Sending the right email to the right person at the right time is actually more complicated than it sounds. Presenting your company via email is even harder than doing it face to face. That is the reason why your email marketing strategy should be able to help your market, your products, and services in a human and helpful way.
Email marketing is all about having a normal conversation with the people you are sending and providing value to. Remember there’s a human being on the other side of the screen, and as Matt Blumberg said: ‘Reaching the inbox isn’t your goal, engaging people is’. So, how can you actually be effective and successful in your email marketing strategy?
3 tools for an effective inbound email marketing strategy
- Segmentation- describe your buyer persona
- Personalize your email
- Implement data-driven analysis
3 aspects of a successful email marketing strategy:
- Implementing a software – ESP (email service provider) which helps you target and analyze your database behaviour
- Understanding your full-funnel conversations
- Clearly defining goals and purposes for the email.
With these previously mentioned tools, you will provide more value to your contacts, but first, you have to understand their needs. In return, these are the people that will indeed help your business to grow.
To build up the relationships you have; first set a purpose: Why are you sending the email? and What value are you delivering to the other person? You want to hit the inbox, not the trash button. Just take a look at the CATS formula:
Sending the right CONTENT to the right AUDIENCE at the right TIME equals SUCCESS.
Every lead that you have is in a different stage of the buyer’s journey: Awareness, Consideration or Decision Stage. That’s why personalization is key when prospecting. Here are some tips to implement better your CATS formula.
- The right email: It has valuable content and context of the company you are targeting at. Inbound is all about the happy marriage between content and context.
- The right person: Segmentation. Creating small groups of people with similarities that fit with your buyer persona.
- The right time: Specific content and timing. Try to identify where the buyer’s journey is. What time is relevant to their needs and goals.
Use the right tone, be straight forward and visually friendly, nevertheless, be sure to test it! Always check your email in terms of design: web/mobile-friendly and copy creation: take the time to proofread, look for typos, include the company’s name, and address. Trust is your highest asset.
Additionally, email marketing is an essential part of your ROI. That’s why setting smart goals for your campaigns is very important. Try to be: specific, measurable, attainable, relevant and timely on them. As a tip, high performing email should follow the 5 W’s:
- Who,
- What,
- When,
- Where
- Why- Why is your most important question and it relates back to the overall theme which sets the right goals for your emails.
- How
After setting the goals and decisions for you to run a campaign, it is fundamental to test them, analyze the behaviour of your leads, and check if you actually achieve the main purpose of your emails.
An analysis is when you take a look at anything complex in order to understand its nature. In this case, analysis means looking at your emails to see if they’re actually letting know what’s occurring. A good way to make this analysis is by A/B Testing; a method which consists of comparing two versions of a web page or app with each other.
There are three key areas when analyzing your emails:
- Individual email metrics
- Whole email marketing channel metrics
- Return on investment.
Finally, remember to be patient; revenue and closing deals through email campaigns are not the only data for KPI, you can have other milestones in the short term, such as open rates or click rates. Take the time and be patient when developing relationships through your campaigns and focus on the value you are providing. It is all about constructing trust, being human and helpful.
