Email Marketing Is Still The Top Way To Generate Leads

As the general public became familiar with electronic communications, mass postal-mail marketing campaigns gave way to email marketing campaigns. If you have been working in marketing prior to the social media boom, you surely remember when emails were the top marketing platform.

Over time, the popularity of email marketing campaigns resulted in personal email inboxes that were overflowing with the latest and greatest offers. Email campaigns grew and people grew tired of them. Laws that allowed customers to unsubscribe breathed new life into email marketing campaigns as customers could easily pick and choose the companies they were interested in.

Email marketing has long been a tried-and-true method for generating leads. This approach continues to enjoy a strong track record in spite of the rise of social media platforms. Email marketing is still an efficient way to generate leads at a reasonable cost.

One thing that hasn’t changed with email marketing is that you need to be strategic about how you word every part of marketing emails. One of the best things about email subscriptions of today is that you can count on your prospects having some level of interest in your product or service that encouraged them to sign up for your subscription list to begin with.

Write email campaigns that get results.

One of the first lessons that I learned about email marketing campaigns is to give sincere thought to how a customer perceives every component of the email, starting with the subject line. Media headlines grab your attention and get you to listen longer or read further. A meaningful subject line for an email offers the same punch. Subject lines should be relevant, interesting and genuine.

Journalism students quickly learn how the inverted pyramid style of writing gives readers the most important information first. The rest of the paragraph or article supports the initial information or offers additional details. Your email marketing customers will respond to the same style of writing. They want the big news first because they’re often reading your email while they’re commuting or at work. If they want the details, they’ll read the email again just before they buy.

Keep your emails simple and minimal. Just as a crisp, pressed business suit sends a professional message, a clean, uncluttered email tells consumers that you are professional. If you can’t create a professional-looking email, look for professional-looking templates where you can fill in the blanks.

Be cognizant of your purpose. Each of your emails should have a clear goal such as educating your customer, asking for referrals or getting them to follow your company’s social media platforms.

Engage your email readers with content that is short and to the point. Wordiness and fluff have no place in email marketing campaigns. Reveal your purpose up front and talk about how your purpose relates to the customer to get a connection started. Choose large fonts in an easy-to-read style. Your readers may be people who constantly read while they’re on the go or they may have poor eyesight. You’ll want them to be able to read and scan the email quickly.

Move the wording in your email toward your call-to-action section quickly and make the action that you want them to take ultra-clear. Try to think about the ways emails in your inbox grab your attention and those that cause you to hit delete.

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Create customized emails for cold leads from all sources.

The main sources from which I get our leads are our blogs, organic traffic, pay-per-click ads and salespeople. No matter where you source your leads, use several email chains that are customized according to what those leads are looking for. Next, categorize them and get them in the right automated email chain. This places them in your sales funnel to warm them up and get them ready for sales.

Generate leads from blogs.

Our prospects love our informative blog articles. Use your blog as an opportunity to send them related articles. This primes the prospect for a call to action asking them if they want you to call them.

Move warm email leads to hot leads and make the sale.

It’s important to give your warm leads as much attention as your cold leads. When our emails move from the cold list to the warm list, I have a specific email that I send to nurture the relationship and make it a little warmer. I also include a thoughtful testimonial to help gain credibility.

After sending the warm email, follow up with a second email asking if they’re still looking for your services. Include a sale offer or coupon to move the lead closer to a sale.

Test and analyze email marketing campaign results.

There’s still a lot of power in A/B split testing. Testing emails reduces bounce rates, tells you more about your customers, increases conversions and is cost effective.

In analyzing my email marketing campaigns, I look for open rates at 30% or higher to know if they were successful. I don’t expect as much from click-through rates, where I like to see around the 5% range.


When a new approach to marketing takes marketers by storm, some marketers make the mistake of moving into new strategies full force, leaving methods that have worked well in the past smoldering in the dust. The best marketing campaigns use several marketing forms simultaneously. The key to maximizing results with every effort is to know your purpose, target the right customers and learn from your results.



Source: https://www.forbes.com
Image Credit: Pexels



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7 Best Ways to Create and Execute Email Campaigns for Improved Marketing

Ever since the internet oh so eloquently entered our lives, emails have been the cornerstone of the field. Emails have been here since the very beginning of the internet and are still going strong, which goes to show their resilience and their effectiveness. Doesn’t matter how much we grow to like tweeting, liking, or commenting on social media posts, emails will forever remain our first love. And that is part of the main reason why email marketing campaigns are of so much importance to your brand if you are a budding entrepreneur in this day and age.


Via an email, you get to promote your brand, offer new deals, and brush up on your existing services, and you do all this, without having to do much. So all in all, running a successful email marketing campaign is of paramount importance when it comes to cementing your legacy as a successful brand. But that’s the thing, most people don’t really understand how a successful marketing campaign works in the modern era, and to help you solve the problem, we’re going to tell you about the best ways you can actually create and execute email campaigns for improved marketing. Here we go.

#1. Consent is important

Do you ever feel annoyed when you are working on something important and suddenly out of the blue, an e-mail pops up? Or better yet, imagine you are enjoying a fine dinner at a posh restaurant with a friend or your date, and a marketing professional just comes by, pulls up a chair, sits right next to you and starts telling you about his product and services. Wouldn’t that make you feel infuriated? Of course it would.

Now imagine a scenario where this marketing professional only comes to meet you and tells you about his products and services, just because you asked him to. You wouldn’t feel so infuriated now, would you? That is because now that marketing professional has your permission to promote his brand. That’s how it works in the email marketing campaigns as well, you have to get permission first. The best way to gain permission from a prospective client to send him emails would be to use a “Call-to-action” button on your website.

Sending emails to a client is like trying to get into their house so that you could sit down and talk about how great your brand is, so it makes sense if you get permission first, it is just like knocking on their door.

#2. Think from the customer’s perspective

It doesn’t matter how elegantly your ad is designed, to the customer it looks all the same. And that is because the customer gets bombarded with a whole bunch of advertisements and promotions the entire day, and your content goes in the same imaginary junk box.

Most of the times when you ask for permission from a prospective client to send him emails, he is asking himself a few bunch of questions. Like, what do I get from this deal? Is this guy going to spam me? Will this brand keep filling my inbox with useless emails? Will I get some concession or discounts? Are they going to offer me some unique deals like a go at the beta version of their new product? These are the questions that you need to answer to gain a customer for life, or risk losing business.

#3. Getting in the good graces of the customer

Most of the time, the emails you send, are filtered by the ISPs or the email service that your customer uses, and put in the spam folder. And that is understandable, because even though you sent a mail to someone who willingly gave you his or her email address, they haven’t really added you to their address book.

Getting whitelisted, or in easier language, getting added to their address book is basically the signal that you have been approved by the recipient as a genuine sender or a definite friend. ISPs and email service providers like Hotmail, Yahoo, or Google, will stop putting your mails into the junk box and you will be able to communicate with your clients without any obstacle.

#4. Know your audience

Email marketing isn’t about broadcasting emails out to the entire world. They are about knowing what to send and who to send to. If you are a company that specializes in offering writing services, you will cater to students, not to firefighters. This is why knowing your audience is the key to success. In order to know more about the customers, you can monitor their activities on your website and get to know them.

#5. Using automation

Implementing automation during your email marketing campaigns can add to your business substantially. Take a look at this email marketing software guide and go for the one that you like to get an autoresponder for yourself. Autoresponders not only help you gain new customers but it can also help you keep the ones that you already have. You don’t really have to remember which email to send to which customer, an autoresponder will do it for you and save you from the risk of losing business.

#6. Monitor your strategy

If you wish to run a successful email marketing campaign, you cannot just launch one and expect it to bring you maximum results. You have to constantly keep tabs on it and find out if it even brings you success or not. Because what’s the point of following a strategy when it is not getting you results? If it is not getting you the desired output, find out the chinks in your armor and get rid of them.

#7. Timing is important

One of the greatest strategies for optimizing your marketing campaigns results, is to get your timing right. If you are an e-commerce website, you need to take into account certain holidays and festivals, both local and international, to get the most out of your business. For instance, be it Christmas, Eid, or Hanukkah, if you set up multiple emails for different festivals, this can really add greatly to the positive results brought about by your marketing campaign.

Image Credit: unknown
Source:http://tweakyourbiz.com


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5 Tips for Your Next Email Blast

Getting ready to send your next email blast and wondering what you can do to improve your results?

This post was written for you.

Here are five simple tips for your next email blast, or eblast.

1. Don’t think of it as an email blast

If you’re just “blasting” out information sporadically whenever you have the time, you need to reevaluate your email marketing strategy.

Focus on creating a thoughtful email marketing plan that consistently delivers value to your subscribers and your business.

Rather than blasting out information, think of email marketing as a way to interact with your customers and prospects, build relationships, and drive valuable repeat business.

Look for opportunities to engage your subscribers by offering useful tips, providing exclusive discounts, or giving your subscribers the opportunity to share feedback.

2. Get to know your subscribers

Once you’ve taken a second look at your sending strategy, you’ll need to take steps to better understand your subscribers. Who they are, what they’re interested in, and how you can improve your relationship with them.

The more you think about your subscribers, the more you’ll realize the different groups you’re trying to talk to all at once.

While some people on your email list may be lifelong customers, others may be completely new to your business.

Rather than “blasting” all of your contacts with the same information, take the time to figure out how to deliver a more personalized experience to each of your subscribers.

Consider creating separate email lists to better target your different types of contacts. Here are a few examples of how different industries segment their list:

• A nursery will email its residential customers about new spring plantings and its commercial customers about availability of bulk mulch.

• A cosmetics boutique will email one coupon to customers who buy makeup and another to those who buy skin-care products.

• A financial services firm will email tax prep customers a timely IRS filing reminder and another to financial planning clients about rebalancing their portfolios.

3. Make your emails interactive

When you approach emails with an eblast mentality, you risk forgetting that your emails should inspire action and elicit a measurable response.

Make your emails interactive and give your subscribers a clear call to action so they know how to take the next step.

Should they read an article on your website? Purchase your new product? RSVP to your event?

Your email design should be clean and focused — with every element in the message supporting the goal of your message.

4. Provide value

Today, consumers expect more from the businesses they interact with online and off.

With so many brands competing for their attention in all the places they visit every day — whether it’s through TV, email, or social media — consumers have gotten better and better at filtering out messages that aren’t relevant to their needs or interests.

If you want your audience to remain engaged with your content, you need to make sure you’re offering something of value. For some readers, that means offering a special discount or an exclusive promotion to your email list. For others that could mean offering a how-to article from your blog or a piece of content that’s more than just the typical sales pitch.

Make it valuable, make it relevant, and make it something your audience would thank you for.

If you’re not sure what to send, add a Poll to your email and ask your subscribers what information they’re most interested in.

5. Measure your results

If you’re not measuring your results, how could you ever hope to improve on the work you’ve been doing?

One of the biggest benefits of using an email marketing service, like Constant Contact, is it’s easy to track your email marketing results.

Your email marketing reports will tell you exactly how many people are opening your emails, clicking your links, and even sharing your content. They’ll also provide insight into the type of information your audience is most interested in and will provide a benchmark to improve upon every time you hit send.

Whether you’re trying to learn more about your readers, provide valuable content, or increase sales — your email reports can help.

Use these tips to improve your next email blast

Thinking of your email blasts as a powerful marketing tool is important to get you in the right frame of mind.

Develop a plan to communicate with your subscribers effectively, start sending valuable and engaging messages, and measure the impact of your efforts to make sure you’re on the right track

Ready to get started? Log in and put these tips to work today. 

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Source: https://blogs.constantcontact.com


ABOUT WNFP
Westchester Networking for Professionals (WNFP) is a business organization focused on providing our members and guests with an extraordinary networking experience, bringing business professionals together for the sole purpose of generating new relationships and developing new business opportunities. Not a member, learn how you can become a member and join this awesome group of professionals to connect and grow your business.

Stay Connected with WNFP!