Written by: Emma Tessler, Executive Contributor
Executive Contributors at Brainz Magazine are handpicked and invited to contribute because of their knowledge and valuable insight within their area of expertise.
Email Marketing can feel like that elusive relative that you know you’re related to but have never gotten close with. For many brands, email marketing is still an untapped resource when it comes to connecting with their audience. However, getting in someone’s inbox can be more valuable than you may think.
When we consider Digital Marketing as a whole, Instagram and Facebook typically come to mind first. If these Social Media apps were your first foray into digital marketing, that’s great! But the issue here is that these apps want to keep your customers on their app rather than sending them to your website/shop / etc.
This heavily limits your interactions with your potential customers and keeps you dependent on the app to communicate and reach them. And it begs the question, if Instagram went away tomorrow, would you be set up to continue connecting with your audience? If you hesitated even a little, you need to begin emailing your audience.
Your email list is the only list that you truly own. Your audience must opt-in to being a part of your list, and there are many ways to do this. I’ve personally worked with clients who started with an email list of 0 and built to multiple thousands within a year. Growing your list is possible ‒ you just need the right tools to do so.
The most common way to build an email list is through a free resource in exchange for an email address. These are typically PDF downloads, training videos, unreleased content, etc. The idea being that in exchange for your customer's email address, they gain something extremely valuable that they desire. This makes the pass-off a no-brainer for your dream client. Other ways you can build your list is by offering:
Exclusive content only available to your email list subscribers
Early access to offers
Discount code for an upcoming offer
You can then promote your email subscription opt-in page on your social media pages that you’ve already built, promising your audience a deeper way to connect in this new medium.
So what do you need next? A welcome sequence or funnel. Once your audience opts into whichever offer you’ve chosen, you need to continue to nurture them. This sequence should be 3-5 emails long and continue to provide additional information and resources to your reader. This way, they feel that they’ve truly gotten the most out of giving you their email and you can build deeper interest in your paid offers.
You can also think about personalizing their experience at this point. Today’s email marketing is much more customized to the user's activity than ever before. The easiest tool to begin integrating personalization into your emails is tagging. Every email marketing platform offers an option to add a “tag” to the contact cards of your subscribers. For example, if someone opted-in to my list through a free PDF I offered, I may add a tag labeled “Freebie Opt-in” to their contact cards on the backend. Keep in mind, there are ways to automate this on the backend of your email marketing systems. This way, when I want to create a paid offer that piggybacks off of the value given in the free offer, I can directly retarget this segment of my list and expect a higher conversion, since they have already shown interest in this topic before. Overall, this creates a more personalized experience for your audience so that they can feel like you truly care and understand their journey.
After sending any campaign, you want to check in on the analytics to track how successful your emails were. The important numbers you’re looking for here are your open rates and your click rates. Let’s break them down:
Your open rate is the percentage of subscribers that opened your email. Reasons this number may be low would be if your email is ending up in Spam (and therefore, not getting seen) or your subject lines are not relaying the value of what’s inside your emails. Both issues can be resolved with better subject lines, as that’s typically what lands your email in Spam to begin with. Consider your subject lines as the trailer to the movie within your email. Make sure you’re giving hints at the insane value inside, but just teasing the good stuff.
Next are your click rates. Any good email campaign has the purpose of sending the reader elsewhere, typically to your website. Your goal is always to get your readers to click through to help increase your SEO and open rates. The more readers click inside your emails, the less often they will end up in Spam for others. Additionally, consider linking as much as possible within your emails ‒ every photo, random words, in-your-face buttons, etc. We want to make it as easy as possible for your reader to find something they want more of to click on. Much like your subject link, tease in the email and make your reader click through to read the entire article / learn more about the product / get the punch line / etc.
As you go through the process of building and continuing to nurture your email list, you will notice some unsubscribes (people opting out of your list). There are many reasons someone may unsubscribe from your email list, but the important thing to remember is that this is actually a GOOD thing. You want people who are not interested in your emails to leave your list because this helps to increase your open and click rates. And as more people leave, you’re simply making room for even more dreamy subscribers to join. Remember to continue to push your opt-in page on social media, in networking circles, and anywhere you think you could be of value. Free resources or bonus value are the best ways to build trust in what you have to offer on autopilot.
While you may not see those direct conversions from subscriber to paying client right away, you will be warming your audience in a brand new way. This will lead to a warmer pool when you are ready to sell and make the sale 10x easier. If you’re just getting started, we recommend Mailchimp or Flodesk to kick things off ‒ you can always upgrade to a more robust system later. Happy Emailing!
Emma Tessler, Executive Contributor Brainz Magazine
Emma Tessler is the founder and CEO of Ninety Five Media, a new-age Digital Marketing Agency. After discovering digital marketing at a college internship and falling in love with it, Emma put this on the back burner to pursue her major of Interior Design at the Fashion Institute of Technology. However, just a few years later, she left this career to form her own Digital Marketing business, Ninety-Five Media. Today, Ninety Five Media works with scaling brands to monetize their online presence on social media platforms using strategic, current marketing strategies ‒ this is their signature Ninety Five Media Method. This Method helps their clients connect with ideal customers, build community, and convert audience members into paying clients. As a former Designer, Emma brings both creativity and strategy to her client's accounts to exponentially scale their online brand awareness.
