Category: Business Building

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Four Email Follow-Up Strategies to Implement

Did you know that, on average, only about two percent of sales are made on the first initial contact? This means those who use email marketing successfully see most of their profits through their follow-up strategies. If you don’t follow up with your subscribers after the initial contact, you are not using email marketing correctly or to its fullest potential.

 

Every great sales person knows that you have to reach out and communicate with the same lead more than once to grab their attention and hook their interest finally. In fact, research shows that nearly eighty percent of sales come from the fifth contact, which jumps significantly compared to the two to ten percent of sales you see from the first to the fourth follow-up.

 

Meaning you shouldn’t be the one to opt-out or give up; leave that up to the readers and implement these five follow-up strategies to improve your email marketing sales:

 

Say Thank You and Ask for Feedback

When an audience member signs up for your list or purchases a product, an automated email to thank them or ask for feedback should happen. The feedback you get allows you to make sure the process is easy to complete and that the products or services you promoted throughout your emails provide the value you promised.

 

Add Value and Personality

Show subscribers your brand’s personality, which is often your personality. Show them that you are there for more than just monetary gain. This means you should always find ways to add value and your character when sending an email. While many of these messages are automated, you should make it obvious or the same every single time.

 

Keep it Short, But Not Too Short

Emails between fifty and 125 words have often been the most successful, especially when increasing click-through rates. Too little information provides the incorrect amount of time to marketing to your readers, while too-long emails distract and overwhelms them. Thus, showing you just how crucial it is to make sure your emails are direct and to the point to make sure they follow your call-to-action.

 

Add Personalized Support

Send periodic emails to invite your readers’ personalized support through one-on-one calls or even creating support groups within your community. The point is the remind your readers that you are there for them and someone they can reach out to if they need it.

 

Don’t expect results right away from one email or opt-in sequence. The power of email marketing starts with continuously getting to follow-up with your interested readers more directly and personally. The more personalized and valuable the follow-ups, the more likely you are to see positive conversions. Give your readers the trust and credibility they need to transition into loyal and paying customers through proper follow-ups.

What is Email Deliverability and How to Improve It

 

 

 

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Six Easy Ways to Improving Your Email Open-Rate

Email open rate determines how well your emails are getting in front of your subscribers and if your subject line or titles are doing their job to pursue them to read. Either your titles are boring and unattractive, or the timing of when the email was sent is off.

 

Whatever it may be, it is important to figure it out and improve it in order to see the return on investment you are hoping for. A low open rate means your audience is not reading or seeing your content. Meaning you won’t have the opportunity to convert them into paying customers or achieve other email marketing goals.

 

Here are six easy ways designed to help improve your email open-rate:

 

Ask A Question

Intrigue your audience with an interesting question. Spike the curiosity, but be sure it is relevant to your overall goal and message as a business.

 

Discover Optimum Delivery and Frequency Time

Sending poorly timed emails can easily destroy your open rates. In addition, email boxes can get crowded, and people are not always on them like they are on social media.

 

It’s not as likely for them to continue to scroll through for hours, especially if they just received hundreds of emails. Instead, find the time your audience is active by testing different times throughout the day for the email campaign you create. Be sure to set a short deadline to track your results to compare which time is best to get your emails synced to their schedule.

 

Be Conversational and Personable

Write all your content, including emails, as if you are talking to a friend, but use a branded tone and style that your audience understands and knows is you. A message that is coming from another human or friend is more likely to get attention and results.

Common Email Marketing Mistakes and How to Avoid Them

Provide Value Every time

Even if you are doing a sales pitch, always find an opportunity to provide value. Add a fact as well as a coupon. If you are the only one who gets any value from the email, you need to start over.

 

Review and Refresh Your List

Be sure the email lists you have are new and updated. Old email lists are likely to have poor open rates. Maybe people change email accounts or interests over time, meaning no matter how hard you try, some of your lists will go stale, and it will be up to you to get them off your list. List hygiene ensures that you get a better understanding of what your real open rate is.

 

Use Short but Detailed Subject Lines

Your subject lines, like titles, are the first thing your subscribers get to see. So, make it count. Spend time crafting one that makes them want to click on it and discover what is next.

 

If you have a low open rate, one of these six areas is likely to be blamed and improved. Be sure your lists are up-to-date, your titles are attractive, and that you always find ways to add more value for optimal open rates.

 

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How To Improve Your Email Marketing ROI

Depending on your niche, you can see an average return of around forty-eight dollars for every one dollar you put into your email marketing campaign. Email marketing is powerful because it is more direct, personal, and cost-effective than other marketing avenues.

 

Your return on investment is a simple math equation that requires knowing your current revenue gained and the costs of receiving those gains. To determine your current ROI, take your revenues gained and subtract your costs. Then take that value and divide it by your costs again to determine your return on investment.

 

The equation looks like this: (Revenue – Costs) ÷ Costs = ROI

 

Understanding this basic equation first allows you to determine better the areas you need to improve or adjust to see a more positive return. To see a proper return on investment, your costs should be low while your revenues should be high.

 

Use these tips and tricks to implement now to improve your email marketing ROI:

 

Mobilize Your Content

It is more likely that your subscribers are reading from their smartphone than a personal computer or laptop in this day and age. Meaning you should optimize your opt-ins, lead magnets, email call-to-actions, landing pages, and website for mobile use. If the call-to-action is too hard to understand and doesn’t entice a click-through, or they simply can’t read the email, you won’t get the results you desire no matter how hard you work.

 

Add Video and Graphics

Your brain is wired to receive and digest visual content. It can process and understand it way faster than written words. Therefore, make graphics and videos useful tools to communicate, educate and engage with your subscribers properly.

 

Develop Valuable and Engaging Content

Develop email sequences that involved a variety of different types of content. Meaning you shouldn’t just spam your subscribers’ inboxes with promotional emails. Include educational material and even encourage them to reply to get them to participate throughout the whole process.

 

Evaluate your Spending

The last thing you want to evaluate is the spending or costs required to complete the email campaign. You are more likely to have higher costs if you don’t produce the content yourself or use many tools and software. While these are great options, they should only be used if you see results. Then you can add them to your costs as your revenue allows it.

 The Three Keys to Optimizing Your Email Content

Overall, improving your return requires keeping your spending low while maximizing your revenue by sending valuable, engaging, and quality content. The more value you strive to bring to your subscriber, the more likely they will return in the favor by increasing your return on investment. In other words, the more you invest in your subscribers, the more they will invest in you.

 

 

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A/B Testing Your Email Funnels is a Must

A/B testing, often called split testing, compares the results of two or more similar email campaigns or funnel material sent to different audiences. After testing, marketers can use this information to determine which material converts the best. Thus, allowing you to perfect your email marketing campaigns and funnels more efficiently.

 

The following is why A/B testing is essential to the email marketing process and a few tips on how to perform them for maximum results:

 

To Increase Open and Click-Through Rates

Improving your overall conversions is the main goal and idea behind split testing. When you test and track these conversions, you can easily see if it is successful or not by how high or low the open and click-through rates are compared to the other sequence results.

 

To Understand Your Audience Better

A/B testing allows you to watch your audience behavior and see them interact with your content. If certain titles or graphics work better to engage and relate to your audience, then you can better update your material to this effect. Thus, allowing you to communicate better and increase your overall email marketing conversions.

 

Increase Engagement and Content Quality

Through split testing, you discover the right ways to communicate to your target audience to improve the quality of your content. An email funnel without quality content might as well not be called one at all. If you don’t take the time to perfect and send the right content your subscribers want to see, it won’t matter what else you do to fix your results.

 

Test One Thing at A Time

Find one area of the email funnel process to test at a time. Only change your titles, then update the email copy after you are done establishing your title. Changing too much information at once can easily cloud the results and make it difficult to understand which change really increased the conversions.

 

Keep Timing and Schedule Consistent

Be sure email is sent during the same times and day of the week, even though the content is slightly different. This way, you can be sure the metrics you analyze later directly result from the content quality rather than other factors.

 

Be Sure Every Test Has a Control

This means you always test your normal content to the new idea or different content to get accurate results.  The only way to know if your test content is better is to compare it to your normal content.

10 Content Marketing Tips for Email Marketing Success

As you can see, A/B testing gives you the data you need to make better content and email copy for your subscribers. It allows you to perfect your titles, call-to-actions, and more, to improve your communication and get your readers more involved and engaged.

 

 

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Five Lead Magnet Tips to Grow Your Email List

Did you know, nearly four billion people worldwide utilize email almost daily? What is even more interesting is that every second, three million emails are being sent. So that means by the time you finish this sentence, likely eighteen million emails, give or take, just ended up in people’s inboxes, which is no surprise why sixty-four percent of small business owners have reported that using email marketing has been vital to their success and is why they continually strive to grow their email lists.

 

The most common and powerful way to grow your email lists is through lead magnets. Free or low-cost material that attracts your potential customer into your buyers’ journey or email marketing campaign. Lead magnets will vary depending on your niche and are quite low cost if you can craft and complete the material yourself.

 

Here are five lead magnet tips for growing your email list:

 

Use How-To Guides or eBooks

Short guides or how-to eBooks are attractive options to many readers. Most people use the internet to ask questions to solve a common problem and gain more knowledge about their favorite things, which is why eBooks and how-to guides are so attractive. Understanding your audience and their struggles are key to creating an effective eBook or guide that piques their interest. Nearly thirty percent of marketers prefer this option.

 

Email Courses and Workbooks

Similar to eBooks, yet more direct are email courses and workbooks. These are materials that work together to help your subscriber actively solve or work through a problem. Instead of downloading all the material at once, your readers will receive their course through weekly and timed emails. Again, keeping an audience engaged for a longer period of time is the goal.

 

Develop Templates and Checklists

Easy, downloadable, and printable material that aids your subscribers in their favorite hobbies or solves their problems are affordable and easy lead magnets to produce. In addition, they can often be used with other paid products for free to incentivize a sale further.

 

Free Webinar and Trials

Invite your audience to join in on a live webinar and offer a free trial of your products and services. This can be a great way to ask for email addresses to send a link directly to the webinar or free trial. In addition, the hands-on and live material is often more attractive and easier to digest.

 

Incentivize

Host contests and giveaways and send coupons such as free shipping or birthday discounts to incentivize your subscribers. It is hard to pass up a good deal, especially one that provides so much value and excites your interest.

Putting It All Together And Developing A Routine That Will Keep You On Track

Although lead magnets are usually free, this does not mean they are not good investments. In fact, a wpforms report stated that marketers saw a 50% increase in signups after using and developing valuable lead magnets.

 

 

 

 

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What is Email Deliverability and How to Improve It

Email deliverability is about how your readers or customers are receiving your emails. It includes keeping track of your bounce rate and increasing the safety and authentication of your email and internet service provider to ensure your emails don’t get rejected or end up in your subscribers’ spam folders. It’s likely obvious to state, but if your bounce rate is high, your readers are not getting your content, and this can have an overall effect on how email providers view your content.

How to Write a Lead Nurturing Email Campaign

The following are a few ways to improve your email deliverability:

 

Enhance the Opt-in Process

Use double opt-in forms to ensure the information subscribers provide is correct. For example, an incorrect email address or typo can easily lead to your email being rejected. However, double opt-in forms require your readers to confirm their information to avoid this altogether. Just be sure to make this requirement clear when signing up; otherwise, it can lead to further confusion, or you won’t receive your content until they confirm.

 

Establish a Proper Send Schedule

In other words, don’t spam your readers. If you send too many emails, they won’t see you as trustworthy nor know the content as personalized and valuable. If your content gets marked as spam, eventually, their email service provider will reject you altogether. It is important to note, too, that spam or being marked as spam won’t just affect the one reader. If the email service provider notices a pattern, it will also start rejecting them for other email addresses as a safety precaution.

 

Enable SPF and DKIM

This is essential to ensuring your email address does not get spoofed or risk hackers taking over your customer’s information. In addition, this information tells your internet service provider to authenticate your email address and prevents others from using the information.

 

Add Easy Unsubscribe Options

While not something you want to see, it helps improve your deliverability and other metrics as well. It keeps those truly interested in seeing your content on the list and is also recommended by the federal trade commission to add an obvious way for subscribers to opt-out if they want to. This also further authenticates and protects your email address from email service providers rejecting your emails.

 

Overall, the goal of proper email deliverability is to make sure your content ends up in the subscriber’s inbox in order to be seen and clicked open to be read. If your emails never make it or consistently end up in their spam folder, you won’t see any conversions and will likely need to start over as your reputation gets tarnished. Use these deliverability tips to avoid it.

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Best Practices for Email List Segmentation

A MailChimp study conducted in 2017 on the “effects of list segmentation on email marketing stats” highlights the importance of list segmentation. In fact, it showed improved open rates by fourteen percent, increased click-through rates by one-hundred percent, and even better decreased unsubscribe rates by nine percent. Again, showing you just how valuable it is to your email marketing campaign.

 

List segmentation is the process of organizing your subscribers based on certain factors. For example, understanding that not all your readers or potential customers are the same, even in the same industry. Most of your readers or customers will be on a different buyers’ journey too. Common ways to segment email lists include:

 

  • Demographic segmentation – This is the information sorted based on age, gender, occupation, income level, education level, and family.
  • Geographic segmentation – When readers are sorted based on their country, city, language, or other information based on their location or where they reside most often.
  • Behavioral segmentation – This is by far the most important way to segment your lists. This includes information based on how they browse your website, interact with your emails, or when and how often they purchase your products.

 

Try these best practices when creating email list segmentation:

 

Keep It Simple

You don’t need to go overboard. Instead, pick a few key pieces of information that work for your industry and goals to know where to start and how many segments to create. For example, if you are a women’s clothing store, you would likely segment based on their gender, age, and purchase history.

 

Use Buyer Personas

Buyer personas should be used at every stage of the email marketing process, list segmentation included. If you truly understand your audience, your buyer personas are like guidelines for crafting the perfect emails. They have details that outline your target audience according to their interests, behaviors, and geographic and demographic information. Thus, allowing you to control and create the perfect process before anyone signs up.

 

Automate with Tools

Automate the process and keep track of results easily with email marketing tools. These tools will keep track of your readers and their behaviors and organize the lists to maximize your goals and do the bulk of the work for you. This way, you can use your time crafting and developing quality email campaigns.

 

Overall, list segmentation aims to ensure that each message sent and received gets to the right audience member at the right time for maximum conversions. The more organized and targeted your email lists are, the more likely you will achieve your email marketing goals.

 

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Four Tips to Creating an Effective Email Sequence

An email sequence is a set of emails sent to specific groups of subscribers or readers on your list. These sequences are either trigger-based or time-based. Trigger-based usually means particular sets of criteria such as demographics or behaviors that your subscribers perform will automatically send emails in the order you set up.

 

A few of the most common behaviors include their browsing behavior, paying customer or downloading your content. Time-based can be a certain number of days after a purchase, the subscriber’s birthday, or anything based on any amount of time passing. Triggering a thank you or welcome email right after opt-in or purchase is another email of time-based sequences. These criteria should be set depending on your niche and email marketing needs. However, the way you craft the material is vital to your overall success.

 

These tips will help you develop compelling email sequences:

 

Outline Your Purpose

First, you must know your goal, and in order to do that, you must know your audience, including the kinds of problems they are dealing with. Second, what is the overall purpose of sending and creating the email sequence? Don’t just create an email sequence because you know it is the best marketing strategy out there. It helps if you have a clear goal and understanding of the email sequence too.

 

Perfect Your Title and Subject Lines

Your titles are important to increasing your open rate. This metric allows you to keep track of how your content or emails perform in front of your subscribers. If your open rate is not what you want it to be, it is likely due to your titles or subject lines. Make sure they are relevant, short to the point, and have your most important keywords in the beginning for a few quick tips on creating the right email subject titles. While they may be short, you don’t want them to be boring or crowded with too much information to look like a spam email.

 

Always include a Call-To-Action

For every goal you set, there should be a separate call-to-action that helps you to achieve it. But, again, make sure it is easy to understand, complete and obvious to your reader.

 

Be Specific, Clear, and Educational

Keep each email straight to the point, and don’t make it too long. Always use your email as an opportunity to educate and provide value to your customer. The point is to exceed the expectations from the start to gain their trust and commitment. The more educational content you provide with accurate information that helps your subscribers, the more likely they will trust your authority and establish your credibility.

 

Be sure the time and effort you put into your email sequence are worth the investment. Follow these tips to craft an effective email sequence to see the return on investment you need and achieve more email marketing goals.

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The Importance of Email List Segmentation

Separating your email list subscribers into different segments of your audience is the process of dividing up your subscribers or customers into other flows or email sequences. When subscribers sign up to your email list, they will not receive the same emails as everyone else at the same time as they go along with the email campaign. Thus, segmentation allows you to better market and communicates to your new potential customers and readers.

 

Most lists are organized based on three different factors: demographics, geographics, and behavior. Depending on your niche and marketing goals, you will need to organize them differently. However, the most popular way to segment lists includes how they behave on your websites and with your emails.

 

Once they are opted-in to your campaign, readers are then divided based on how they interact. Do they open more often than others? Do they click-through links frequently? Then it would be good to put them on a different path than those who are less likely to open or click-through your emails. They likely don’t need an aggressive approach and are clearly interested in your products or information.

 

Reasons list segmentation is an important step of the email marketing process:

 

It Allows You to Send More Targeted Information

Most businesses will have more than one buyer’s persona, which means not every email you send needs to go to every lead or customer on your list. It also means you likely have more than one goal in mind when it comes to email marketing. Segmenting allows you to pick certain keywords or information in order to organize and better target them with different key pieces of content.

 

For example, readers who have bought your products are more likely to get content about the products they purchased or new products to try. While new subscribers who have not purchased a product will be reading content on why the products benefit their life and possibly information about you and your business or other emails to get to know them better to further convert them into paying customers.

 

To Increase Overall Conversions

List segmentation better targets your readers, which allows you to communicate more effectively. When you understand at what point of the buyers’ journey they are on, then you have a better chance at maximizing your opportunity.

 

To Improve Engagement and Reputation

Clear communication and understanding your audience are key to increasing your conversions and running a successful email campaign. Better communication provides more value to your customers, further building your reputation and improving your engagement—two important metrics for running and creating a sustainable business.

 

As you can see, the key to list segmentation is to ensure the right emails are being sent to the right people to achieve your email marketing goals better. If everyone receives the same emails and you ignore primary information about your target audience, you are likely not communicating to them effectively enough to produce results.

 

 

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Five Common Email Automation Flows to Implement

Email automation flows are exactly what they sound like. It is a set of emails sent automatically to subscribers to streamline and enhance your email marketing process. Automation can be set biased on time or a certain set of events, such as signing up for a newsletter.

 

Automation will send them a welcome email. It will also ensure they receive the other emails in the series consistently. What’s more, is it can better segment your list to target and refine your communication to see better results and conversions. It would be impossible and highly time-consuming to send each email yourself, which is why email automation is key.

 

Here are five common email flows to implement in your email marketing strategy:

 

Welcome Email Series

First, establish the connection with a welcome email. If someone subscribes to your list, you should never neglect the opportunity to say hello and thank you for joining the community. They need to know at first contact what to expect and when to expect it.

 

Abandoned Cart Email Series

This is a straightforward reminder crucial for e-commerce businesses that send reminders to customers’ inboxes that they left items in their cart to purchase. Often times this is a great opportunity to incentivize your customers to continue with a small discount.

 

Personalized Discounts

Asking for a birthday, anniversary, or other personal information is a great way to set up an automated series personalized to that specific subscriber. Then, when their birthday or anniversary comes around, you get the opportunity to make them feel special by recognizing their special day.

 

Post-Purchase Series

This is a set of emails sent after a subscriber makes a purchase or follows a certain call to action. This shows that you appreciate their business and hope to continue to provide value to them. It also ensures they use the products or services correctly to maximize their usefulness. This is also a great time to ask questions and give feedback to establish your trustworthiness and credibility further and improve your customer experience.

 

Value Drive and Educational Email Series

Also known as lead nurturing content, this is a series of emails that focuses on further building a connection with your subscribers to keep their interest and understanding about your business, products, or services. The more education and value you provide your subscribers, the more likely they will become loyal customers.

 

Remember, automation is there to keep you consistent and help reduce tedious and mundane work. It does not mean you can let it go and ignore it. If you want to crush your email marketing goals, always keep track of the results and test new automated series to see which ones your readers like the most.