What Is Email Marketing?

In the simplest of terms, email marketing is an effective way to convert leads into sales. It is a personalized way to target a specific audience. You can also use it to re-market pre-qualified leads. Email marketing is productive at every stage.

Email marketing has ample benefits. It is cost-effective. It is time-saving. It is real-time marketing, less intrusive, increases visibility, builds credibility and awareness. Plus, it is easy for tracking ROI.

Let’s dive into each stage of customer lifecycle. There are mainly five stages:

  • Awareness
  • Consideration
  • Purchase
  • Retention
  • Advocacy

Awareness

It is a simple concept. Customers recognize the problem. You can educate them on how your brand can solve their problem.

Somebody is looking for something, you come to the rescue. In this case, we do it through email. We collaborate with them via email. Bring awareness. Educate them. Present them with the solution through our product. 

For example, if you are running a shoe brand. You can share the newsletter with your customer. Educate them about your products through guides and blogs. For example, if you are running a shoe brand, you can send something like this - “5 must-have shoes everyone should have in their shoedrobe”. Get them to click on the call to action to learn more. 

Consideration

Customers focus on searching for relevant products. They compare them with other relevant products. Choose one and purchase. For most of the times, they are already aware of what they are buying. 

That is the right time to hit them with the right email and promote your product. Explain to them why they should consider it. Why is it better than the others? How can it benefit them?

Here, we are taking the example of a shoe brand. Describe them why they should consider your brand in this case. Here is a good example of a description (for your shoe brand we talked earlier) to grab their attention.

  • Discover your style and type and feel your feet!
  • Extreme comfort.
  • Give flexibility.
  • Great quality.

Remember, you are promoting your product to the person who is further along the process, ready to make the buying decision. So, hit him with the right words with email. He will definitely consider your brand. 

Purchase

In the purchase stage, you need to attract your customers. Offer them some deals or vouchers. Discounts always tend to work. That customer whom you emailed about your great footwear collection can now move from consideration to purchasing. Provide them with an offer they can’t refuse. 

It can be any specific day, date, or week. It can be a seasonal sale. Here is a good promotional email subject line to make your customer buy your product.

  • Flat 30% Off This Summer. Offer Expires This Sunday.

Hitting your target audience with an extra incentive goes a long way via email. 

Retention

Your relationship with your customer matters the most. Ensure they are loyal to your brand. They have already purchased your product at this stage. Retention is how you make them stick to purchase again. 

Reach out to them via email. Get them to buy the same product or a completely new product that just arrived at our inventory. Give them an exclusive offer; an offer that is just for your premium customers. Or come up with different combos of offers. 

Making them purchase once is not going to work. Build a relationship through effective customer retention. The key is to make them realize that the offer is just for them. Treat your customers with exclusive discounts. 

Advocacy

Advocacy is making your active and loyal customers your brand’s advocate. They have your product. They like your product. Why not make them spread the word? In short, make them advocate. Make them talk about your brand. But how?

Reach out to them via email. And say that a specific amount of our sales for this week or month is going to a non-profit. It could be for saving animals, educating children, or cleaning plastic in the ocean. They will surely like it and probably, will speak on your behalf about your brand. 

Help them spread the word and share your brand’s story in public. All you need is to come up with some fun and easy ways to offer discounts. Like, give them a discount for every friend they get to buy your product. Make sure to provide them with a call to action in your email.

This is the customer lifecycle or the funnel for email marketing. Now, let’s talk about A/B testing.

What Is A/B Testing In Email Marketing? Why Is It Important?

A/B testing is key to email marketing. In theory, email marketing is gaining high click-through rates and open rates. The idea is simple. Get more opens to get more people to click. Get more clicks to get more people to purchase.

But it’s not as easy as it sounds. So, how do we achieve that? Through A/B testing!

A/B testing is a method to analyze which of the two campaign strategies is better in terms of open rates and click rates.

In the case of emails; send out two emails. Two subject lines. Two call to actions. What you are really doing is just testing one against the other. There are no restrictions to how you can do A/B testing. It can be done with the subject line. It can also be done with the email content. 

Subject lines and email content should be intriguing and attention-grabbing. A better subject line means you have more chances for better open rates. And better email content means you have more chances for higher click through rates. 

Through A/B testing, you can analyze your email variations and choose one that gives the best results in terms of open rates and click rates. Make sure to be short, succinct, and direct with your customers. If you customize and personalize content, it goes a long way in emails. Also, add a bit of sense of urgency through eye-catchy call-to-actions. 

Some good examples of CTA’s are: 

  • Hurry Up
  • Limited Stock
  • Limited Time Offer
  • Offer Expires

Note that you can test a lot of different parts of the email through A/B testing. You are not limited to subject lines and email content.

Now let’s take a look on how to write crisp subject lines and email content. 

Subject Lines

A subject line is the first chunk of content your customer gets to see before opening the email. It should be straight to the point. Personalize your subject lines for better open rates. Don’t be too boring. And don’t be too informal. Here’s what you can do to write to a good subject line.

  • Include a number in your subject line.
  • Include an emoji (where appropriate) in your subject line.
  • Use title case in your subject line (preferred but not mandatory). 
  • Keep it to 17 to 24 characters. 

Making your subject line positive and easy to read improves the chances of click-through rates and open rates. So, personalize it in the best way possible. Know who your audience is. And don’t sound spammy in your subject lines. 

Optimizing Email Content 

To optimize your email content is to provide customers with relevant information.

  • Use recipient names.
  • Follow a logical structure.
  • Use compelling images.
  • Build rapport with customers by sharing insights they value. 

Create emails with responsive designs. Choose the right fonts and colors for your email. Use bullet points to make the content readable. Personalize emails for your readers. Add a clear call-to-action at the end.

Wrapping Up

You can’t ignore A/B to run an effective email marketing campaign for your business. Remember, email marketing can boost up your sales. If done correctly, it will deliver huge returns. But customer satisfaction and loyalty are the ultimate priority. Be polite. Show respect. And deliver value every time.

Customers’ time is precious. Provide them with what they expect from you; quality and reliability. Building customer loyalty is a slow and consistent process. Give your best to your customers as a brand. You never know which email to your customer can build a life-long relationship. 

Lastly, don’t forget to measure your performance. Gather data and analyze it. Remove unwanted subscribers. Those who won’t convert into a fruitful lead.

Opens rates and clicks rates are your obvious statistics for campaign management. Compare the open rates and click-through rates with other organizations in your industry. Know how important your subject lines and email content is to resonate with your buyers. Or else, your efforts will go in vain.