Email Marketing 101
In the age of digital media, it’s no wonder small businesses lean on social media platforms like Instagram, Facebook, and even TikTok to market their brand and expand their reach. It feels intuitive and there are plenty of success stories to back up an investment into these platforms.
Seems perfect, right?
Wrong. (Well, sort of.)
Social media marketing is for sure a great means of advertising and building brand awareness, and it’s not going to change anytime soon.
The problem is that a lot of business owners focus so much on building out their social media profiles that they neglect other marketing methods that are time-tested, effective, and in some cases more profitable.
Enter email marketing.
There’s a reason our inboxes never seem to stay empty for long. According to Hubspot, email marketing earns you $38 for every $1 spent, making it one of the most profitable ways of connecting and building relationships with both prospects and past customers. Plus, it's sophisticated enough to send hyper-targeted messages to people based on how they've interacted with your brand.
So now that we’ve enlightened you on the perks of investing in (and reaping the benefits of) email marketing, here are three email campaigns and sequences we suggest every entrepreneur have in their marketing plan:
#1) The Welcome Sequence
You know those emails you start getting after you opted-in for an email newsletter or even just a one-time freebie? Chances are those emails are a part of a welcome sequence, which is a series of emails staged and ready to be sent immediately to new email subscribers.
A welcome sequence provides you with the perfect opportunity to formally introduce yourself, your business and just how cool you guys are so that prospective customers know exactly what you have to offer and how you can help meet their needs. These sequences typically have the highest email open rate because they pop into a new subscriber’s inbox when they are most interested in what you have to say. In other words, welcome sequences are the perfect time to start laying the groundwork for a sale.
Here’s an example outline of a welcome sequence that has a few sales pushes mixed in:
Email 01: Delivering the freebie / content that your subscriber initially opted into / quick introductions
Email 02: Education + Value - Add more context into the freebie you offered up to your subscriber to provide more value and clarity
Email 03: Relatability - Share about how the knowledge you just shared with your new subscriber impacted your own life. Tell your story behind the brand and why you’re so passionate about changing the lives of the people you interact with.
Email 04: Mini Training - A catchphrase of our is, “value, value, value”
Email 05: Fear Busting / Addressing Limiting Beliefs - By this point, you’ve shared who you are, what you do and how you impact others. This means that your new subscriber is now trying to decide if purchasing your product or service is the right thing to do. Enter: All the little voices in their head telling them why they shouldn’t. Make this email address the concerns new customers often have when trying to make a purchase from you.
Email 06: Offer Details - It’s time to lay our offer on the table - inject full product/service details and testimonials galore in this email. Knowing that your open rates are still probably at their highest, feel free to inject a super sweet offer if people sign up/purchase ASAP.
Email 07: Urgency - This email can have a mix of testimonials, address concerns and pain points, and one last call for your new subscriber to make a commitment to solve their problem with your solution.
When people make it through your welcome sequence they can now enter your….
#2) Nurture Emails
Nurture emails are all about building rapport and credibility with your audience through the use of personal stories, educational content, behind-the-scenes content that ONLY your email list has access to and general industry topics that your audience cares about. These emails prime them toward conversion later on.
Use your nurture sequence as an opportunity to get your leads excited about working with you or buying your product before you ever send a sales email.
Be wary of making your emails overly promotional. Instead, use them as an opportunity to show off your brand, talk about relevant topics your audience cares about, and hint at the incredible projects you have in the works. As a rule of thumb for ourselves, we typically send three weeks of nurture emails for every week of sales emails that we send out.. This allows us to make offers to our audience without feeling overly pushy.
#3) Sales Email
This is probably the most straightforward of the emails we’ve talked about and probably doesn’t need much explanation. A sales email is when you finally lay your offer on the table and invite your audience to take you up on it. If your nurture emails were effective in warming up your prospects, then this is where your hard work should start to pay off.
These emails can look different depending on the offer, but the goal is to use the credibility you’ve established with your audience through other email campaigns to close the sale and boost your conversion rate.
There are so many more emails we could discuss, but these will serve as a great foundation to start connecting with your audience and building an effective sales funnel.
Eager for more email marketing advice? Stay tuned for next week where we’ll be sharing our tips and tricks on how to pick the perfect email marketing platform for your business.