There is always the naysayers who bash on email. They say, “It is a thing of the past.” Or, “It doesn’t work anymore.” Even, “I didn’t see a return on investment with my email campaigns, so it doesn’t work anymore.”
These are the same people who say cold calling is dead. Or Facebook ads are overrated.
Whatever, their loss.
The reality of email marketing is that it is alive now more than ever:
1) By 2022, over 4 billion people will have email accounts. That is half of the world’s population.
2) According to a 2019 statistic, email marketing still brings a 1 to 42 return on investment That means if 1 dollar is invested in email marketing, then 42 dollars come back. (1)
Whoa!
But it doesn’t end there:
3) 81% of small/medium-sized businesses still rely upon email as a primary source of customer acquisition.
4) Emails have 50% higher open rate when customization is used in subject line. (explain more of this later)
5) Emails have 300% higher click through rate when videos are used. (2)
Not only is email marketing alive, but it is better than ever.
Now as a side note, some email marketers use mail chimp, while others use Hubspot. In this article, it speaks to the capabilities of Zoho Campaigns, which I utilize because it is one application of Zoho one, a total business system. It integrates with my CRM, which I will discuss later.
Most email marketing software are pretty standard as far as features/bells and whistles. So the content in this article can serve as general info for how to use any email marketing software better.
Segmentation:
Straight from Zoho Campaigns documentation, it says, “List segmentation is a widely used techniques to target your prospects. In List Segmentation, users can divides the mailing list into different sub-sets to focus on specific criteria, such as geography(country, state, city), demography (age, gender), behavior, buying patterns, etc.”(3)
This information could be pulled from many sources, including the CRM, lead forms, buying behavior, etc. It is a way to granularize the campaign to have maximum impact. It decreases bounce rate and the chances that the prospect will unsubscribe from the list. It also increases click through, and ultimately, conversion rate which leads to higher profitability.
All of this will lead to better rapport with the reputation engines, which has a snowball effect on deliverability and all the other KPIs mentioned above.
Understand The Basics Of IP Trustworthiness/Domain Authority:
Gone are the days when an email marketer could dump a cold list in and blast his message. Instead, as a business associate recently told me, Joel Buhr, owner of National list Counts, “It’s more of a science or an art.”
There is a great article from Neil Patel, 12 Ways To Improve Email Deliverability:
1. Prime Your IP for success
2. Register a sub domain
3. Implement Sender Policy Framework (SPF)
4. Check your sender reputation
(read the rest on his website)
Think In Terms Of Total Business System:
I ran into a business person on Linkedin who was sending out targeted email campaigns to digital marketers in Hawaii. He said that he was using email marketing and I mentioned that there are certain types of people who will never–EVER–buy from an email drip. That he should overlap cold-calling, retargeting, direct mail into his campaigns.
His response, “I don’t have time to cold call.“
My thoughts, “I guess you don’t have time to win clients and scale your business.“
I use a system called Zoho one, which integrates my phone system and email into one central Data Management System, showing when people open my email campaigns or do click through. I can then take those email lists and scrape them against (Joel’s National List Service) to get cell phone numbers and business addresses, etc.
If somebody is showing interest in my email campaigns, doesn’t that hint that they are a potential buyer?
The prospect could be one phone call away from buying a high ticket service. I have time to shoot them a call. Maybe this isn’t the case if the email marketer is only selling small ticket items, but, it is extremely effective to push a client over the edge and convert something that would otherwise be a lost sale.
Conclusion:
Commit to using email marketing as one leg in a total business marketing system. It’s like WW2 when the Germans implemented Blitzkrieg tactics, war by land, sea, air. It’s the fundamental rule of 7 in marketing, meaning a client needs to get hit with a message consistently (up to seven times before the seller gains mind share with the prospect).
As Campaign Monitor put it, “Focus on insights, instead of just raw data.” (5)
That’s where all the total business system thing comes in. Literally stalk the client on social media, on Google, via email, direct mail, over the phone, in person visit.
BE OMNIPRESENT TO THE BUYER!
Of course there are more little email marketing techniques and strategies that can be used, like A/B split testing, and putting videos or reviews in the email campaigns. But all that is icing on the cake when a business entrepreneur commits to using email as part of a fundamental building block of a total business marketing system.
