Spending hours crafting the perfect email, only to see it land in your subscribers’ spam folder? It’s not your fault! Email marketing is a delicate science that requires a deep understanding of its most essential rules.
What is email marketing? What are its benefits for businesses? How do you implement a good email marketing strategy?
Through this guide, we will teach you how to write emails that get opened, read, and clicked. Whether you’re a novice or a seasoned professional, these tips will help you take your email marketing to the next level. Let’s get started!
What is email marketing?
Let’s start with the basics, namely a definition: email marketing is a digital marketing channel that uses emails to promote products or services.
Also known as electronic mail marketing, email marketing can be used to build relationships with potential and existing customers, to drive sales and revenue, or simply to stay in touch with customers.
Email marketing falls under the umbrella of email marketing, which encompasses all growth marketing strategies related to the use of emails, including prospecting emails.
What are the stakes of email marketing for businesses?
The main challenge in email marketing is getting subscribers to open your emails. In other words, it’s a channel that converts quite well.
For your recipients to see your call to action (CTA), you first need to pique their curiosity with a catchy subject line and a well-crafted email.
Email marketing also has the advantage of being a highly measurable marketing strategy.
Unlike other web marketing channels, it’s easy to track metrics such as:
- open rates;
- click-through rates (CTR);
- conversion rates.
Furthermore, email marketing is a low-cost and high ROI solution when considering the audience size and average conversion rate versus the pricing of major email marketing solutions.
Finally, email marketing is an excellent channel for collecting data on your prospects or customers.
This data can be enriched using software like LaGrowthMachine, then used to create prospecting lists and activate numerous leads for outbound sales or marketing.
Once your data is enriched, congratulations, you are ready to do multichannel prospecting!
With LaGrowthMachine, you can create as many sequences as you want, with our numerous actions, triggers, timing parameters, variables, etc… This allows you to be scalable and agile!
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Looking to improve your sales team’s performance? LaGrowthMachine generates on average 3.5X more leads while saving you a ton of time on all your processes. By signing up today, you’ll get a free 14-day trial to test our tool!
What are the limitations of email marketing?
A tool favored by many in marketing and sales a few years ago, more and more barriers are hindering the performance of this channel, including:
- ad blockers;
- GDPR legislation (and particularly tracking cookies);
- ISP (Internet Service Provider) restrictions;
- spamming;
- double opt-in;
- soft and hard bounces, which impact your email deliverability;
- etc…
It is therefore important to be aware of these obstacles, which are likely to impact your results, and to adapt your strategy accordingly.
LaGrowthMachine is software that complies with GDPR. Additionally, we offer settings that allow you to improve your deliverability and open rates:
What are the different types of email marketing?
In email marketing, several objectives can be pursued:
- Conversion: the goal is to generate sales or leads;
- Customer Loyalty: the goal is to create a bond with the recipient to generate upsells;
- Reactivation: the goal is to bring back customers who haven’t interacted with your brand for a while, again with the aim of upselling;
- Prospecting: often specific to B2B, the goal is to find new potential clients.
- Awareness: the goal is to make your brand known, or to promote a new product or service.
- Image: complementary to awareness, still within the communication category, the image objective is not to make your brand known, but to position it in a marketing sense.
These objectives can be achieved through different email marketing campaigns, which correspond to different types of emails:
Prospecting Email
Sent to a list of potential clients, this email campaign aims to promote your product or service by providing value. A prospecting email is generally the first personalized contact between a salesperson and a prospect, and must therefore be designed to make a good impression.
This is our specialty at LaGrowthMachine!
Moreover, we support you with copywriting throughout your campaign. Don’t hesitate to contact us for valuable advice and to boost your conversion rate!
Image Email
Also known as “branding“, this type of email aims to build loyalty and your brand image. It will be interesting to look at KPIs such as reach rate, open rate, and audience size to measure the effects of the marketing campaign.
Educational Email
This email, also called “informational,” is intended to accompany the purchase of a product or service, or to provide recipients with information about a trend or expertise to share. It is a pre-sales email that helps both consolidate the relationship with the prospect and make them aware of the product or service.
Promotional Email
Widely used in e-commerce, this email has a purely commercial objective: to promote a product or service, usually at a lower price than usual. The brand will often communicate about sales periods, clearance, stock reduction, etc…
How to do email marketing step by step
Now that you understand the importance of email marketing and the different types of emails to use, the question arises: how to do email marketing well?
To answer this question, we offer you this guide that will allow you to build your email marketing from A to Z, step by step.
Step 1: Define your objectives
The first step is to define the objectives of your email marketing. As we’ve seen, there are different types of email marketing with different goals: awareness, loyalty, reactivation, prospecting, or image.
You need to be clear about what you want to achieve with your campaign in order to determine the content and design that will help you reach your goal.
For example, if you want to increase your brand awareness, it’s important that your email is sent to a large number of recipients. Conversely, if you want to boost sales, your email should focus on conversion.
Step 2: Define your target audience
Once you have identified the objective of your email marketing campaign, you need to identify the people to whom you will send emails. This target audience can be defined in different ways. The most common is to segment your database based on certain criteria:
- Geographic criteria: by city, by country, etc.
- Demographic criteria: age, gender, income, etc.
- Socio-professional criteria: profession, company size, etc.
- Psychographic criteria: interests, hobbies, consumption habits, etc.
- Behavioral criteria: time since last purchase, purchase frequency, products purchased, etc.
Once you have defined your target audience, you need to find the right way to reach them.
LaGrowthMachine allows you to create audiences and manage lead management directly within the tool.
This way, you can segment your lead lists, define your objectives, and tailor your message and sequence for each audience!
Good to know 💡
To do this, you need a good mailing list that meets your needs. You can either buy a database or find new leads through tools like LinkedIn Sales Navigator for B2B… to be combined with LaGrowthMachine to enrich your data and send your sales emails automatically!
Step 3: Define the content of your email
The content of your email should be adapted to both your target audience and your objectives. Here are some tips to help you write good email content:
Use a catchy subject line
The subject line is the first thing your recipients will see in their inbox. It’s therefore essential to ensure it grabs their attention and makes them want to open your email. To do this, use action verbs, numbers, or emojis. A sales email subject line like “Take advantage of our summer sale!” is much more likely to be read than “Our summer sale starts!.
Be clear and concise
For effective email marketing, your message should be easy to read and understand. Use short sentences and paragraphs, and focus on a single message per email.
Include a call to action
Your email should contain a call to action, which is an element that encourages your recipients to take the desired action. This can be a button (“Take advantage of our sale!”) or a link (“For more information, click here”).
Personalize your messages
Thanks to data enrichment tools like LaGrowthMachine, you can now easily personalize your emails. For example, you can address your recipients by their first name using variable systems in the subject line or body of the message. This will make them feel closer to your brand and encourage them to take action.
Include images and videos
Images and videos are much more effective than plain text for capturing people’s attention. They also help convey your message more clearly.
Step 4: Design your email
The design of your email is just as important as its content. Indeed, a poorly designed email will not only fail to achieve its objectives but will also harm your brand image. Here are some tips for designing an impactful email:
Choose the right format
There are two types of email formats: HTML and plain text. HTML format is the most common as it allows you to add images, videos, and links to your messages.
However, plain text emails can sometimes be more effective, especially if you are targeting a B2B audience.
Use a responsive design
More and more people are reading their emails on their mobile phones. That’s why it’s important to use a responsive design, meaning a design that adapts to all screen sizes.
Include your logo
In the signature or in a graphic, your email should include your company logo so that it is easily recognizable. This will create a stronger connection with your recipients.
Step 5: Test your email
Before sending your email marketing campaigns, it is essential to test them to ensure they work correctly. To do this, you can use an A/B testing tool like Litmus. This tool will allow you to test how your email renders on different devices and platforms.
Good to know 💡
You can also send a test email to yourself or a colleague to ensure the message displays as you intend. Once this step is completed, you are ready to send!
What are the best solutions for email marketing?
Often mistakenly called marketing automation solutions, there are many email marketing solutions on the market. Among the most popular are:
- MailChimp;
- Constant Contact;
- Sendinblue;
- Sarbacane;
- etc…
Each of these solutions has its own advantages and disadvantages, so it’s important to choose the one that best suits you.
For example, if you’re looking for an easy-to-use solution with many features, MailChimp might be a good option. On the other hand, if you’re looking for a more affordable solution, Constant Contact might be a better choice.
The best way to know which solution is best for you is simply to benchmark email marketing software. Most of these email tools also offer trial periods, which you should take full advantage of before making your choice.