Email Marketing 101

Easter is around the corner, schools are on holiday and the weather is warming up. What better time to think about your email marketing??

We think email marketing is great. It’s an audience and a platform which belongs to you, and only you, and the stats speak for themselves: according to Hubspot, 40% of B2B marketers say email newsletters are most critical to their content marketing success, and 73% of millennials prefer communications from businesses to come via email.?

So, if you aren’t already using email marketing, below are some pointers to help get you started.?

The basics?

As much as we love email marketing, and it has fantastic results when it’s done well, when done poorly it really is just spam.?

No one likes spam, so five things to bear in mind when you get started to avoid this are:

1. When building your audience, collect the right data from the start so that you can segment your audience and personalise your emails. This could include who they work for, how you met them and which topics they are interested in. This is an important step to help you to send the right messages to the right people at the right time.?

2. Please make sure you are collecting email addresses in a method which is GDPR compliant. This means you need consent to add someone to your mailing list. If you use one of the tools below to do this, this should happen automatically.?

3. Be creative and have fun, but remember to be relevant. This is what will keep your subscribers engaged. The best newsletters have a specific topic so that your audience knows what to expect from you. If you’re a fintech startup, chances are that audience wants you to tell them about what’s new in fintech.?

4. Be useful. You can absolutely use email as a sales tool, but if that’s all it is, people will unsubscribe. How can you add value to your audience? What can you share which they will find useful??

5. You can do a lot with email marketing and it can be tempted to jump into automation, surveys and lead magnets right away. We recommend starting with a regular email newsletter. It’s a great place to start: build your audience, find out what works for them, and make your newsletter a habit.?

Our favourite email marketing tools

You’ll need an email marketing platform to manage your database, create your email and deliver it to your audience.?

We love MailerLite, ActiveCampaign and Mailchimp. Each of these will help you to manage all of your email marketing. Which one to choose depends on the size of your audience, which website platform you use and the type of emails you send - and all of this will affect the price you pay. It’s worth exploring each platform before committing to one.?

HubSpot is a very powerful tool with CRM, sales and marketing all built in. We usually recommend this only if you have an in-house marketer who can help you to use the system to its full potential.?

We’re keeping a close watch on Substack, which is designed as a paid su bscription email platform and reached a million paid subscribers last year. If you want to monetise your email newsletter, this is one for you to look at.?

The anatomy of a great email

?? A short, snappy headline. Did you know that 80% of the success of your email lies in the headline? You should focus 80% of your efforts on the subject line.?

?? Text in the body of the email. We still see examples of beautifully designed emails which are one big image. They look great, but if your email doesn’t contain any text, it’s likely to be flagged as spam.?

?? A clear layout. Use headings, bullet points, emojis, bold text and images to make your email easy to read. Quick tip: It can look visually appealing to centrally align your text, but this makes it harder for your reader to scan and read. We recommend left alignment for blocks of text.?

?? A clear call to action. Do you want your reader to register for an event, click on a link or buy your product? Then make it clear and easy to do so.?

?? Don’t forget to test. Send a test email to yourself and colleagues or trusted friends. Check how it displays on desktop on mobile - are all the links working??

Email newsletters that we love

?? Zag by RIVAL send actionable tips on challenger marketing - they always have great case studies.?

?? Rebecca Mackay Miller at Bloc + Rose writes about storytelling, brand strategy and nailing your content plan.?

?? Lauren Currie at UPFRONT shares weekly updates on confidence, public speaking, and power.

?? Liz Ward at Slick Pivot has a Sunday email with practical tips and mindset fuel to power your pivot.

If you liked this newsletter then please share it with your network. Thank you so much.