by Suellen | Email Marketing, Meeting the Challenges, Online Success
Email automation. What a gift!
With automation, we can set up emails to go out when we are sleeping – or on vacation. And we can set up as many as we want to go out when people sign up for different products or offers.
These are often referred to as automation flows or autoresponder flows. Sets of emails sent automatically to subscribers to streamline and enhance our email marketing process. Automation can be set based on time or on a certain set of events – such as signing up for a newsletter.
Automation can send them a welcome email. It will also ensure they receive the other emails in the series consistently.
What’s more, automation can better segment our lists to target and refine our communication. Thus, better results and better conversions.
Automation can do what would be impossible for us to do.
Let’s look at five common email flows you should implement in your email marketing plan:
Welcome Email Series
First, establish each new connection with a welcome email. If someone subscribes to your list, you should never neglect the opportunity to say hello and thank you for joining the community. They need to know at first contact what to expect and when to expect it.
Abandoned Cart Email Series
When a possible customer starts to purchase and then doesn’t follow through, an email series can be quite effective. That person was interested, but decided for some reason not to buy.
This is a straightforward reminder crucial for e-commerce businesses. This email reminds the customer that they left items in their cart to purchase.
Often times this is a great opportunity to offer a small discount and help your customer follow through with the purchase.
Personalized Discounts
Some marketers ask for a birthday, anniversary, or other personal information when a customer signs up. Then when the customer’s birthday or anniversary comes around, they can be recognized, making them feel special.
Post-Purchase Series
This is a set of emails sent after a subscriber makes a purchase or follows a certain call to action. This shows that you appreciate their business and hope to continue to provide value to them. It also ensures they use the products or services correctly to maximize their usefulness.
This is a great time to ask questions and give feedback to establish your trustworthiness and credibility.
This series can be a tremendous boost to your business.
Educational Email Series
Also known as lead nurturing content, this is a very valuable series of emails. This series can build a connection with your subscribers to keep their interest and understanding about your business, products, or services.
The more education and value you provide your subscribers, the more likely they are to become loyal customers.
Remember, automation is there to keep you consistent and help reduce tedious and mundane work.
Never approach this as something you can set up and ignore completely.
If you want to crush your email marketing goals, always keep track of the results and test new automated series. Design and tweak your automation to get the best results.
Your customers will love you for it!
by Suellen | Email Marketing, Online Success
Once you have people signed up to your list, you want to treat them with great respect. Let them know how much you appreciate them.
One way to do this is through lead nurturing email campaigns. These are personalized and automated emails sent to subscribers throughout their journey with your business.
These emails provide value to your customers – and at the same time, maximize the potential of your list and ensure its sustainability.
It’s about not neglecting the leads you worked so hard to get in the first place. Statistics show that it costs a lot more time and money to find new leads than to nurture those you already have.
Here are a few tips for creating lead nurturing email campaigns:
Start With a Welcome Email Series
The moment someone opts in, you should thank them and introduce yourself. This should provide a basic overview of your values and your business goals. You don’t want to start with a long, drawn-out email. This would overwhelm them.
This is also a great moment to encourage your customers to reply by asking them a few questions about themselves and what kind of problems they are dealing with. Make the readers feel like they made the right decision to opt-in. Let them know that you are interested in them and their success.
Create Weekly and Monthly Newsletters or Updates
Keep your readers up-to-date on trending topics, news, and updates within your business and industry.
Please don’t use these messages to sell. Instead, use them to educate and get your readers more engaged in other communities such as your Facebook Group. Tell your audience about new products or services you are working on and any additional valuable information they can use.
When you continue to provide value to your customers, they will want to stay in touch.
Send Segmented Promotional and Educational Campaigns
Use birthdays, anniversaries, and other important dates and information to your advantage.
List segmentation allows you to send more personalized messages and education to those who care about your content. It also allows you to tailor and target your message better, as no two readers will be the same or on the same buyers’ journey.
This segmentation requires a little extra effort, but the time spent is worth it.
Always include a Follow-up and Way to Reply or Engage
Send emails that ask for some feedback and a way to engage further or reengage your subscribers.
Invite them to social media pages or tell them to reply to the email. The replies you get can ensure the content you create is valuable and solves their problem.
So there you have four tips for establishing your relationship with your list members.
One of the biggest mistakes marketers make is to have people sign up on their email list – and then either sell, sell, sell, or ignore them entirely.
Let’s make it our purpose to treat our list with respect. We want to give them something of value – on a continuing basis.
As we do that, these “names” become friends and many of them will become partners on our marketing journey.
by Suellen | Email Marketing, Online Success
Let’s look at three Keys to optimizing your email content.
We know that effectively communicating to your audience is required today to be successful in business. Most people agree on that.
But what are some keys to effective communication?
Good, quality content is essential. Without good content to engage with your audience, your emails will not be effective. So what makes for good content?
The following are the three key elements for optimizing your email marketing funnels.
Your content should be Value-Driven
Always be looking for ways to educate and add value to your subscribers’ life. Education is the best way to establish friends – and eventually persuade them to make a purchase.
It’s a big “no-no” to constantly be selling to them. In fact, if the title looks like an obvious sales pitch, they are unlikely to open. (Your emails might even go to their spam folder).
Only about one out of every four sales emails is opened.
However, if your readers know that they will gain value every single time they open your emails, they will want to open them more often. Your customers understand that you need to sell products or services to see a return on investment. If they find value in your content, then your sales will come around.
In a nutshell, don’t make sales your only point of focus.
Your Content Should be Engaging and Personable
All content should be engaging and personable. This means your readers feel like they are talking to a human and are forming a deep connection. It inspires or drives them to take action and makes them feel more involved or important while reading your email.
The more interactive and humanized the content, the more trust, and credibility you establish with your readers. You will find that your audience and your conversions will grow as a result.
Your Emails Should Be Personalized
You may feel like you can’t write. But the truth is if you simply write as if you are talking to a friend or loved one, you’ll do better. Write how you speak and edit later.
A natural conversation with automated personalized features like adding their name goes a long way. Not making an effort to use personalization will be obvious to your subscribers.
When you don’t personalize, you make your readers feel unimportant. It seems like you are only there to get something from them instead of providing value in return.
Personalization shows you value them as an individual and strengthens the customer experience and relationship.
Be sure to follow these three keys to optimizing your email content. Your success in opens, clicks and sales will all depend on sending out emails which bring benefit to your customers.
Commit to always getting to know your audience, tracking your metrics, and asking for feedback to improve your content and increase your email marketing success.
by Suellen | Email Marketing, Online Success
Six Secrets to Creating the Perfect Email Funnels
Email marketing has by far one of the largest returns on investment compared to other forms of marketing. However, that doesn’t mean it is straight forward nor will you see results just because you have a campaign set up. Like most things in life, there are important rules to follow to get to success.
Here are six secrets to creating a powerful email marketing funnel:
Lead With Your Goals in Mind
Before you develop any content, you need to clarify your marketing goals. For example, are you looking for more exposure to increase your sales? Are you hoping to educate your audience? Or both?
As you can see, these are important questions. Answering these and similar ones can lead you to the type of information you need to create. Also, how you can develop the right calls-to-action to see proper results.
Add Readers to Multiple Sequences and Segments
Remember, your readers can be on different journeys. Some will be brand new, and others will be avid users of your products. Meaning they shouldn’t be on the same email sequences or segments.
Likewise, if you have multiple products, they may not all be interested, making segmentation important. Welcome emails, abandon carts, or re-engagement emails are a few different examples.
In my case, some of my people are writers and want to improve their skills. Others are primarily interested in the income they will need to continue their blogging. Thus, they are more interested i affiliate marketing.
So you can see that to be more effective, I should be sending out different emails to address the different needs and desires of my audiences.
You can evaluate your audience. What do they want and need? That’s how you can segment them. If you are not certain about segmenting your emails, GetResponse has excellent training videos to improve your skills.
Keep Your Content Funnels Varied
In other words, don’t just sell to your readers. Make sure there is a mix of value, promotional and fun. If all you do is sell, sell, sell, your audience is more likely to be turned off and eventually unsubscribe to your email campaign.
The best policy is to lead with generosity. You don’t need to make a sale after every email you send. Providing value without anything in monetary return is often the best way to see success.
This is what establishes your credibility, trust, and awareness as a brand. Eventually these work together to bring you more influence and more profits.
Take Advantage of Your Titles
Titles are the most important part of the funnel. Sure, you need their email address. Yet just having their address and sending them emails doesn’t mean they will read them.
So you still need to capture their attention, and your titles and subject lines will do that.
A special tip here is to create more than one subject title and test them on different readers.
So Test Your Funnels
We’ve talked about testing several items. Open rates for certain times, etc. One of the most important is the subject line (title) you share.
HubSpot’s “Ultimate List of Marketing Statistics for 2021” report stated, that nearly 47% of marketers test different titles to see which ones perform the best.
Some key aspects for successful titles include clarity, urgency, curiosity, and relevance. In other words, make sure they know what they will get but don’t give too much away.
Then be sure that the email you present to them satisfies the expectations of the title.
Focus on Retention of Your Customers.
You got the sale, but that doesn’t mean the work is over. You must further nurture and inspire your customers to keep them interested and coming back for more. One sale won’t lead to sustainability.
So there we have Six Secrets for greater productivity in your email campaigns.
Be sure you get the results you need from your email marketing campaign by following these six secrets to creating a powerful email marketing funnel.
As long as you have the secrets, take action, and continue, you will see the results.
Sign up for this 30 Day Email Marketing Challenge Here.
by Suellen | Meeting the Challenges, Vision and Goals
Do you pray over your business? I do.
In fact, I often start my morning with an hour or more of spending time with God. Praying, listening, and reading the Bible.
I consider him to be the CEO of my business. I’m the COO. He’s the boss. I just carry out His plans.
So what difference does this make?
First, spending this time helps me stay focused on the right priorities. My number one priority is to serve my customers – helping them to achieve their goals. I want to offer products and services which bless them abundantly.
Second, this special time helps me gain clarity. Often as I pray, the Holy Spirit gives me new ideas and shows me where I’m not being as productive. What to pick up and what to put down. With clarity, I can approach the day with a clear picture of what I want to accomplish.
Third, praying gives me confidence. I know that I have God’s hand on my business and He is empowering me to achieve His goals. So I know that I will be successful in what I am doing because He is with me in the process.
So how about you? Do you pray over your business?
I would love to hear your thoughts about this.
