What’s your email marketing strategy?
How do you convert casual readers into loyal clients?
An effective email marketing strategy is more than simply sending an email to a wide audience; it requires a thoughtful approach to ensure each email resonates with your audience, increasing engagement and the chance of a conversion.
In this blog, we will explore how to create an effective marketing campaign.
Table of Contents
What is Email Marketing?
Email marketing is a form of digital marketing that involves sending targeted emails to a select database.
It is a powerful marketing tool that enables businesses to communicate directly with their current and potential clients, helping to maintain existing relations, connect with potential clients, raise brand awareness and drive sales.
Via email marketing a business can share industry insights and be informative, educating their audience on topics they specialise in.
For the most part, businesses see email marketing as a way to promote services, which it can do, but as a service-based business with long-term relationship building in mind, having a strategy that includes useful and interesting content is a better way to foster stronger relations with potential or existing clients.
So how do you best connect with your mailing list?
Understand Your Audience (Before you work on the strategy)
Before considering the best email strategy and how to best connect with them, look at who your audience is —consider their age, gender, interests and challenges.
What questions are your clients asking regularly? What’s the latest political or economic shift that specifically affects my clients? What updates would they find useful?
By sharing valuable information (for free) you can demonstrate your knowledge and experience and show a client how you could help them with their related problem, without directly selling your services.
You can also divide your audience into distinct groups and develop content that directly addresses their specific concerns, making the email more likely to resonate and engage the reader, more on this below.
For example, an email directed at first-time buyers could include a step-by-step guide to the buying process and tips on how to get a mortgage.
Email Marketing Strategy: Steps for Success
From the subject line and headline to the body and visuals, each section of the email should work harmoniously to guide the reader towards your desired action.
Capture attention with the subject line
If you consider how many emails you receive daily, your email needs to stand out. This starts with the subject line.
A successful subject line needs to pique interest and promise value all within a brief sentence, so think carefully about what to include. After all, an email filled with valuable content serves little purpose if it remains unopened.
Introduce Value in the headline
The headline is often the first thing people read when they open your email – so this needs to align with your subject line AND keep them interested to read more.
Remember you only have a short period to capture the reader’s attention.
Avoid gimmicks; every marketing outlet from emails to social media should align with your overall brand tone. Suddenly shifting to jokes in your emails is unlikely to build a trusting relationship with potential clients.
Delivering the message in the body content
The body of the email should include informative and valuable content.
By tailoring your content to address particular individual’s needs and pain points and providing them with insights and solutions, you can create an email that is both relevant and practical.
Not only will this increase engagement but will also help position your brand as one that cares about clients’ needs, improving your reputation and overall customer relationships.
Images, videos and infographics
Incorporating visuals like images, videos and infographics can break up lengthy text into smaller, more digestible chunks, making the email more engaging and easier to read.
Make sure that the visuals are relevant and add value to the content, rather than used as a decoration.
A Clear and Persuasive Call to Action (CTA)
When designing an email it’s important to consider what action you want the individual to take upon reading the email.
By having a clear call-to-action that aligns with the rest of the email you can guide the readers on what to do next.
For many businesses, the ideal scenario is to point the reader to their website.
For many of Sirius’ clients who work in professional services, one of the best, proven strategies for email marketing is to share a monthly newsletter and populate the content by sharing the latest articles published on the company’s website.
The email will not be too long as the long-form content is over on the website, the email will include introductions and point readers to the full article should they be interested.
This also enables more topics to be covered in an email, meaning it is ideal if you have an audience with varied interests, or if your services might apply to the same person at different times.
Timing and frequency of emails
Identifying the ideal time to send your emails and how often can be challenging, as each audience will be different.
By varying the days and times you send your emails, you can use analytics tools to identify the most effective times to schedule your emails for optimal engagement.
For example, business-to-business (B2B) emails may perform better during work hours, while business-to-consumer (B2C) emails may do so in the evenings or weekends.
It is important to strike a balance in the frequency of sending your emails —send them enough times to keep your audience informed and engaged, but do not overwhelm them as this can frustrate them potentially leading to lower open rates and higher unsubscribe rates.
Segmentation Techniques for a Targeted Email Marketing Strategy
Depending on your industry, expertise and the size of your database, segmenting can have a dramatic effect on the success of your email campaigns.
By dividing your audience into groups you can tailor your messaging and include content that is relevant to their needs and interests.
This level of personalisation creates an email that is relevant to them and informative, encouraging the reader to engage and take action.
From Inbox to Client: Email Marketing Strategy
Email marketing isn’t just about sending out general messages in bulk; it’s about creating personalised content that addresses the specific needs and interests of your audience, transforming them from casual readers into committed clients.
To talk to Sirius about your email marketing strategy, get in touch, without obligation.
