Inbound Marketing 103 EMAIL

An eBook by 212 Media Studios Inbound marketing caters to the buying habits of today’s consumer. Attract potential buyers by establishing yourself as a subject-matter expert. Then, convert them into leads by providing industry information they find valuable. Close the deal by continuing to offer them personalized content using drip-marketing tactics. Finally, delight your customers and turn them into promoters of your company by cross-selling, up-selling, and reminding them how great you are with quality service and follow-up. Email is potentially a business’ most powerful inbound marketing channel. It provides a vital step between the acquisition of new leads and their conversion to customers. After all, what’s the point of gathering contacts if you don’t follow up with them?

Email takes advantage of inbound marketing’s greatest strength. The contacts you receive are of highest quality. Therefore, your emails are sent to recipients who already have a genuine interest in brands and products like yours.

Email and inbound marketing are a match made in heaven. Unfortunately, not all businesses know how to get the most out of their email marketing campaigns. That’s where this eBook comes in—it provides the intelligence you need to supplement your inbound marketing with an exceptional email campaign.

First, let’s understand where email fits into the inbound marketing funnel and its four stages:

Email is most applicable between the convert and close stages. Once your social media, blog, website, and search engine optimization (SEO) attract visitors, CTAs and content offers convert them into leads. But how do you nurture these new leads into sales-ready, potential customers? Enter email marketing.

Email nurtures leads into customers, but that doesn’tmean it has no other valuable applications.It’s also one of thebest ways to delight customers by offering the same great content that attracted them in the first place.

02 Before we delve into the detailed process, let’s consider the types of marketing emails and their roles in an inbound campaign:

SPONSORSHIP EMAILS Social media excels at spreading information, making it remarkably valuable in this step. Sharing your blog or other content via social media is one of the four main channels of traffic to your website – the others are direct, search-engine, and paid-advertising traffic. Some people think driving traffic is all social media is good for. In reality, focusing only on traffic wastes a lot of potential for the next three steps.

DEDICATED EMAILS Also known as stand-alone emails, dedicated emails include information about only one offer or product, focusing on a great call-to-action (CTA). These are usually sent to your entire email list, which could make them somewhat inefficient in converting leads and minimizing unsubscribes.

LEAD-NURTURING EMAILS A core inbound marketing tactic, lead-nurturing helps you understand your 02 leads’ timing and needs. It typically involves a connected series of automated emails featuring useful content. Because these emails work best when narrowly targeted, ask for specific information on your landing pages.

02 DIGESTS Digests highlight information that’s popular with your audience and links to the content, along with short blurbs that tell readers what to expect if they click them. Use these to attract new leads to your brand and nurture existing leads, but keep in mind that digests are not targeted, making them less effective in converting leads.

NEWSLETTERS Email newsletters go one step beyond digests by including the content on the page and delivering consistently. Use newsletters to become the first brand readers think of when they need a product or service that you provide. Newsletters are great for keeping customers who have already bought from you in the marketing loop.

After you have obtained a lead, following up is imperative to nurture a lead and increase the chances of obtaining a new customer.

Throughout your nurturing workflow, keep in mind that only one to two emails are needed. Bombarding your potential client’s inbox will quickly flag your business as spam. Keep your lead moving throughout the sales funnel by sending appropriate and timely emails. (212 Media Studios is educated in lead-nurturing and inbound marketing with the expertise to know exactly when and what type of email to send based on a lead’s place within the sales marketing funnel.)

03 Emails that should be sent during the nurturing phase include:

1. CONNECTION EMAILS. Once a lead gives his information, invite him to connect with your business via social media. This introduces other aspects of your company and helps you pinpoint the lead’s specific needs.

2. EDUCATIONAL EMAILS. These are of utmost importance. Once a lead has been acquired, get to know him. Learn which parts of your website he’s visited, consider his social media activity, and evaluate the questions he’s asked. Once these have been acknowledged, send an email on how your business will address and answer these problems. Offer a solution based on the lead’s actions and history.

This can be a daunting task, especially because careful attention must be paid to your lead’s activities. 212 Media Studios has the capabilities and personnel to determine exactly what your lead needs in an educational email.

3. VALUABLE EMAILS. Your emails should present something of value. Invite readers to subscribe to your blog. Provide answers to everyday questions, such as how to increase their ROI. Or offer a CTA for a free eBook or other resources.

4. OFFER EMAILS. Just like educational emails, offer emails require research. Review the pages your lead has visited, then send offers corresponding to these interests. Provide a CTA within the email that will take him exactly where he needs to go for a solution.

5. RE-ENGAGEMENT EMAILS. If some of your leads have fallen off the path, reconnect with them via email. Encourage engagement with your business by supplying content that your leads will find significant.

6. THANK-YOU EMAILS. Sending a thank-you email with a CTA is one of the most beneficial ways to showcase additional services and products. Thank-you emails can enable you to close the lead while increasing opportunities for further business with current clients.

04 04 Remember: Don’t send all of these emails; only send one or two. Determine which email style to send based on the lead’s place in the sales funnel. To ensure success, timing must be strategized. Keep your name recognizable so it doesn’t look like spam. Messages should be personal with engaging subject lines. Make them direct and always provide a CTA.

Subject lines are an integral component of content marketing. It’s the first thing people notice. The wording of the subject dictates whether the email is actually opened. It is your headline and enticer.

To create a great SUBJECT LINE, stick to the following:

1. LURE YOUR READERS—TACTFULLY. Use words and phrases that will draw recipients in, making them want to open the email. However, be wary of language that could seem desperate, which could land your message in the spam folder.

2. INFORM THEM. A reader won’t open something if he has no idea what’s inside, especially with a healthy fear of viruses and scams. Be clever, but not coy.

3. DON’T BE TOO SALES-ORIENTED. Leave the selling to the email’s content, not its subject line.

4. USE THE WORDS “IMPORTANT” AND “URGENT” SPARINGLY. Other words to avoid include: “claim,” “collect,” “price,” and “pay,” because they are often flagged by email providers.

5. KEEP IT RELEVANT. Attracting readers requires giving them content they want. Subject lines that are relevant to their needs and interests boost your open rates.

05 Consider the nature and characteristics of your readers. Your email isn’t just to a list. It’s to people. Each address belongs to a person with likes, dislikes, and time commitments. With this in mind, use these formatting tips:

1. KEEP IT BRIEF. The shorter, the better—if you want it to actually be read. Craft sentences that are short and easy to read.

2. PROOFREAD. Remove typos, misspellings, incorrect dates, etc. Also, check that the right word is used (e.g. their vs. there; effect vs. affect; its vs. it’s). Prevent repeated words or phrases.

3. WATCH YOUR LANGUAGE. Will all of your readers understand your industry’s buzz words? If there’s any doubt, don’t use jargon. Choose words that are easily understood when skimmed. You have mere seconds to catch the attention of a reader.

4. ALIGN LEFT. Keep your paragraphs aligned left instead of centered. Centered text can come across as unprofessional.

5. REMOVE DOUBLE SPACING. Yes, it’s how most of us were trained, but it’s no longer standard to use two spaces between sentences—especially online, where long emails and scrolling are burdensome. Two spaces between sentences can create awkward “rivers of white space” in the text.

Know exactly how you want your recipients to respond. What is your goal? What are customers supposed to know or do? This is your call-to-action (CTA). Whether you design the CTA as a button or link, the purpose of the email should be clear, and the next step even clearer.

Make your CTAs and subject lines as efficient as possible by employing A/B testing. Before you send the email, test it among others in your business, or survey your most loyal customers. A/B testing allows you to send the same message with slight variations to separate groups. You can then analyze the data to isolate strengths and weaknesses. Hiring a marketing agency can remove a lot of the guess work for you in creating effective CTAs.

The FCC regulates that marketing emails must be “opt-in” subscriptions (meaning people must sign up to be added to your mailing list). An unsubscribe option must be present in every email. Respecting readers’ communications requests should always be a priority. 06 Everyone makes mistakes—and those mistakes are often the best teachers. However, when you are a leader in the professional world, some mistakes are better left un-experienced. To save you some heartache and embarrassment, consider these email faux pas to avoid—so you can learn the lessons without the pain. In email marketing, do your best to avoid:

1. BUYING LISTS. Here’s a real-life example: a company once bought an email list of 90,000 people who had signed up for emails by checking a box, agreeing to receive email offers. The company then sent out an email. A large percentage of people marked the email as spam, causing an extremely high bounce rate. Because of this, the company was blacklisted by MailChimp, who thought they were spammers. What can be learned from this company’s omission? If possible, avoid buying lists. Instead, use well qualified contacts that you find on your own.

2. HIGH BOUNCE RATES. A bounce rate occurs when an email is returned to the sender because the receiving address is non-existent. Messages that are too large can also prevent emails from being sent to the intended recipients. You can prevent a high bounce rate in a number of ways.

First, check that no formatting errors have been made. Sometimes email files aren’t separated properly because of misplaced commas or quotation marks.

Second, look to see if it is sending to a Yahoo or AOL email address. According to MailChimp, “In an effort to stop fraudulent emails, AOL and Yahoo no longer permit third party senders like MailChimp to send on behalf of aol.com or yahoo.com email addresses. Because of this policy change, campaigns using an aol.com or yahoo.com domain for their email address will fail DMARC authentication causing emails sent to receiving servers that check for DMARC to bounce.”

If you use Conversations or other MailChimp features that send email notifications, these policy changes will affect delivery of those as well. If your profile name uses a Yahoo or AOL address, change the email address associated with your profile name to ensure you get Conversations and other MailChimp notifications. Use a private domain to send your emails to prevent this.

Third, make sure your contact list is accurate. If you aren’t sure, check out this MailChimp list test: http://kb.mailchimp. com/article/is-my-list-okay-to-use-in-mailchimp.

0607 3. IGNORING EMAIL SOFTWARE POLICIES. If you don’t follow the rules your email provider has created for usage of services, your account will likely be terminated or suspended. Common policies include prohibiting offensive content, such as pornographic, illegal, or harassing messages. Another standard restriction is marketing for commercial use without permission from your server. You cannot send spam orinformation that you plagiarized from another source.

4. SENDING TOO OFTEN—OR NOT OFTEN ENOUGH. While sending a lot of emails in a short timeframe may seem like the perfect way to gain attention, it can annoy recipients. You may start to sound like the little kid saying, “Mommy! Mommy! Mommy!” over and over, vying for attention and not knowing when to give it a break. This will drive people away from you. Frequency of emails remains the number-one reason people unsubscribe. If they do respond, they may be frustrated with your “nagging” and provide negative feedback or speak poorly about you to others.

On the other hand, if you wait too long between emails, your contacts may forget about you. They may lose interest in your message and focus their attention elsewhere.

Finding balance is crucial to building and maintaining relationships. We suggest sending emails at least once a month, but not more than once or twice a week. Anything more or less frequent will likely distract from your message, frustrate consumers, or make you appear irrelevant.

0608 CONCLUSION

When done skillfully, email marketing is an extremely valuable and intricate component of inbound marketing. But it also involves a lot of time and testing. That’s why many companies seek assistance from a marketing agency, like 212 Media Studios, to help manage their email marketing. Businesses can continue to focus on what they do best while still reaping the benefits of email marketing—and consistently engaging with loyal clients. Whether you choose to forge ahead on your own with this guidance or enlist the help of experts, welcome to the adventure! We look forward to hearing how it benefits your company.

For more information about inbound marketing, check out Inbound Marketing 101. Look for other titles in this series, including: Inbound Marketing 102: Content Generation and Inbound Marketing 104: Social Media.

For tips on inbound marketing, content marketing, and more, follow the 212 Media Studios blog, check out our additional eBooks, or get in touch. For all this and more, go to www.212mediastudios.com.

Inbound Marketing EMAIL

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