to advise you on your choice of email marketing tools, but if you are looking for one, you could start by running this search.
Types of Email Marketing Campaigns
Email is an extremely versatile medium, and you can use it for many different types of marketing. Jonas Fischer outlines seven specific campaign types in a post at Mailerlite. These include:
- Welcome campaigns
- Newsletters
- Lead nurturing emails
- New product or service emails
- Special offer emails
- Review request emails
- Survey emails
Welcome Campaigns
Welcome campaigns set the tone for your relationship with subscribers.
Use one or more emails to welcome new subscribers to your list, establish a relationship, or offer welcome discounts (if applicable). Don’t overlook this opportunity—74% of all subscribers expect a welcome email, and 50% open the ones they receive.
If you’re in retail, this is a good time to offer discounts or make product recommendations. If you’re a SaaS provider, this is a good time to make recommendations or provide basic knowledge about your product. If you run a nonprofit, this is a perfect time to begin building your relationship with donors, clients, and volunteers.
A welcome email also provides a chance to request additional information from your subscriber. Putting a full set of questions in your initial sign-up form can obviously be detrimental to conversions, but once people have subscribed, you can flesh out your list with additional data points. But don’t be nosy—only ask for information you will use to provide additional value to your subscribers, and be clear about why you are asking. Additional information you can request includes:
- Phone numbers (for calls or SMS messaging)
- Demographic data (for refined targeting)
- Birthdays (for sending a gift)
- Special interests (for refined targeting)
Send your first welcome email within 24 hours of subscriber sign-up. To maximize your initial impact, send a series of two or three welcome emails, with appropriate spacing between individual messages.
Newsletters
Newsletters are essential to email marketing strategy. You can use your newsletter to share updates about your organization, share pointers to your latest blog posts, raise awareness of key issues important to your stakeholders, promote your brand, publicize upcoming events, and more.
If you decide to publish a newsletter, build sustainability into your plans. Be realistic about how often you will publish, set expectations with your subscribers, and stick to your schedule. Use your newsletter to provide value to your subscribers. Those recurring communications will help you nurture relationships over the long haul.
When should you send your newsletter? A separate Mailerlite study suggests that midweek, midday is the time most marketers prefer, with the majority of them sending their newsletters on a Tuesday or Thursday. Wednesday has the highest open rate. Whatever day you send, most opens occur between 10:00 AM and noon, with a second peak between 5:00 and 6:00 PM (subscriber’s time zone). But if my inbox is any guide, mailers also favor Friday afternoons.
Lead Nurturing Emails
Relationships take time to build, but the effort can be worthwhile. Especially for businesses—according to this Smallbizgenius post, companies that excel at lead nurturing generate 50% more qualified leads at just a third of the cost. Nurtured leads also make purchases that are, on average, 47% larger than non-nurtured leads.
Use lead nurturing emails to remain top of mind for your readers, to educate them about technology, trends, and methods that are relevant to their work, and to advocate for your solutions.
New Product or Service Emails
If you’re introducing a new product or service, use email to share the news with people who already know your business. If you’re developing a new idea, share it and ask for feedback. If your new offering is especially relevant to particular subscribers, use email to offer a trial discount.
Special Offer Emails
Special offers are really an extension of lead nurturing. Some leads hesitate as they approach the conversion point of your funnel. They may stall there for a while, and there is a risk that you will lose them to a competitor.
Use a special offer to encourage conversion. A discount or offer of free shipping can work wonders at this stage. Keep your text short and simple, emphasize your offer with compelling design.
Review Request Emails
Product reviews can be a powerful motivator, and many consumers read reviews as part of their research process. But customers don’t always leave reviews without a reminder. Use email to provide that prompt.
Use simple messaging and bold design to request reviews. Consider including an incentive. Automate your review requests, sending them soon after purchase. But leave enough time for your customers to receive and try out your product.
Survey Emails
Relationships thrive on communication and feedback, and commercial relationships are no exception. Surveys give your customers a chance to offer praise and constructive criticism, and they give you a chance to see your product or service through your customers’ eyes. Best of all, they allow your customers to feel seen and heard.
Survey emails can yield actionable, quantifiable information, provided your email list is large enough and you prepare your questions in the right way. You can send special survey emails or embed questions (or entire surveys) in your regular newsletter. Consider offering an incentive to increase the response rate, particularly if your survey is long.
More to Come
This post is the first in a series on email marketing for beginners.
If you’re new to email marketing, it can offer many benefits. In future posts, we’ll talk about:
- Building an Email Marketing List
- Segmenting Your Mailing List
- What to Put in Your Newsletter
- Writing Tips
- Complying with Anti-Spam Legislation
- Analytics and Conversion Tracking
- Apple’s Mail Privacy
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