The Basics of Email Marketing
Written by Sarah Dyer
What is Email Marketing?
In simple terms, email marketing is a form of digital marketing used to send marketing messages directly into recipient’s email inboxes. It’s used by many types of businesses to get key messages in front of their target audience to either push sales to their website, generate leads or increase other KPIs like event sign ups or service bookings. I’m sure now you're reading this, you’ll no doubt receive these yourself too in your own inbox!
Email marketing is such an important form of digital marketing in 2024 because once a subscriber opts in, it’s a lucrative channel for many businesses, used largely for retention.
“Email marketing has a typical ROI of $42 for every $1 spent. Data from Statista suggests the global revenue from email marketing will reach $17.9 billion by 2027, up from $10.8 billion in 2023” - https://ecosend.io/blog/9-ways-make-money-with-email-marketing-in-2024
Email marketing plays a key role in the sales funnel. With many businesses battling against the high costs of acquiring new customers via Meta Ads, Google Ads, or other methods like SEO and social media marketing, email is such a great way to convert not only past customers, but convert prospects too.
The Customer’s Journey + Email Marketing
First things first - we need to get people to sign up to your email list and become a subscriber before we can start utilizing email marketing! That requires a few things:
You’ve chosen your email marketing platform (Ie Klaviyo for eCommerce, HubSpot for B2B email marketing)
You have your website synced up with your platform
You have a privacy policy in place on your website, stating how you collect data and any local privacy laws and rights
You have sign up forms on your website - like a newsletter sign up bar and/or pop up in place
These forms/pop ups are linked to a list
Your lists can then be used to send automated email flows, that are triggered based off an action on your website (eg add to cart, placed an order, completed a form)
How to use Pop Ups
As soon as someone lands on your website, you can kick off your email marketing strategy, and that all starts with the pop up.
Pop ups may seem intrusive, but they play a vital role in getting prospective customers opted in to receive emails from you - something that is required to effectively (and legally!) run your email marketing channel.
Some general things to think about when crafting your pop up:
How soon should a website visitor see this pop? Consider their demographic, and whether they will be browsing on mobile or desktop. (ie an older demographic might suspect instant pop ups as spammy, but younger demographics might actually be waiting for a pop up to get a welcome offer).
Should I test my offers? Spoiler - yes, yes you should! (ie free shipping versus % discount)
How does my pop up appear on desktop or mobile and how can this be optimized?
You should look at hiding your pop up (if it’s a welcome offer) from profiles already active on your email lists, to avoid annoyance and improve your metrics
Consider how it looks on the site, and how it interacts with other elements such as a cookies bar, age-gate (for alcohol brands for example) and
Email Automations
Email automations (or flows) are so powerful because it means your marketing messages are automated - in other words, you can set them and forget them! There are a variety of email automations you can utilize depending on your business type, for example in e-commerce you would utilize any actions taken on the website that you can then follow up with a set of emails within a flow. For example the ‘Abandon Cart’ flow tends to be a top earner revenue wise, as many people are busy and respond well to being reminded they almost completed a sale, and need a nudge over the line.
For a service B2B business for example, you might use different triggers for these automated email flows for example - someone has completed a lead form on your website and you want to follow up with a set of specific messages to close a deal, warm up a lead or capture a lead to provide further information on a service.
Let's talk a little bit about e-commerce email flows. In my opinion there are eight key flows that all e-commerce businesses should have in place in their email marketing account. These eight flows cover all parts of the sales funnel, from customer prospect down to customer, continuing to repeat customer, down to VIPs. They even deal with customers or leads that are at risk of churning.
Depending on the size of your e-commerce business you may need additional flows, or you might just need the basics, but I always recommend that any e-commerce business starts with these eight key flows. This way, the foundational work is done and as the account grows (as the site gets more traffic), all the automations can flow seamlessly and revenue can be captured effectively from email Marketing without having to lift a finger!
Segmentation
The great thing about email marketing is that we can access so much data about our prospective customers and our customers. But the question is what should we do about all this data?
A key function of most email Marketing platforms is segmentation, which basically just means we can split profiles into different groups based on their behavior, their data and so much more. Again, I believe that most accounts should have a basic set of segments in place to make sure an account's KPI’s can stay healthy, messages can reach the right person at the right time and the overall effectiveness of email marketing can really be at its best.
These segments are based on a few things - here are some segments I would definitely recommend you try to create within your account.
Segments based on engagement. We want to send emails to people who want to receive emails from us, and have had a positive experience with the brand. I would suggest creating an engaged segment based on engaging with the brand within a certain time frame - either clicking or opening an email within 30, 60, 90 or 120 days. Test your email campaigns with the segment by starting at 30 days which is the most recently engaged to see how the open rate is. If the open rate is high I (over 50%) you can safely move to 60 days which would be a bigger pool of people. Repeat this process until you see the best results i.e a good balance of healthy open rate, healthy click rate and decent amount of revenue or leads coming from these campaigns.
Segments based on new-ness. I would also utilize a segment based on those who are new subscribers - that is, those who have signed up to a list within the last 14 to 30 days. These people are your hottest leads and should be receiving emails on a consistent basis, so we want to make sure these people are being emailed regularly within you sending cadence.
Segments based on customer type. I would also create segments based on customers and prospects so that you can adapt your messaging when you're sending your email campaigns. I.e. we don't talk to prospects the same way we talk to customers, so you can adapt the messaging based on the segment and the content.
Campaigns & Content
When sending regular email campaigns, your sending cadence will all depend on one your list size, your goals for your business and your content calendar.
If you are a business just starting out and you are just collecting email subscribers, I would only start sending email campaigns when you get at least a hundred subscribers or more. Again, this will depend on the business type and goals and whether you are a service provider or you are an e-commerce brand or store. Ideally when you're just starting out with email marketing, your email flows will do most of the hard work for you, allowing your list to grow, letting you send campaigns at a slightly later date.
For more established brands, you should be sending campaigns at least each week, with your exact sending cadence for campaigns depending on your list size, your goals and your product range size or messaging.
A note on content and your email campaigns - it's important to remember when sending emails that your main focus is to make sure your emails are engaging. We want to get the all important action from email marketing - and that is the Click.
The click tells us our subscribers are interested in something, and it's up to us to follow up on that action to get them the information they need to make a decision. I.e, to look again at our products to get more information, to educate them further. The final goal (for eCommerce) is of course to get them to complete a purchase. We can do this through email Marketing by making sure our emails are as simple as possible, but give the right amount of information to take them to the next step.
Think of email marketing as a small billboard to get the subscriber to move to the next stage, a timely reminder to come back and have another look - which is landing on a web page to complete the next step in their journey. Some quick tips here to keep click rates high would be to keep all the key information above the fold, as you would on a landing page. I.e a key headline, call to action button and key imagery.
Deliverability & Important Metrics
Deliverability is more important now than ever in email marketing. In 2024, Google and Yahoo released some important changes about how emails are reviewed within their inboxes. This means email marketers have to follow a new set of rules to make sure that the emails they design and strategize can still land in consumers' inboxes effectively, and steer clear of landing in spam. Here are some top tips on how to improve email deliverability.
Use human language and your subject lines preview lines avoid using all caps as this can essentially land your email directly and spam.
Talk to your subscribers as you would talk to a friend - use language that’s easy to understand, that’s simple and gets the point across quickly
If you can intrigue subscriber’s without misleading them, go for it! Ask questions in the subject line, use their first name, use customer reviews, etc.
Make sure you exclude those who have recently bounced from your weekly email campaigns and email flows. You can do this by creating a segment and your email Marketing platform, and exclude this segment from your campaigns. This keeps email bounce rate low, and your email marketing platform happy!
Simply make sure you are sending content that is relevant to the segment you are sending it to. This ensures subscribers will engage well with your emails, keep your metrics healthy and even make sure that subscribers will look out for your emails and be excited to receive them in their inbox!
Growing With Email Marketing
Growth with email marketing will all depend on the stage your business is at and how you will prioritize email marketing as part of your sales funnel as an effective marketing channel.
Email marketing will mostly be used for retention purposes, making sure customers come back. We want to send relevant messages regularly, so the brand stays top of mind and stays relevant within their inbox. I.e they want to stay subscribed! Growth wise, email marketing should be anything from 30% to 50% of your overall revenue share within your business depending on the business and it’s revenue stage.
Email should grow as your business grows - if all your flows are in place, core marketing messages are automated, and will not need much more work once set up. After that it's more about utilizing your segments properly to move subscribers across the sales funnel, targeting prospects only or targeting people who have only purchased once, etc. Any e-commerce business should be utilizing email marketing, as it plays such a key role in growth and of course, retention.
To grow your subscriber list, simply means pushing more traffic towards your website or any other areas that you gather subscribers. It also means keeping your list healthy, that means only keeping active profiles within your email marketing account, subscribers that actually want to engage with the brand.
I would recommend cleaning your email marketing lists at least a couple of times a year and making sure that your ‘Sunset’ automation flow is in place to do most of the hard work throughout the year. This is managed by automatically placing those who are not engaging with your emails into a segment that you can review and clear out a couple of times a year to keep your list healthy (and your email marketing costs down!).
Interested in working with us on Email Marketing? Check it out and take 24% off with coupon code: SUMMER24