Email Marketing in 2020?

Yes, email marketing is still a viable resource for businesses to use to connect with their customers. With evolving software providing in-depth information and an easy to use the platform, many people are building successful email strategies at fairly low cost. How do you get started building an email campaign that converts and leads to increased profits for your business?

Importance of Email Software

Email software allows business owners to take complete control of their marketing campaigns and expedite their email marketing processes. Email software such as Mailchimp or Constant Contact gives users a plethora of features to ensure they are sending content that users will engage with. Here are a few perks of using email software that you wouldn't get from traditional email

Grow your mailing list - Email Softwares allow you to create signup forms for your potential customers to fill out on your website. Once the user fills out this form it is automatically sent to the software and placed into your email list.

Divide your mailing list - Sectioning users off based on where they came from or what content they engaged with allows users to customize their content for different audiences. For example, if you are on a fitness page and fill out a form regarding a treadmill, you would not want to send them emails about dumbbells!

Data, Data, Data - Understanding what email campaigns are working and which aren't is key to streamlining your content. Understanding your user's interactions with your emails is key to adjusting and improving your content to be more user friendly. Important metrics to track include open rate, # of people who unsubscribe, and interactions with your CTA.

Mailchimp vs. Constant Contact

These are the two biggest players in the email marketing space. With both of these platforms having the same function with some different features, it is important to understand the right company for you. Both of these platforms allow users to manage their email lists and sort users into specific groups in order to send them separately. Both platforms have a free option for users but Constant Contact is only a free trial, while Mailchimp has a free option that allows small businesses to utilize their platform if they have little/no marketing budget. This gives Mailchimp a much larger reach because they are allowing customers to use a basic version of their platform in order to realize the power of email marketing. Mailchimp's standard plan is $15 a month while Constant Contacts is $20.

Mailchimp also offers more customization to lead generation forms, allows users to compare results to their industry averages. Constant Contact has a lot of the same features as Mailchimp but, they are a lot less in-depth then Mailchimp. The only place where Constant Contact clearly beats Mailchimp is their customer service. Constant Contact has 24/7 support by phone, email, and chat. Mailchimp has no customer support for its free users and paid customers to email and chat but no phone support.

Maximizing Marketing Automation

With advances in marketing automation over the last decade, it has become a no brainer for business to ditch traditional email marketing. The purpose of marketing automation is to use software to automate marketing activities. This allows businesses to constantly be pushing content out to their customers without having to do it themselves. While in typical email marketing it was only possible to track open rates and send mass emails, marketing automation platforms allow users to have more control over their marketing campaign. The example above is an example of an autoresponder series. The purpose of an autoresponder is to nurture your leads for a set period of time after they enter your email list. Contacts enter your email list through a lead generation form on your website and then are categorized based on what type of form they filled out. Once you put them into a certain category, you can automatically send leads a series of emails in order to get them to complete some macro conversion.

Marketing Automation Best Practices

1. Welcome Email - Think of this as making a good first impression. You want to let your newest customers know that you are thinking about them and want to help them on their journey.
2. Keep Track of Warm Leads - Are some of your customers opening more emails than others? These are your most valuable customers, they are brand loyal and actively engaging with your content. It is important to reach out to them and continue to build your personal relationship.
3. Don't Forget About Your Less Engaged Customers - Identifying customers who aren't opening your emails is vital to not losing them. If users begin to not open your content consistently, you may want to consider sending them different content.
4. Add Value to Your Customers - Marketing automation shouldn't always be about making a sale. It is important to add value to your customers and keep them opening your emails. Think of subjects your target customer is interested in and provide value to them based on those subjects. It is important to stay connected with your customer and continue to make their life better.

Conclusion

Although email marketing has been around for a long time and tends to be more hit/miss than other digital marketing techniques. Having a strong email campaign is still valuable to every brand and is a great way to stay in touch with your customers. Spending the time to build out successful landing pages, forms, and autoresponders can lead to more leads and sales for your brands.