- To many, email marketing feels old and antiquated,
but this is far from the truth.
Now the days of buying email lists are long gone,
but emailing those who have opted into your list
is still a prime strategy.
And this is because many customers welcome communication
from brands they already interact with,
just like our own acceptance
and use of snail mail coupons from businesses we frequent.
Now on one hand, your email marketing efforts
will be about acquiring new subscribers to your list,
and on the other,
retaining and generating revenue from those subscribers.
With email marketing,
you can inform existing customers of new products,
upsell them to a more premium package,
or even encourage them to share your business
with their peers.
Email marketing is very strategic.
Each message needs to be carefully crafted,
have a strong call to action,
and arrive at just the right moment to get noticed.
If it's not relevant, it gets deleted.
Think about your own email habits.
What are you opening and why?
What are you clicking on?
Try to identify patterns
and use those ideas to your advantage.
Now, good email marketing
is built on detailed customer segments.
Anytime you acquire an email,
you should track where that subscriber came from.
And if you have the resources,
it would be ideal to also track which emails made purchases,
how much revenue did that individual subscriber drive,
and even start associating demographics
or persona information if you have it.
For example, I might have multiple email lists
for an online storefront.
I can have a list of customers that made a purchase
in the last 30 days,
customers that are high value,
and a list of people who added an item to their cart,
but never converted.
Each of those segments
would receive a different email from me.
And good email marketing is hinged
on the idea of a drip campaign.
So how this looks is take our abandoned segment.
I might send an email in the first 24 hours that says,
hey, you left this in your cart.
There's only one step left to checking out.
Maybe 72 hours later,
I'll drop another email,
free shipping today only with coupon SHIPFREE.
View your cart now.
Now that's just one example of many,
but automated email marketing is a must have
in today's digital landscape.
There's just so much potential revenue
sitting in that email list.
Now to get the most value out of email,
you won't be using a typical email client.
Instead, you'll need to leverage an online provider
such as MailChimp or Constant Contact.
These systems will let you tailor your lists,
set up automatic triggers,
and track your results.
Email marketing is still a valuable tool.
Focus on generating and leveraging that email list.