Why is Email Marketing important? How to do it the right way?

What is Email Marketing?

An act of sending an email to a prospect with the intent to make a sale is called Email Marketing.

Email Marketing is one of the best marketing strategies to include in modern-day marketing & advertising campaigns. 

Reason? 

The use of Email for marketing, and business communication will always stay.

It is easy to send emails to potential customers directly. The exchange is very easy and interested prospects will also like to hear from you. 

Emails are already in wide use to resolving customer queries and getting customer feedback.

Similarly, if you use the best Email Marketing tools and strategies, you will be able to increase your revenues in no time.

Business communications will always depend upon emails no matter how many tools such as Slack, Zoom come into the picture. 

Points to note –

• Unlike interruptive online Ads, doesn’t breach your private space. 
• The penetration of calling has reduced and people now feel more comfortable with text-based communications.
• There are 4 billion email users around the world; higher than the users of Facebook, Twitter, & Instagram.

 Isn’t it fascinating that email users mostly stay under the radar from most of the marketers out there! Social media platforms are cool to use but emails have always been the foundation of the corporate world. Hence, you can outperform your campaign success if you sync email marketing with Facebook Ads, Google Ads and SEO.

This quote is for all the marketers reading this blog –

Hitting the hammer is important, but it is more important to know where to hit the hammer.

Overview

This is a complete Email Marketing guide that you will ever need to learn and execute Email Marketing for your marketing campaigns. 

In addition, you will learn about different email types, strategies for email marketing, tools of the trade, email marketing for beginners, and more. 

After reading the article, you will feel more confident about sending your first email to your prospect.

Excited? Let’s get started! 

What are the types of emails that land in our inbox?

Before diving deep into how to do email marketing, let us first understand the type of emails we all receive. All these serve different purposes and you must know a bit about each one of them. 

Primarily, emails can be categorized into five categories –

Newsletters

Newsletters are scheduled emails from a publication or a brand. These emails are sent out on a weekly or monthly basis. An interesting thing about newsletters is that people purposefully sign up for newsletters that they want to hear more from.

Some of the most popular publications are Vogue, Forbes.com, Entrepreneur.com, etc. These publications have a tremendous readership and people also sign up for their paid newsletter subscription.

If you have a website that drives good traffic, and if people love your content and share it often on social media; you must have an email sequence of newsletters for your readers.

It will help you showcase your products and services easily. Secondly, people will always remember your name and will come to your website to search for their queries. (Healthline.com for health tips, PaisaBazaar.com for financial management advice). 

There is a lot of trusted Email marketing software such as ConvertKit, MailChimp, GetResponse that you can use to create Newsletter sequences in the form of email sequences.

Lead Nurturing Emails

Lead nurturing emails are sent out to build trust with people who have recently entered into the funnel. A funnel is a mechanism where a cold lead (prospect) enters into an email sequence. The purpose of this email sequence is to nurture the leads and convert cold leads into warm leads and warm leads to hot leads.

These emails are very personalized and provide a lot of value to the readers in terms of knowledge and exposure. Consequently, it also helps brands to know their prospects better.

Promotional Emails

We all have seen emails that offer discounts, seasonal offers, and more. These are promotional emails where a specific brand tells you, persuades you to buy their discounted product or service.

Though such promotional emails are at times annoying. That’s why some Email services such as Gmail, Yahoo have become smart enough to prevent promotional emails from landing in the primary inboxes. 

However, there are smart ways to make the email land in the Primary inbox. We will discuss it in the later section of this blog.

Survey Emails 

Survey Emails are intended to know more about prospects. A lot of people say ‘know your customer better’ but they don’t tell ‘How’?

Here is the right way. Google form, Typeform are the two prominent survey tools you can use to survey your prospects. You can ask more relevant questions that can help you serve them better.

You will be in a better position to serve your potential customers if you have gathered much information about them.

Informational Emails

The purpose of informational emails is to send you the necessary information from a person, or an organization. The refund request emails, delivery tracking emails are a few examples of informational emails.

Short history of emails

Ray Tomlinson is arguably considered the founder of the mailing system. He put ‘@’ in the emails that directed the communication to go in a specific direction. However, there is a conspiracy that V.A. Shiva Ayyadurai invented the Emails. 

The first electronic mail was sent in 1965 that allowed users to share files and messages on a central disk. 

• The first email that included ‘To’ and ‘From’ fields became the standard in 1973. 
• Queen Elizabeth sent the first email in 1976 becoming the first head of the state to do so. 
• The first Microsoft Email was developed for the Mac Operating system in 1988. Another version for Windows was launched in 1991. 
• The features to add an attachment in an email started in 1992.
• AOL and Outlook were launched in 1993.
• Hotmail was launched in 1997.
• Yahoo mail was launched in 1997.
• Gmail was launched in 2004.

And the rest is history! We all use Gmail and on average, more than 300 billion emails are sent & received from Gmail every day. 

There was a time when email marketing started becoming less effective owing to a lot of spam. But Email service providers improvised it and today, we only get the most useful email into our inbox. 

Benefits of Email Marketing

In this day and age, your prospects are overloaded with enormous content pouring from all over the internet. Emails provide direct reach to your audience like none other and give you the following benefits –

Complete control over prospects – 

If you have ever given a thought to the fact that your Facebook, Instagram followers and YouTube subscribers are not your users. 

They are the users of Facebook, Instagram & YouTube. 

People engage with your social media content because they like your content…That’s it! 

You will never be able to generate any significant revenue out of it. 

Investing money on gaining Facebook page likes, followers and subscribers is like building your dream home on someone else’s land.

Imagine someday, the platform loses its organic reach capabilities (like happening with Facebook already) or the Government bans it (just like TikTok).  

It will be a disaster! All your efforts in gaining followers will go in vain. 

However, email ids are here to stay always. No matter what happens, business communications via emails will always happen. 

You will always have control over your prospects if you have a robust Email Marketing strategy. 

Think long-term and invest in rock-solid affordable Digital Marketing Strategies.

Consent-backed communication

People sign up on websites/blogs for newsletters and communication of their own will. They feel that you are somewhat useful to them. That’s why they are interested in hearing more from you. 

It is more likely that you will be able to convert such prospects because they have already interacted with your content/website before. 

If a subscriber wants to opt-out of your emails, accept it gracefully and do not send more emails. ‘With great power comes great responsibilities and you must follow good moral values while reaching out to your prospects. 

Personalized Content

The biggest advantage of email marketing is that it offers better personalizing of content.

You can segment your entire audience into categories (based upon the information your prospects gave you) and can use conditional content to send personalized emails to them.

No other online marketing strategy can give you such benefits of getting close to your prospects this close. 

Email Marketing works best when we use good Email Marketing & CRM tools (explained below) like ConvertKit, TypeForm, and Zapier.

These three are the only integrated tools of the trade you will ever need to slay your email marketing game.

Measurable Results

Email Marketing is measurable. You can capture Link clicks, email opens, CTR, and more. Measuring such actions helps you in Lead profiling and lead scoring. On the basis of this data, you can take the following actions –

• Segment warm leads from cold leads.

• Separate hot leads from warm leads and conduct Sales calls, sales webinars etc.
• Focus more on cold leads.

Isn’t it amazing to have such control over your marketing campaign! 

Email Marketing though still has some challenges that may be troublesome at times. There is something called Email Sender Reputation. It is a point-based categorization of you as a sender. It will prevent your emails from going into your prospect’s email if you violate any of the privacy policies or GDPR, CAN-SPAM, and CCPA guidelines. In some situations, it can also ban your account.

Read more: Email Sender Reputation Explained

Tools of trade

Different marketers use different email marketing software and CRMs as per their needs and requirements. If you are someone who is just starting with Email Marketing, you can use the following tools –

Typeform

Typeform is one of the best survey tools I use to gather information about my prospects. When a prospect signs up on a landing page/website, you can send a quick email with a Typeform link in it and ask for the necessary information you need. 

Make sure the information you ask is simple, to the point, and will help you serve your prospect better. 

With Typeform, you can have the following solutions –

Use the following templates – 

Typeform vs Google Forms

A lot of people ask me why Typeform and not Google Form? Google Form is very basic and is intended for very basic detail-filling objectives. However, Typeform offers advanced features like integration with your CRM, custom content and more. 

Secondly, the aesthetics of Typeform is far better than of Google Form. 

There is a trial version for Typeform available at its website. Sign up for Typeform and feel the difference.

ConvertKit – 

ConvertKit is one of the reputed CRM softwares you can use to seamlessly manage your email marketing campaigns. 

The tool allows you to create landing pages along with forms. 

There are different templates which you can use as per your industry – 

You can customize it as per your preference and can integrate the forms with your email marketing software.

Zapier

Zapier is an automation tool and helps you integrate your email marketing and CRM tools together. Additionally, it will also help you to automate your emails.

It is recommended that you integrate your Typeform with ConvertKit. Considering that every lead that is captured in Typeform will automatically go to your ConvertKit account. 

You can integrate more tools together as per your needs and requirements.

How to do Email Marketing the right way – 

Step 1 – Understand your target audience first –

It is imperative that you understand your target audience well. 

Do AMA (Ask me anything) activities on social media, follow relevant groups in your niche and forums. Observe what people are discussing, understand what their pain points are. 

Besides, you can also make an educated guess about this based on your past experiences. 

You can do a survey using Google forms and ask questions from your prospects.

 Step 2 – Use Lead Magnets to drive attention –

Create a Minimum Viable Product (MVP)  for your email list prospect based upon the problems of your prospects. Ensure that your product (MVP) is helpful to them in some way.

It can be a free eBook, Free course, free webinar, or free consultation. Create a landing page and use forms to get their email Ids. Send these minimum viable products to your prospects.  

ConvertKit allows you to measure how many people have opened your email and among them, how many have clicked on the link (link to download an eBook) in the email.  

Your minimum viable product will act as a lead magnet. It will help you drive the attention of your prospects.

Step 3 – Send a survey form –

The lead magnet is just one of the solutions that you will provide. However, to convert your prospect into a buying customer, you need to build trust with your prospects. 

There will be other competitors who might be selling a better product or service than yours. However, if your prospect starts trusting you and your products; it is more likely that they choose you over others.

Send a Typeform survey form to your prospects asking some personalized questions. These can be about the following – 

• Your prospect’s desired state.
• Pain points in their business.
• What’s stopping them from upscaling?
• What do they expect from you?

Keep a check on the email open ratio and the link clicks. 

Step 4 – Segment your audience 

Based on the Typeform survey, you can segment your audience into different categories. For my Digital Marketing training business; I have four segments – 

• Students
• Working Professionals
• Homemaker

Step 5 – Nurture your leads

In any sales process, nurturing leads is very important. Once you develop a habit to nurture your leads well, you will reap its benefits in the long run. 

Stay consistent with your communication with your prospects. Keep them engaged with your email sequence. You can become friends with your prospects.

Gift your prospects seasonal discounts, free eBooks, courses, and tips on how they can upscale in their fields.

Step 6 – Transact

If you follow all the above steps accordingly, it will be easy to identify qualified hot leads that are ready to be converted.  

By this time, you and your leads will be well communicated. 

Engage your sales team through direct call, or sales webinar. The sales will be seamless because the results of all the above efforts will reap in.