Any business that does not have an email marketing strategy is missing out on one of the best ways to advertise, engage with customers, and find new leads.
And if you think email is on its deathbed, think again. Although it’s been around for over 50 years, it remains a tried and true form of communication that can truly help a business grow.
When it comes to engaging with loyal customers and bringing in new ones, you cannot beat traditional email marketing.
“Email has an ability many channels don’t: creating valuable personal touches – at scale.” – David Newman, author of “Do It! Marketing.”
The Numbers Tell the Story
Email communication has an incredible ROI (return on investment) for businesses. Did you know that for every $1 you spend on email marketing, you can generate approximately $38 in return? Can you think of any other advertising channels with that kind of ROI?
That impressive ROI (which is 3,800% if you do the math) is just one of the astounding statistics spotlighted in Hubspot’s Ultimate List of Email Marketing Stats for 2020. Here are some more notable numbers from the report:
- 59% of email users reported that marketing emails influence their purchasing decisions.
- 73% of millennials prefer that businesses communicate with them via email.
- Segmenting an audience, which means sending targeted emails to specific groups within your email list, can significantly increase revenue. Marketers noted in the report that they had as much as a 760% revenue hike upon using segmented email campaigns.
How Email Marketing Can Help You Grow Your Business
For decades, email has had staying power, despite emerging platforms such as instant messaging applications. Here are some other numbers from Statista that illustrate just how big email is in our lives:
- There are 4.03 billion email users worldwide. For comparison, the world’s population is 7.8 billion, according to Worldometer.
- 306.4 billion emails are sent and received every day (up from 269 billion in 2017).
- Email usage penetration in the U.S. is 90.3%.
Email Marketing in 3 Easy Steps
Email marketing is considered one of the most effective ways for a business to connect with its customers and attract new prospects. And email marketing platforms like Mailchimp, Constant Contact, and Campaign Monitor make it easy to create beautiful email messages using pre-designed templates.
Choosing an email marketing tool is the first step, but how exactly can you use that tool to grow your business? If you are just getting started, it’s as easy as 1-2-3.
Step 1 – Create a Welcome Email and Automate It
The welcome email is perhaps the most important email you will send to your sign-ups because it is the first impression they will receive about your company.
While your welcome email can be a simple ‘thank you for joining,’ this is your chance to make your brand shine. A warm greeting, compelling brand story, a showcase of your products or services, enticing discounts, and a call to action that gives your new subscriber something more to do are all best practices.
Once you are satisfied with your initial email message, automate it so your welcome email will be sent to new subscribers when they first sign up.
Step 2 – Build Your Email List
Now that you have a welcome email in place, it’s time to build your email list. Aside from asking your friends and family to sign up, you’ll want to put the call out strategically. Here are some methods to get started:
- Add a pop-up or form to your business website and blog that encourages sign-up. It should be visible on all site pages. You can also add a CTA (call to action) to the bottom of your blog posts to encourage people to sign up.
- Advertise on your social channels, such as Facebook.
- Leverage your email signature, as well as those of your employees. Add a CTA to join your email list.
- If you ship products, add an insert to outgoing shipments.
- Offer something unique or exclusive to those who sign up.
- If you have a brick-and-mortar location where you interact with customers, put up a display where they can write down their email address and join the list.
For More on the Topic: Why You Should Start Building an Email List Right Away in 2021
Step 3 – Focus on Strategy
With the basics in place, you are now ready to deploy specific tactics to help your business reach its sales and growth goals. Here are some proven strategies:
- Launch email campaigns that promote your new and existing products or services.
- Use email to educate your customers and become their trusted authority.
- Build customer loyalty by sharing relevant updates about your business, giving access to special promotions, and making customers feel like they are an integral part of your business and brand.
- Use email automation to guide the customer journey – from the first ‘Welcome’ email to trigger points to build loyalty, increase sales, and grow your customer base.
- Drive referrals. Build a referral program and encourage your customer base to become your business’s best advocate.
Once you deploy your strategies, don’t forget the essential part of the process, diving into the data. Monitoring the performance and making shifts as needed will ensure your email marketing strategy helps you reach important goals.
For More on the Topic: Email Marketing: What You Need to Do
Need Help With Your Email Marketing Strategy?
At Flashlight Marketing, we are committed to your success, and our experts can work with you directly to either get you started or build on your existing email marketing strategy. Contact us today!
We can also assist you with your overall marketing strategy with our 6-d Process:
Discover: We peel back the layers to find out what YOU really need..we are not going to sell you on a shiny object that is useless.
Define: We then get really clear on what we are delivering to you to understand what is needed fully.
Design: Every one of our clients has a strategy designed for their individual situation, and you will be no different.
Develop: Once the strategy is designed, we develop the system to run in place so you can see the results repeatedly.
Deploy: We are consistently deploying the latest new techniques and staying abreast of the constantly changing digital media landscape.
Deliver: We get excited by this piece… delivering the results to you on time, every time.
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FREE Email Writing Cheat Sheet
Use the fill-in-the-blank templates to create any or all of your emails moving forward. We also give you some tips on what to write and what to avoid!
