Five Steps to Starting Your First Email Marketing Campaign

Email marketing allows you to reach your customers and prospects right when you need to. Email marketing is a natural way to nurture your leads and generate more sales. Email marketing is using email messages to promote products and services. An email campaign aims to gain customers and provide them with information about you and your products or services.

 

The following is how to start your first email marketing campaign in five simple steps:

 

Step One: Start with a Purpose or Goal

It is important to start with a purpose or goal to create an effective email marketing campaign. Your purpose may be anything from increasing the number of subscribers to encouraging people to purchase a product to just maintaining the current number of subscribers.

 

Step Two: Form a List of Subscribers

The second step in the email marketing campaign is to form a list of subscribers. Every successful email marketing campaign starts with a good list of recipients. You can use your database, purchase a list of recipients from a third party, or get them from an email marketing service provider. This step determines how many people will see your emails.

 

Step Three: Create Unique Content

Once you have your recipient list, the next step is to create unique content for each recipient. This means that you will need to craft different messages for each individual based on their interests and needs. However, if you have the information to solve a common problem, it is worth creating an email.

 

Step Four: Use the Right Software

The right email marketing software allows you to create, send and track your emails. It lets you know the open rates, click rates, and other metrics. It also helps with automation as it can schedule when to send emails. A few popular email marketing software choices include MailChimp, Constant Contact, and Aweber.

 

Step Five: Send and Keep Track of Results

Finally, you are ready to send your first email. The most helpful and informative part of email marketing is keeping track of your results. For example, how often your emails are being opened and their click-through rates. This information will help you determine where you need to improve to see better conversions with your email marketing campaign.

 

Starting your first email marketing campaign does not need to be complicated or overwhelming. Take your time to learn how to use the right software, and be sure to create content your target audience wants to read. Email marketing is a highly valuable form of marketing that doesn’t break the bank as long as you get it started correctly.

 

 

How to Conduct an Email Funnel Audit in Five Easy Steps

An email funnel audit is a process of reviewing every step of your email marketing process to ensure you see proper conversions. I know you don’t want to waste time, resources, and worst — subscribers — due to poor email content, poor understanding of your audience, or the email marketing process altogether. However, proper review, implementation, and reform are required to run a successful email marketing campaign. Furthermore, if you want to see a high return on investment, as the average is forty-eight dollars for every one dollar spent, then you must audit your funnels.

 

Here are the five steps to conducting an email funnel audit:

 

Step One: Evaluate Your Goals

 

The first step to any marketing process is to determine your goals and evaluate them. This means step one of the auditing process includes comparing your goals to the campaign materials you created. For each campaign you have, create a list of the most important goals. Then go through the content and review it to be sure it aligns with these goals. A great way to organize this step is to create a chart for each section for your email marketing funnel to the left and then the goals established for each campaign at the top.

 

Then as you read through the material, add each section to the goals you outlined. In the end, each campaign should be neatly organized and in its proper spot to achieve the goal properly. For example, if you notice your call-to-action in one campaign completes a different goal, then you can see that your campaigns are not properly organized to achieve your goals. Your call-to-action should be the same in each to be more successful.

 

Step Two: Review Your Metrics

 

Next, take a look at your metrics. The most important metrics include your bounce rate, open rate, click-through rate, unsubscribe rate, list growth rate, total revenue earned per email, and total revenue earned per subscriber. Each of these metrics can work as red flags to help pinpoint areas of concern or highlight your strengths. For example, a high open-rate with a low click-through rate shows your titles are strong; however, you lost your readers’ interest somewhere along the way. Meaning you should review your email copy and call-to-action to be sure they align with your target audience and marketing goals.

 

Step Three: Analyze Email Flows, Segmentation, and Sequences

 

For step three, you need to review the flow of your sequences and ensure they are segmented appropriately. The more focused your email campaigns are, the more likely you are to increase your conversions. So be sure they are not too long or short and that your subscribers are in the right sequence. It is important that cold subscribers, for example, are added to sequences and segmentations that nurture them and get them reengaged.

 

Step Four: Inspect Email Campaign Value, Variety, and Structure

 

Take the time to read the content and compare it to your buyer personas. Be sure the content you are sending has various types of content, such as educational and promotional. Too much promotional content will be viewed as spam and send you straight to their spam folder. Confirm that each campaign and email have the proper structure as well as quality content and titles.

 

Step Five: Fix, Plan and Execute

 

To wrap up the auditing process, you need to highlight the red flags or areas to improve and develop a plan of action. For example, if you noticed material in the wrong campaigns, adjust it. If you saw your unsubscribe rate is higher in one campaign than the other, you need to inspect the content quality further. Then whatever changes you make, set a short deadline to track and repeat the review to ensure the changes you made were appropriate.

 

Overall, the auditing process is designed to ensure each step of the email marketing processed is being executed appropriately to ensure you see the return on investment you need to make all the work and time investment worth it.

 

What To Look for During an Email Funnel Audit

How to Write a Lead Nurturing Email Campaign

One way to grow a loyal audience with a strong relationship that understands your business value is through lead nurturing email campaigns. These are personalized and automated emails sent to subscribers throughout their journey with your business.

 

It is designed to maximize the potential of your email list and to ensure its sustainability. It’s about not neglecting the leads you worked so hard to get in the first place. Statistics show that it costs a lot more time and money to find new leads than to nurture those you already have.

 

The following are a few examples and tips to creating lead nurturing email campaigns:

Start with a Welcome Email Series

The moment someone opts in, you should thank them and introduce yourself. This is also a great moment to encourage them to reply by asking them a few questions about themselves and what kind of problems they are dealing with. This opens up the relationships and gives them a basic overview of your value and business goals. Make the reader feel like they made the right decision to opt-in.

 

Create Weekly and Monthly Newsletter or Updates

Keep your readers up-to-date on trending topics, news, and updates within your business and industry. Please don’t use these messages to sell. Instead, use them to educate and get your readers more engaged in other communities such as your Facebook Group. Tell your audience about new products or services you are working on and any additional valuable information they can use.

 

Send Segmented Promotional and Educational Campaigns

Use birthdays, anniversaries, and other important dates and information to your advantage. List segmentation allows you to send more personalized messages and education to those who care about your content. It also allows you to tailor and target your message better as no two readers will be the same or on the same buyers’ journey.

 

Always include a Follow-up and Way to Reply or Engage

Send emails that ask for some feedback and a way to engage further or reengage your subscribers. Invite them to other social media pages or tell them to reply to the email. The replies you get can ensure the content you create is valuable and solves their problem.

 

Don’t let all the hard work of finding your email subscribers waste with these lead nurturing tips. Instead, learn to enable them through the email marketing journey to maximize your results and success better. Don’t be like the average forty-eight percent of salespeople who give up or fail to follow up after the first initial contact.