Email Marketing

The #1 ROI-producing digital marketing

What is Email Marketing?

Email marketing is simply any email communication with prospects or buyers. Email can be a blast to an entire category of leads as direct marketing or an individual message triggered by a threshold event such as a new purchase. Once an email address is obtained through any opt-in in the marketing process, email correspondence becomes a primary method for increasing rapport and moving prospects through the pipeline.

Email is a marketer’s natural choice as a vehicle due to its low cost or no cost per piece model. The development of a successful email campaign can be time-consuming and costly at inception due to the content creation and repetition requirements, plus the cost of a CRM (client relationship management system). Depending on the scale and complexity, the logic required to set the strategy is the most daunting element. Once initiated, however, email performance is second to none.

How does Email Marketing work?

Get a List

There is a science to acquiring opt-ins or new email addresses to add to your database. What makes this endeavor so enticing is that once you own the email, you have permission to “talk to” that lead indefinitely (or until he should opt-out of your communication.)

Emails can be teased out of your audience, bought from a list service, or borrowed from an affiliate. The most relevant leads come from teasing qualified candidates into freely giving their contact information and this is accomplished through the practice of 10X Content—a concept which posits that through the abundance of free content available on the web, marketers must provide 10 times the value (cleverer, more visual, more relevant, more exciting content) to capture the audience.

Segment simply

However you build your list, the next step is to segment by demographic, by product, etc. but the most important segmentation is defined by the funnel, that is to say that your messages will differ most based on where the prospect or customer resides in the buying journey itself. Are they new to you? Have they bought recently? Have they referred someone? This can get very intricate and complex so before you give up, this can be simplified for impressive results.Many companies can’t or don’t reliably track all the funnel movements of their lists so a simple way to create a robust email program is the rule of 3’s.

1. Drip: Send good content to the whole database regularly. At a high level, what would all your contacts like to see? New product launches, industry news, your promotions, venues where you’ll be showcasing? Great. Start with that calendar and send well-branded and interesting write-ups of this content.

2. Indocrination: New subscribers are easy to track and they are uneducated about you. All new subscribers get an indoctrination sequence of the best orientation materials you can muster.

3. Transactional: Other funnel triggers which are easy to identify are well-handled through email for instance, everyone who bought in the last 3 months can get a “referral, please” message. Many of the messages that we currently leave up to our sales force can better and more consistently be handled in transactional email. Think of these messages as the email equivalent of slipping a coupon into the product bag at check-out.

Create Templates

The magic of email is in the repetition. Once the elements are established, creating new email campaigns in a cinch. Develop:

1. a formula for your subject lines,
2. a branded header for each email type outlined above
3. a consistent signature line
4. an unsubscribe disclaimer
5. a standardized “from” and “reply-to” contact

Create a Calendar

Sketch out how often your drips will occur and how far apart your indoctrinations should be. It’s guaranteed to change but just take your best guess at what the right rhythm of contact should be. Important: write it out. It will never get done with consistency if it isn’t planned, edited, quality assured. Plan out all your steps.

Create a Content Plan

The biggest struggle companies report for email management is the fuzzy concept of “content”. When approached scientifically, unlocking content is magnificently easy. Content is like the air you breathe—accessible, constant, albeit hard to put your finger on. Companies like Titan Publishing have strategists, content generation tools, and writers to help your plan come to life. Then just follow your structured content plan with templates.

Why use Email Marketing?

Dropping budget on acquiring new leads doesn’t provide a good return on investment until you know how to maximize the buying cycle of a lead and move profitable customers through the sales cycle. It takes 7-10 contacts to make a prospect into a buyer. To accomplish those contacts email is a much more efficient venue than phone calls, direct mail, personal sales visits, or even text messages.

40% of companies focus more on acquiring new clients than expanding purchase patterns of current ones—a strategy that is estimated to cost 5-30 times more to achieve a sale. Current customers are much more profitable if you expand their purchase patterns: upsell, cross sell, increase frequency of purchase, increase longevity (that they stay with you), create referrals, and the list goes on.Once you’ve created email campaigns, they are used over and over, on every lead, forever after thus, the set-up cost diminishes over time.

Do you know these Email Marketing buzzwords?

• Spam
• Subject line
• Conversion
• Lead nurturing
• List segmentation
• CAN-SPAM
• Opt-in / Opt-out
• CRM (Customer relationship management)
• CTA (Call to Action)
• UI (User interface)
• UX (User experience)
• Newsjacking
• 10X content
• Storyselling

Metrics used in Email Marketing analysis:

• Size of list
• Open rate
• CTR / Click through rate
• Bounce rate
• Hard bounce
• Soft bounce
• Unsubscribe rate

What should I do if I want help with Email Marketing?

Email is not as daunting as most professionals presume. Talk to one of Titan Publishing’s email strategists and watch the power of email engage your database. Old list? No list? No problem.

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