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5 Times You Should Have Sent an Email Instead

August 12, 2021 No Comments

It is much easier to clear up a miscommunication 20 minutes after a meeting than six months down the road

In a previous article, I shared with you four situations in which you should never use email, and we got a lot of great comments. So today I want to share with you five times that you should use email instead of an alternative. Because in today’s fast-paced remote workplace, there is still a time and a place for email. Here are some examples.

1. A Quick Written Message

Let’s say you have back-to-back meetings all day and you don’t have time to pick up the phone to ask your assistant for a certain piece of information or to ask your marketing director a quick question about your latest pay-per-click campaign. It is super simple to shoot off an email in between Zoom meetings to get the message to its intended recipient. Email is great if you just need a quick answer and you don’t have the time to set up a meeting or pick up the phone.

2. To Share Information or Data or a Quick Report

I like to use email to aid in the delivery of structured reports to prompt somebody to look at it or act upon the data within. So, for example, let’s say you have a dashboard that has your marketing stats and you just don’t get on there regularly to look at it. Well, you can set it up to automatically send an email to you or other key employees each week or every two weeks or every month that shows you your KPI’s. It’s a great way to stay on top of the data that matters to you. Beware of doing this too often, however; if you receive an email every time someone visits your website or fills out a lead capture form, you may start to ignore the data within and miss valuable opportunities to act on key pieces of information.

3. To Document Something

You just had a great meeting with a vendor, and there were a lot of things that were shared during your meeting. Perhaps there were specific deliverables that the vendor promised. Perhaps there were deadlines set that need to be followed up on? Maybe there was a guarantee of results. You want to put that in writing immediately after the meeting and send it off to all parties involved to get their written approval and make sure that you are all on the same page. It is much easier to clear up a miscommunication 20 minutes after a meeting than six months down the road.

4. When the Conversation Is Asynchronous

When it comes to asynchronous conversations, email is really quite good. You can share an email with someone at 3 p.m., but, let’s say, they’re working on a project and they take a look at it the very next morning. They get back with you the next morning, and you get back to them when you have a chance. When it isn’t time sensitive and you don’t want to interrupt someone’s flow, email is a good option.

5. When You Need to Share Something With a Group

Email is great for communicating with a group of people. Maybe it’s about an upcoming sale that will be companywide. Maybe you want to highlight a companywide victory or share a report of particular interest to an entire department. Email can be great for that.

Feature Image Credit: Getty Images

By David Finkel

Author, ‘The Freedom Formula: How to Succeed in Business Without Sacrificing Your Family, Health, or Life’ @DavidFinkel

Sourced from Inc.

In News

Why Every E-Commerce Brand Needs to Be All-In on Email Marketing

August 6, 2021 No Comments

By Ross Andrew Paquette

Email isn’t going anywhere, and it cannot be ignored.

Millions of consumers worldwide use email and its use continues to increase throughout the years. Email is one of the most popular communication channels, and the majority of emails sent daily are business related.

Think of how many emails you receive on a daily and weekly basis — they consume a large part of our life. From notifications to paperless billing — we rely heavily on emails every single day.

Email marketing has continued to be one of the most effective ways for a business to market to its customers. Email is personal and the open rates put your message in front of its intended recipients more than any other channel.

Email isn’t going anywhere, and while SMS marketing may be experiencing industry-high open rates, specifically in the e-commerce industry, email cannot be ignored. Here is why brands need to be all-in on email marketing.

More customizable and personal than social media

E-commerce brands, especially direct-to-consumer brands, love social media. While social media offers a great platform to market to your customers, it isn’t highly customizable or personal.

If a brand has 100,000 followers on Instagram, for example, every Post or Story is broadcast to that entire audience. What if a D2C apparel brand has both men’s and women’s lines? A post highlighting the women’s spring collection is going to be seen by all followers — male and female.

Email, however, allows an e-commerce brand to segment its list based on data. An apparel brand can have a main list that includes all customers, and then segment that into lists according to purchase behaviour.

Sending an email announcing a new women’s line to customers that have previously purchased women’s apparel is going to perform much better than an offer broadcast to the entire list. The same applies to men’s drops.

Email personalization also helps to create a stronger relationship. A post on social media feels generic, whereas an email addressed to the recipient feels more personal.

Highly measurable data

When you take all of the data available to you and break it down, you can make incredible improvements in your future email deployments. You can further segment your list, identifying your best customers and you can also use data to determine the best days of the week and time of day to send messages.

Numbers don’t lie, and when you take the time to analyse your email data, you will find new opportunities and optimize them to improve your overall results. For example, you might find that general newsletters have a significantly higher open rate on Tuesday afternoon, while special offers convert better on Friday mornings.

Access to this data also allows you to send dynamic content within your emails, tailored to each recipient. When you place an offer for a product they were recently viewing on your website in front of them, they are more likely to convert than they would be if it was just a generic blanket offer designed to appeal to the masses.

Consumers have instant access to their email via mobile devices

Mobile devices have the majority of consumers’ email at the tip of their fingers. You don’t have to wait for them to get home or to login to their email on a desktop or laptop. They are notified as soon as that email hits their device.

Whether or not they open your email immediately depends on several factors. If they are busy, they are going to ignore their email until they have time to dive in. A strong Call to Action in the email subject, however, can potentially get your emails opened very quickly.

Most consumers are glued to their mobile phones all day and all night — from the morning when they wake up until it’s time to go to sleep. Even while working or preoccupied, most will at least glance at their notifications.

Email gives you instant access to the majority of your customer base. Remember, you aren’t the only brand vying for their attention. Strong email subjects to draw high click-through rates are important, as is conveying your message within the first few sentences.

The right offer can trigger an immediate action, which is the beauty of email marketing. A consumer could have no intention of making a purchase, but they become intrigued with your offer, and the next thing they know, their credit card is out and they are completing a transaction on your website from their mobile device.

Cost-effective

Online marketing costs are skyrocketing for e-commerce brands. Facebook ads are becoming increasingly popular, therefore driving costs so high that it’s forcing many brands to look for additional channels that provide a more affordable acquisition cost.

Email is hands-down the most cost-effective, as the hard costs to deploy messages are minimal. Customer emails are collected when they make a purchase and via opt-ins on-site. While there is a cost associated with every email address added to a list, that is a one-time cost.

That email list turns into an asset that becomes more valuable as it grows. Large e-commerce brands can send email marketing offers weekly or bi-weekly and generate a substantial amount of revenue each time without the customer acquisition costs that come with Google Ads and Facebook ads.

By Ross Andrew Paquette

Sourced from Entrepreneur Europe

In News

How to write an email subject line that could get you promoted

July 9, 2021 No Comments

Sourced from LADDERS

Your boss will open any email you send them. Your boss’s boss’s boss might not.

That’s a problem you want to fix. Your career could depend on it.

This may not be the reality at small companies, where a VP reads every internal email that comes her way. But at a giant corporation like Google, where I work, it’s simply the reality. Imagine unplugging for a week away with your kids, and then coming back to a mountain of laundry and 462 unread emails. That’s what a corporate VP is dealing with every afternoon.

Compounding this problem is that people on the corporate ladder are constantly seeking recognition for their work, because that’s the pathway upwards. You want that attention because you’re working on cool stuff! You inspired Engineering to fix the product and reduce customer care contacts by 12%, and that project might nudge you up to the next performance rating bucket at your annual review.

To get noticed, you must win a competition for attention. You must woo your corporate executive to open your email. You have but one chance to grab your reader’s attention, and that chance is your subject line.

Here are three things you can do to nail it.

1. Start with a call to action

When you email your boss’s boss’s boss, think of it as a marketing email. You are the product being marketed. And if you’re at all versed in email marketing 101, you know the first lesson in getting someone’s attention: You need a strong call to action.

A call to action asks the reader to do something — share, sign up, give feedback, or anything else. But so many subject lines lack them.

I’m high enough in the corporate ladder that I am someone’s boss’s boss’s boss, and as I look at the first 100 emails in my inbox now, I see that only two have a call to action. The remaining 98 are less action-oriented, like, “Thursday’s leadership meeting” or “Dashboard use cases.” That doesn’t urge me to do anything.

Use a call to action to inspire your reader to read on. “Thursday’s leadership meeting” could become, “Please add agenda items to Thursday’s leadership meeting,” and “Dashboard use cases” might be more interesting as “Please give feedback on dashboard use cases.”

Of course, the act wears thin if every email has a call to action; there are times when it is simply not needed. Use it when you really want your audience to respond or do something.

2. Emphasize what’s in it for them

Not every email to your boss’s boss’s boss should be about how great you are. But every email can display how attentive to detail you are.

Consider this situation: Maybe you’re emailing colleagues about the Intern Development Day initiative you led. You might be tempted to write “Intern Dev Day” as your subject line — but that’s a missed opportunity to serve your audience (which might include that VP you want to impress).

Instead of announcing “Intern Development Day”, take it a step further to clarify why the reader should care about this Intern Dev Day in the first place. Maybe your senior VPs can leverage the cool idea the interns came up with and apply it to their own business strategy. In that case, the subject line “Interns thrive during Dev Day; leverage their efficiency ideas” signals to the reader what’s in it for them.

If you want to go a step further, don’t send a mass email at all — instead, customize the email for different audiences. If you are writing to the VP of the finance department, for example, your subject line might be, “Help our interns implement Dev Day idea to reduce costs by 2%.” When a senior executive has hundreds or thousands of people in their org, chances are they’ll be most interested in emails from those who offer a direct way to help them, save them time, or save the company money.

3. Declutter the subject line

If your VP has 462 unread emails, you can bet that she isn’t prioritizing what I call the “game of telephone subject line.” It reads like this: “FWD: FWD: FWD: RE: FWD 1:1 Agenda” — even if, deep down on that thread, there’s evidence of the strong relationship you’ve built with Sales.

If you’re about to forward an email up the chain, get rid of that stuff! Consider your subject line like a blank canvas.

If this email is important enough to send to someone senior, gently knock out that FWD: FWD nonsense and utilize the precious real estate for something more enticing like, “Great progress on Sales relationship.”

Changing the subject line also makes it easy for others to send your email up the chain. After all, most weeks you are not emailing your boss’s boss’s boss directly. However, if you change the subject line to something with more allure, you nudge your boss one step closer to passing your email along on your behalf. That has even more weight: Now your email also has your boss’s vote of support.

With tactics like these, you’re doing a lot of work in a small space. You’re grabbing attention with a call to action, emphasizing what’s in it for your recipient, and getting to the point without clutter. Most importantly, senior leadership is paying attention to your awesome work. That will pay dividends during your performance review.

Sourced from LADDERS

This article originally appeared in Entrepreneur.

In News

10 Email Marketing Tools For You To Consider

May 27, 2021 No Comments

By Elena Osipova,

Email Marketing can be challenging. I learnt this lesson from my experience in the digital marketing sphere and being a support representative at an email software company. Why? There are a number of reasons. They come in different forms and from various places and refer to segmenting an audience, finding contacts, designing a perfect subject line, to name a few.

Such activities require from marketers tons of creativity, consistency and research. Yeap, email marketing is still one of the most efficient marketing channels due to ROI. This fact only fuels the competition in the industry, leading to seeking new solutions.

Notably, email campaign software has become the go-to option for many brands and businesses. Automation interferes in many spheres and enterprises, while digital marketing is not an exception. Email campaign software makes a difference there.

However, how many email platforms are there? A lot. I have been working in digital marketing for some time and understand why one can find very confusing the amount of software available before marketing teams.

That’s why I have designed a list of the top email marketing software that can add to your small business, start-up, or long-term campaign. This post will be helpful for those who have doubts about which email marketing to use or have just started a journey into the marketing world.

Top Email Marketing Services

Before all, the automation tools I am listing in this post are different and answer to similar needs of a marketer. Some of them are all-in-one solutions; others aim to facilitate a specific issue. Interestingly, you can combine one tool with another.

How to choose the best marketing software? Pick the one that will help your business needs or goal. The right email marketing tools are about answering the challenges. What are some that marketers consider crucial? Scheduling, organization, personalization, segmenting and data collection. Each of them is equally important for the open and click rates within lead generation.

At the same time, many of you have struggled with email templates; there are tools for it as well. Among other things, the platforms help to track results and report on valuable data. All in all, it is what a reliable marketing tool is to be expected of.

Let’s look at the options that can help you with the email marketing objectives.

1. Constant Contact

Constant Contract is at the beginning of the list as it has a specific focus on email marketing and has been long enough in business. Despite the idea that I had used it only for a while, many colleagues of mine refer to it as an excellent solution for small business. Why is it good?

First of all, it puts simplicity and accessibility in email campaign designation. For instance, the particular platform offers the management of emails, sending schedule, and content. It refers to template and newsletter creation, together with the insertion of CTA buttons. Importantly, it has integrations with Shopify underlining its usability for small businesses.

Also, it offers email list management and segmenting for better targeting. In the end, it is used by many small companies to generate leads. However, what I heard is that their users wish they paid less for the simplicity the particular platform offers.

2. GetProspect

Have you ever struggled with your email list enrichment? I bet you are. GetProspect email finder may be a solution with its simple interface, easy-to-use functions, and extracting possibilities. I have worked at this company for some time and must say it does a pretty good job in what they offer. What exactly is it, and what value does it provide to your business?

Well, small businesses usually struggle with getting contacts of their target audience. If you are a b2b service, they may be business owners, CMOs or CEOs of firms. If you are a marketer or SEO specialist, they may be influencers or bloggers. Lastly, if you already have an extensive database, you may need to verify it. GetProspect has these functions. With it, you can extract the emails from Linkedin or any corporate website.

It’s not the only email finder on the market. Still, it can be integrated into other CRMs by Zappier and has a very minimalistic design. Thus, you can extract your groups of contacts, transfer them to the greater platform and produce the campaign you want.

Many of its users say that that simplicity and straightforward solution to email enrichment captivate them.

3. Mailchimp

You probably have heard of this marketing tool. It is one of the leaders for a reason. If I haven’t mentioned this in my post, it would be a mistake. Why is it good? There is a free package, providing valuable functions, while paid options are to bring even more.

I used Mailchimp for its easy-to-use tracking and email building. Particularly, it has the drag-and-drop feature, which can help a lot if you are new to email design.

Simultaneously, Mailchimp can be handy in segmenting audiences. I had to use it on my first marketing assignments and was very glad it had a drag-and-drop function. Making discount coupons and give away campaigns required much less time, thanks to a large collection of templates.

However, looking back, I can say it has basic analytics and segmentation, while for the advanced ones, the user should pay. Notably, a friend of mine had some issues with the support department and their responses. Bad luck, possibly.

Lastly, integration capabilities with other platforms can significantly add to the user’s experience, though. It will be a great choice if you are supposed to level your email creation before entering a larger market and nurturing more leads.

4. Hubspot

HubSpot is another popular solution that many businesses use. The pros of this email marketing software lie in its universal nature. The particular software offers an all-in-one automation solution for many marketing platforms. However, it as well as a separate email marketing tool that is free.

Similar to Mailchimp, it provides assistance in preparing visual materials and producing the body of emails. Some of my colleagues did like the interface and the follow-up sequences upon purchasing via websites. However, as it is a free tool, though, by a recognized company, it has some limitations, while the full version can be costly for small firms.

I would be using it if I have plans of enlarging my business, where email won’t be the crucial part of my marketing activity but add to the social media strategy. At the same time, it would be great if you are trying and experimenting with email marketing or considering unifying all of your channels under one CRM system. Then, Hubspot will be the perfect solution.

5. Sendinblue

Sendinblue has made it to this list due to its surprising features, considering the time we live in. Who sends SMS messages today when we have messengers? However, the particular tool does! It as well facilitates email campaigns management, having automation and personalization possibilities. In short, it is excellent for transactional messages sending. I had my team use it for one event project, and it did great.

Simultaneously, the template options are not as advanced as the top marketing email services above provide. Thus, choosing this option would be suitable for those who have their template game on an adequate level. That is one downturn among some other ones.

They refer to a limited free package and multiple logins only under advanced packages.

Still, it is affordable and should be a good choice if it suits your goal and strategy.

6. Sender

In regard to this email marketing software, you may want to use it if you pursue your deliverability improvement. The algorithms behind Sender focus on tracking delivery rates. At the same time, there is a facilitator for template creation. One can add different visuals that will for sure optimize the engagement rates of the campaign. The service pays attention to details making your email marketing campaign bright.

Still, I heard that they had some lags within their segmentation feature, which the company is likely to have taken care of. Why? Their customer support is friendly and lends a helping hand irrespective of the issue’s complexity, despite that the pricing is relatively low.

7. Drip

You may think that this tool can be helpful in drip campaigns. This mailing campaign software has a powerful segmenting focus and synchronizes with many website constructors.

Such a combination makes Drip useful for many entrepreneurs or small business owners that conduct their business online. In addition, they have a bunch of personalization features. That’s why many consider it ideal for firms with small operations in specific niches.

One of the cons is that it can be a bit pricey. Yet, it offers some educational materials for users. Again, the data analytics, targeting features, and personalization within this email automation service can become a game-changer for an owner of a small firm.

8. Convertkit

Convertkit is another email marketing tool that is handy in email campaign designation. As Drip or Mailchimp, it is excellent for segmenting the audience. However, compared to them, this service offers it through tagging. Some colleagues of mine have said that it is easier to have different groups and target them by tags at your display, especially if there is only one product of yours.

On the other hand, the particular instrument can be challenging to use at first. You may need some time to comprehend all the functions. This happened to me, and I decided to go for another solution. Still, if you want to enhance your lead generation funnel, this can work.

9. Aweber

Aweber is a traditional and straightforward mailing campaign software that was designed solely for email marketing. It has both advanced and drag-and-drop features for template creation. Besides, as it is a long time on the market, it has an extensive knowledge base and support.

Moreover, it has all the standard features referring to personalization, follow-up automation, listing and segmentation. Notably, what is the most important thing is its simplicity.

I believe I have started my email marketing journey with this tool, and for me, as a newbie in marketing, it was pretty easy to use. That’s why it can be a universal tool for tiny companies who just start selling their product and have not developed large lists yet.

10. Omnisend

Omnisend can be a great choice if you are developing your business on several channels. Although it has a basic set of features, it has SMS automation features and can work with numerous platforms.

You can have different campaigns, while the Omnisend reporting system will show from where you got the revenue. It is essential for prioritizing the campaigns and offers for the customer groups.

Except for simplicity in management, automation and the beautiful design of templates, it can offer affordable packages. Suppose a person needs something for a small business related to visually pleasing products, like jewellery or craft. In that case, they are likely to benefit from the templates of this email campaign software.

Lastly, if you want something that would better align with other strategies or website designing, another option can be a better solution for you.

Bottom Line

There are many email marketing software, and picking the right one depends on your goal and your business. You may need an email marketing tool solely for email campaigns or contact research. The best is the one that is the most efficient. I have made this list due to what I experienced and heard from my colleagues.

When choosing the best tool, look at what challenges you have or how a tool can give you an advantage. If the issue refers to contacts extracting, then, Getprospect is a solution. If you have multiple products and many platforms or channels, MailChimp or Hubspot can be a pick.

If you need some help with templates, picking an email automation service focusing on their designation would increase your engagement rates. Lastly, if you lack segmenting, Drip and Convertkit have efficient mechanisms and reporting to work with contacts’ data.

By Elena Osipova

Sourced from Data Science Central

In News

Four Ways to a Flourishing Business

December 18, 2020 No Comments

Sourced from Vancouver Magazine

Starting a business can be daunting, and there’s a long list of things to do to get it off the ground. We asked an industry expert for the top tips on how to kick start your small business and make the most of your online presence.

Choose the Right Domain

For many people, registering their domain name is one of the last things on the list and it shouldn’t be, says Anne De Aragon, vice-president and country manager, GoDaddy Canada. “A domain name is an important annual investment as it is the hub of your business’ website,” she says. “Much like a physical sign, it marks the location of your business on the web. This makes registering a domain name one of the most critical business decisions you make.”

Some business owners prefer their full business name as the domain name while others prefer an abbreviation. Business owners also need to consider this important fact: According to the Canadian Internet Registration Authority, Canadians are 4x more likely to shop on a .ca website over .com as it taps into the patriotic desire people have to support local businesses. “Taking a minute to think about your business, your goals and how you want to present yourself will allow you to decide on the best domain name for your business,” De Aragon says.

Create a Website that Looks Amazing

A mobile-friendly website is essential for a business to ensure it is easy to access and use for today’s mobile-first environment. This means your website looks its best and performs stress-free for the user since the text is readable, images are optimized and fitted to screen sizes, and there is no need for horizontal scrolling.

For example, GoDaddy’s Websites + Marketing tool allows business owners to create a modern, mobile-friendly website for free and with no technical knowledge required. The tool has hundreds of already-designed templates, which allow business owners to control the look and layout of their website.

Leverage Digital Marketing

Digital marketing can deliver strong results at a fraction of the price of traditional marketing. Think of your website as a hub from which consumers access your various channels. De Aragon recommends being selective, always keeping your business goals in mind. “You should incorporate a variety of channels, but you don’t need to be on every platform,” she says. “It has to make sense for your business and your target audience.”

No matter what channels you choose, make sure you have high-quality visuals. Entrepreneurs can engage a design professional or take advantage of content design applications, such as Over by GoDaddy. These applications allow entrepreneurs and small business owners to easily create impactful visuals which can be leveraged on social platforms, websites, and email marketing campaigns.

Make Your Email Shine

Since email is often the first consumer touchpoint, it is important for your email address to be professional. “A professional-looking email address gives your business more credibility when you’re corresponding with existing and potential customers,” De Aragon says. “To set up a professionally branded email address, you need to have registered a unique domain. From here, setting up a professional email account can be done quickly and easily.”

Learn more at GoDaddy.ca.

Connect at Instagram | Facebook | Twitter

Sourced from Vancouver Magazine

In Uncategorized

Email In The Time Of A Pandemic: Channel Is Most Favoured By Consumers

December 11, 2020 No Comments

By Ray Schultz

Email reigns supreme as a customer engagement channel.

As consumers turn to digital as they cope with the COVID-19 pandemic, 91% rate email as a top communications channel, according to Critical Channels of Choice—How Covid Has Changed the Channels of Engagement, a study by the CMO Council.

Next are websites (61%), telephone (59) in-person (49%) and text (43%).

And when they have a critical need, 55% of consumers now view email as a channel they could not live without. That reflects a slight margin over the telephone, but it is a major shift, given that the phone was the overwhelming choice last year.

Telephone slipped, in part, because brands delivered a poor experience using the phone, the study says.

In general, consumers see email as:

Convenient — 29%
Trackable — 22%
Reliable — 18%
Fast — 11%
Trusted — 8%
Personal — 7%

Email is also seen as a trusted channel when consumers need to communicate with a brand. They prefer it even when they don’t get an immediate answer because “there’s a social contract that a brand will respond in short order, even if it’s an automated response,” the study states.

But email also brings challenges to brands, one of which is that consumers’ inboxes “are flooded with non-relevant marketing messages resulting in low open rates,” it continues.

Moreover, email is only one part of the multichannel environment that consumers find frustrating.

For one thing, 87% of are irritated by having to renter details in multiple channels — so much so that 73% question whether they should do business with that brand. Gen X is most irritated by having to repeat themselves, and Gen Z the least annoyed.

And in general, 65% say brands are not exceeding expectations with digital engagements during the COVID-19 pandemic.

However, 21% of consumers now prefer to engage with brands only via digital, from discovery to conversion. That’s up from 10% last year, likely reflecting the impact of the pandemic on habits.

On the privacy front, 25% of the respondents would share their personal data to receive more personalized experiences and offers. In addition, 22% would do so to receive better service, 15% for faster service, 9% to be able to self-serve and 7% to receive more engaging experiences.

The CMO Council surveyed more than 2,000 consumers in October. The survey covered six countries: the U.S., Canada, the UK, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand.

By Ray Schultz

Sourced from MediaPost

In News

How to Grow Your Email List

November 3, 2020 No Comments

By Kiely Kuligowski

A quality email list is a vital part of email marketing and can determine the success of your campaign. Here’s how to build one.

Email marketing is an incredibly effective way to market your business, and your email list is arguably the most important component of your strategy. Your email list can have immeasurable impact on your marketing campaigns and a serious effect on your traffic and sales. If you’re looking to grow your email list, we have 25 tips to help your small business reach a wider audience.

What is an email list?

An email list, also referred to as a mailing list or subscribers list, is a collection of email addresses from visitors and customers who have consented to a business sending them communications, such as information, updates or discounts. Your list may grow and shrink as followers unsubscribe or new ones join over time.

Email marketing is a huge asset for a business. Nearly every customer has an email address, so there are billions of potential customers available for you to reach with just a few clicks. Additionally, email marketing is 40 times more effective in acquiring and retaining new customers than social media, and it has a significantly higher click-through rate than social media posts, which means more customers receive and read your content than they would if they came across your content on social media.

25 ways to grow your email list

There are many ways to grow your email list organically. Follow these 25 tips to grow your list the right way.

1. Create valuable content.

Your followers signed up to receive emails from you for a reason. Your job is to make it worth their while by providing interesting, engaging content. You will quickly lose subscribers if your content is boring or not applicable to your followers.

2. Know your audience.

Knowing your audience will help you create content they like. You can use email analytics or information you’ve collected on your own to inform your content. Look at things like demographics, customer behaviour and clicks to better understand your audience.

3. Make it easy for followers to share your emails.

Include buttons that link to your social media and “email a friend” links in each of your emails to make your content easily shareable. You don’t want your subscribers to have to work hard to send your content to another potential customer.

4. Segment your lists.

Once you understand who your audience is, you can segment them into groups – for example, by age, location or buyer behaviour – and send emails based on those groups, making your messages more targeted to each part of your audience for a more positive effect.

5. Send out an opt-in campaign.

If you have an old email list that doesn’t yield much engagement, you can send out an email with an opt-in message and a promise to remove any email addresses that don’t respond. While it might seem counterintuitive to remove contacts from your list, it can actually give you better results by ensuring you only send emails to people who want to receive them.

6. Include a link in employee signatures.

Including a link to a landing page where people can sign up for emails in all your employees’ email signatures is a quick and easy way to help build your email list.

7. Include gated offers on your website.

If you have valuable content to offer, like whitepapers or e-books, you can host it on your website with a pop-up that requires an email address and an opt-in to receive emails from you in order for the user to download it.

8. Require an email address to get a quote or access a resource.

Similarly, you can require a customer to provide their email address if they want to contact you for a quote or access a unique resource your business offers on your website.

9. Host a contest.

You could host a contest and require an email address for entry. Post about the contest on your social media pages to drum up interest and awareness, with a link directing viewers to where they can sign up on your website. [Read related article: How to Create a Giveaway Campaign That Boosts Sales]

10. Have a pop-up on your website.

“The single best method I’ve used to grow email lists rapidly is via website pop-ups,” said Kent Lewis, president and founder of Anvil Media. “Add a pop-up to your site to ask for an email address to send updates. The strategy still works, especially if you cookie the visitor and only hit them once, instead of every time they refresh or visit a new page. Make sure the incentive is clearly articulated and relevant to your brand to maximize conversions.”

11. Put a call-to-action button on your social media.

You can add a CTA to sign up for your email list on your social media pages to make it easy for interested customers to sign up to receive your emails. Here’s how HubSpot Academy integrates a CTA on its Facebook page:

12. Ask website visitors for their feedback.

Visitors enjoy providing feedback on a topic they’re interested in or that pertains to them, so you can provide a form on your website that asks them to leave their feedback on your business or website, and make their email address a required field.

13. Keep lead-capturing forms short.

When you ask customers to provide information, you don’t want to overwhelm them with lengthy forms that ask for a lot of information upfront. Stick to the basics, like their name and email address.

14. Utilize Facebook groups.

“Over the years, I’ve added thousands to my email list by using Facebook groups,” said Rick Orford, founder of The Financially Independent Millennial. “As part of the joining process, I ask for users’ email address in exchange for free information, such as a PDF. Facebook groups can be an invaluable way to increase engagement with your audience, while allowing you the opportunity to keep in touch with everyone by email.”

15. Make subscribing easy on your website.

A customer who wants to subscribe to your emails should not have to hunt around your website to find the subscribe button. Make it plain and easy to find in several different places on your website, such as your homepage, your “about” page and your “contact us” page.

16. Conduct A/B tests of your email content.

When you first start out with email marketing, you don’t know what content will perform best. To find out (or at least better predict), you can send out different versions of the same email – with different subject lines or images, for example – to sample groups to see which performs better with your audience. [Read related article: 16 Effective Methods to Make the Most Out of A/B Testing]

17. Set expectations.

“Set expectations so that a subscriber knows exactly what he/she is signing up for and how often he/she will receive email from you, and immediately send a welcome email upon sign-up that matches the expectations you just set,” said Katie Bonadies, content and social media strategist at Berxi.

18. Have a blog.

Blogs are a great way to boost your online presence. They can increase your ranking on search engines like Google and go a long way to establish brand credibility. You can also collect email addresses via blog subscriptions and deliver quality content right to their inboxes.

19. Allow customer reviews on your website.

Alongside a blog, a place for customers to leave reviews on your website can boost your image as a reputable business while giving you another opportunity to gather email addresses. Make an email address a required field for a user to leave a review.

20. Be consistent.

“Don’t expect to have a massive email list overnight,” said Shmuel Fogel, web designer and online marketer at Talmudico. “It takes time to build email lists, but they can be extremely effective in marketing to your customers. By maintaining in-store signage, website banners and campaigns to grow your email addresses year-round, you will ultimately build up a large list over time that continues to grow.”

21. Collect email addresses at a trade show or conference.

There is always the old-fashioned way to collect emails: in person. Have a sign-up sheet readily available for anyone who stops by your booth or table, and have a welcome email ready to go once you add the email addresses into your system.

22. Add QR codes to your promotional materials.

Another quick and easy way to collect email addresses and maximize your advertising materials is to add a QR code to your printed advertisements. This way, you can collect email addresses even from a poster or brochure.

23. Offer an incentive.

“The best way to grow an email list is to offer some incentive for being on it,” said Rex Freiberger, CEO of Gadget Review. “Sometimes, if customers really want to know about an upcoming product or possible promotions, this is enough. Usually they need enticement in the form of free content, trial services or large discounts.”

24. Include timed pop-up surveys on your site.

You can create surveys that come up only after a customer has spent a certain amount of time on your website. This works because the customer has demonstrated interest in your content and is much more likely to sign up to receive emails from you if you make it quick and easy.

25. Leverage your social media.

“You can set up Twitter and Facebook campaigns to boost your lead generation efforts,” said Anthony Mixides, managing director of The London Vape Company. “By giving links to your various offerings and resources on social media, you allow more users to find you, and this helps you tap into a newer sect of people. This is also a very useful technique for growing your target audience base.”

What to avoid when building an email list

Because solid email lists are so vital to the email marketing process, there is some specific etiquette to keep in mind, as well as missteps to avoid. Here are 10 things not to do when building your email list.

1. Buying email lists

This is the No. 1 mistake marketers and business owners make in building their email lists. Many think the best and quickest way to build a list is to buy one. While it’s true that this is the fastest method, it generally comes back to bite you, since there’s no way to guarantee that the purchased email addresses are real or associated with users who are interested in your content. As such, you could purchase a list with 1,000 addresses but discover that only a few engage with your content.

2. Adding email addresses without permission

This is another huge mistake many marketers make, and it could even get you in legal trouble. You should only send marketing emails to addresses who have given you permission in some form. These are the two main types of permission for email marketing:

Implied, which covers those with whom you have an existing business relationship – like current customers, donors or members of your website
Express, which is when someone gives you clear permission to send them emails, such as by entering their information in a subscription form

3. Asking for too much information

When you’re asking someone to provide personal information for your email campaign, you don’t want to ask for too much and risk coming off as a spammer. You want to make subscribing quick and easy, and make the customer feel at ease providing you with their contact information. Give the customer plenty of time to learn about your business and establish that you are a credible organization.

4. Offering a nonvaluable incentive

Offering an incentive is a common way to get people to sign up for a targeted email list, but it can backfire if the incentive isn’t actually valuable to the customer. For example, you don’t want to offer a coupon that expires the next day, or a discount that can only be applied at one store at a specific time. Make your incentive as valuable to and usable by as many of your customers as you can.

5. Using stolen email addresses

“There are bots that can search the web and aggregate a list of found emails,” said Steffa Mantilla, founder of Money Tamer. “If you add these emails to your list, you’ll likely get reported as spam, and your deliverability will go down drastically.”

6. Skipping the welcome email

When a new subscriber signs up, it’s important to send out a welcome email as soon as possible. This greeting makes the new subscriber feel valued, encouraging them to become a repeat customer. Your welcome email should have a clear subject line, engaging visuals and content, and a link to whatever incentive you promised when they signed up.

7. Using paid advertising too soon

“You don’t want to grow your email list with paid advertising until it’s proven,” according to Kelan and Brittany Kline, founders of The Savvy Couple. “You always want to focus on organic growth to find what actually works, then you can scale things up by running paid ads.”

8. Sending emails without a goal

A clear goal for your overall email marketing campaign as well as each email you send will go a long way in making your emails worth your subscribers’ while. You don’t want to send out emails for the sake of sending emails; this will be clearly felt by subscribers, who may be put off by content that isn’t valuable to them. You should know what you want to accomplish with your emails before you send them. Is it sharing news about your company? Sending a discount code? Informing your customers of a new product? Shape your email marketing content around that goal.

9. Being disingenuous

“I’d stay away from anything disingenuous to the reader,” said Jakub Rudnik, vice president of content at Shortlister. “Ultimately, any bait-and-switch tactics will lead to the sign-ups that you earned unsubscribing more often than not. People are protective of their inboxes, so tell them exactly what types of content they’ll get and how often they’ll get it. You’ll gain their trust far better that way.”

10. Sending too many (or not enough) emails

With email marketing, the best way to retain your customers is to be consistent in your sending habits and let subscribers know what to expect. If you send a burst of five emails every few months, or three emails every day, your subscribers could get annoyed and unsubscribe. Set and stick to a regular posting schedule. Many email marketing services have scheduling features to make this effortless, even allowing you to schedule emails months in advance.

By Kiely Kuligowski

Kiely is a staff writer based in New York City. She worked as a marketing copywriter after graduating with her bachelor’s in English from Miami University (OH) and now writes on small business, social media, and marketing. You can reach her on Twitter or by email.

Sourced from business.com

In News

Email Marketers, Focus on the Pre-Send Experience

November 2, 2020 No Comments

By ANDREW KORDEK

Over the last two decades, email marketing and its optimization have been written, talked and argued about—from the tactics of acquiring an email address to subscriber re-engagement and purging.

Personalization is one area of optimization that’s continuously addressed on blogs or at conferences. Each year, marketers gather more data, and have more tools and opportunities to ensure their emails allow the subscriber to feel more connected to the brand. Some brands have been able to leverage the data and the tools to become more relevant to the subscriber, having done so with diligence, testing, resilience and taking risks.

However, many brands have overlooked a key component to relevancy bliss at some point in time: the pre-send experience. This refers to anything that could impact the email program before the email is sent to the subscriber.

It’s not about a beautiful piece of creative, captivating copy and irresistible calls to action with hyper-personalization sent at the right time to subscribers. The optimization of the pre-send experience is sometimes put last on the list of things to do because it’s not sexy, takes time and requires patience.

Inception and administration

There are two equally weighted areas of the pre-send experience that marketers need to focus on: inception and administration.

Inception is tied to what a person goes through to sign up for the email program on a site or on another channel. In many organizations, the website and UX are owned by different groups, which often means that the email department is left out of the optimization discussion even though the objective of list growth is technically shared.

For example, brands like to play hide and seek with the email sign up and place it toward the footer of the site in a small font, because the notion of making it more prominent is often frowned upon by designers. The idea of making a pop-up banner to capture email addresses is too intrusive to the experience. Yet if done right and tested, it can be a stable and sustainable source of email list growth.

HOW SHOULD EMAIL MARKETING STRATEGIES EVOLVE IN A PANDEMIC?

A critical part of inception is the experience you provide on getting data, preferences or choices that people have around your email program. If you have 15 newsletters and capture 11 pieces of geographic and psychographic data points, is that too much for the subscriber to handle the first time they interact with your email program? While the goal is to provide choice, too much choice can overwhelm and turn people off.

As an email marketer for more than 21 years, I encourage clients to go through the sign-up experience at least twice a year with an unbiased group of people to see how easy or painful it was to get on the email list. As marketers, we understand our brand’s process on the site, but often overlook the things that could annoy or frustrate the typical site visitor who wants to sign up for your email program.

A great test to execute this is watching people navigate the front page and looking at the process they go through. After, you should ask the following questions:

Did you find the process to sign up for email easy or challenging?
Do you understand what our email program is about and what to expect?
Do you feel special or do you feel like a number?

The goal is to create an experience your customer can benefit from, rather than what your marketing department wants.

Administration is the ongoing experience your subscriber has during specific points of their email lifecycle with your brand. These things include a preference or subscription centre, cadence or frequency caps, opt-out or opt-down options, and the use or misuse of the data you have on each one of them.

If you have data, use it. But use it sparingly as not to raise the red flag of creepiness.

For example, if you have invested resources and budget into a preference or subscription centre and only leverage or promote it for the inception experience, you could be missing out on critical lifecycle points from the subscriber because things change in their lives.

A preference or subscription centre shouldn’t just capture data points at one point in time and be promoted at the bottom of every email next to the unsubscribe link. It should be publicized at various time stages for each subscriber to update as their life and preference changes.

Finally, if you have data, use it. But use it sparingly as not to raise the red flag of creepiness. Today’s sensitivity of subscribers is at an all-time high and, as brands, you need to be a good steward of privacy.

The optimization of the pre-send experience should be an ongoing project for any organization. It’s time for email marketers to help influence and take ownership of things that have long been assigned to other departments. The email program has long influenced attribution, and marketers today need to un-silo themselves from single-channel expertise.

Feature Image Credit: iStock

By ANDREW KORDEK

Andrew Kordek is vp of customer engagement at iPost, an email marketing and automation platform.

Sourced from ADWEEK

In News

Streamline Your Marketing Plan With 75 Percent Off This Email Platform

October 21, 2020 No Comments

By StackCommerce Team.

Kirim.Email filters out spam, bots, and other drags on your marketing bill.

Online marketing can seem pretty impersonal; everyone has a social media branding plan, but it’s disheartening hoping for even a quick glance from potential customers amid the flood of memes and clickbait.

That’s why it’s more important than ever to maintain the fundamentals of email marketing. Email addresses are like gold to up-and-coming businesses, and those newsletters and messages you send are read on customers’ home turf—making them a lot more likely to respond. Of course, email marketing isn’t without its own hazards. To deal with them, you need a service like Kirim.Email to streamline your plan and weed out any wasted (and potentially harmful) contacts.

The all-in-one tool lets users build a list of subscribers and send an unlimited amount of emails from one central dashboard. Schedule them weekly, daily, or multiple times a day for no extra cost. More importantly, Kirim.Email automatically validates all your addresses, and can detect and delete “zombie” accounts or those that are simply a front to send spam or malware. Not only are these fake addresses potentially harmful, they’re an added drag on the cost of your marketing campaign.

That’s hardly all the service does, though. Build your own landing page directly through Kirim.Email, with full functionality and access to thousands of graphics, photos, and other assets; set up surveys through Google Forms or Google Sheets and incorporate them directly into the list with a third-party add-on. And do it all with no coding required. Kirim.Email integrates seamlessly with popular web platforms like WordPress and Facebook, allowing users to focus on what’s really important: the message you want to send to and the connection you want to make with customers.

By StackCommerce Team.

Sourced from PC

In News

How to Reduce Abandoned E-Commerce Carts With Email Marketing

October 1, 2020 No Comments

By Skye Schooley.

Learn how to use email marketing to recover e-commerce cart abandonment and increase sales.

We’ve all been there – you’re browsing an online store, you put some items in your cart, and then you exit before hitting “purchase.” This phenomenon is called cart abandonment, and even though it is common among all e-commerce stores, you can mitigate it with a tactful cart recovery strategy and email marketing campaign. Learn the leading causes of cart abandonment and 10 ways to improve your marketing strategies to convert abandoned carts into online sales.

How do you recover abandoned carts with email marketing?

Instead of viewing abandoned carts as lost sales, think of them as opportunities. Just because a customer leaves your site doesn’t mean you should stop communicating with them. One of the best ways to win over a potential customer who previously abandoned their e-commerce cart is through strategic email marketing.

Recent surveys show that 45% of all cart abandonment emails are opened. Additionally, the average abandoned cart email click-through rate is 21%, and the abandoned cart email conversion rate is roughly 10% (although rates vary by industry, device and recovery tactics). This gives you a great opportunity to create savvy and timely cart abandonment emails that resonate with your audience and increase conversions.

“Assuming the user is logged in when they abandon the cart, you will have their email address and can send them a reminder to complete their purchase,” said Harry Thakkar, partner at Avatria. “This type of email typically includes a list of items they left behind, some marketing copy focused on creating a sense of urgency and/or showcasing the products’ benefits, and potentially also a discount code to entice the user to come back and finish the transaction.”

Garin Hobbs, director of deal strategy at Iterable, suggested 10 ways to improve your cart abandonment email campaigns:

Replicate the abandoned cart in the email, showing the exact items the shopper left behind. Visually depict what they’re missing out on by abandoning their cart. There is often emotion at play in retail purchases, so use that to your advantage.
Display similar in-stock items to the customer at lower price points and/or with faster shipping. Give them the chance to add reliable and attractive replacement options to their cart.
Close the shipping gap by offering cheaper or faster shipping alternatives, such as curbside or in-store pickup, in your follow-up email. Of course, we are in the middle of a global pandemic, so provide high-touch options with caution.
Offer single-click, in-email purchase completion capabilities for customers to facilitate a faster purchase.
When you analyze your cart abandoners, segment those repeat gamifiers (customers who have a history of abandoning their cart and then converting when you offer a competitive coupon). Once you identify these customers, make sure to send them modest coupons. Recognize their value, appeal to their money-saving tactics, and make the sale.
Offer discounted shipping as an incentive to complete the purchase. This is a motivator to both the procrastinator and the proactive customer.
With companies like Amazon offering free one-day shipping, consumers expect the same from every brand. If a customer is concerned with shipping, follow up with an offer of free shipping if they reach a certain cart spend. This will not only incentivize greater spending, but show that your brand can compete with the conglomerates.
Synchronize messaging across email, mobile and web channels to create a reengagement ecosystem and a layered messaging scheme. This reactive workflow will enable you to message customers based on a series of anticipated user behaviors.
Use lifestyle content and imagery to illustrate how the product might fit into and improve the shopper’s day-to-day life. Brands that are not aware and empathetic won’t connect. We see the relevance of this tactic today; consumers are working from home, so fashion retailers that don’t shift to a casual style are losing loyalty.
When sending discounts and options to customers, remember that you must A/B test different messages, offers and calls to action in real time to determine what resonates with each consumer, down to the color of the button that generates more engagement. You’ll need to do this test for any campaign you run, at multiple intervals during the year. As customers change their preferences, change your marketing strategy.

“With the right optimization of timing, frequency, cadence, channel, and personalized content, offers and context, abandoned cart email performance can be improved up to an industry-standard recovery rate,” said Hobbs.

By Skye Schooley

Sourced from Business.com