Learn More About Setting Up Your Email Marketing
What You'll Learn
In this lesson you'll learn not only about email content and templates, but the cooler aspect of mail marketing- The fundamentals of how to execute a standard drip marketing campaign.
Why is This Important?
Email marketing can seem tedious and difficult compared to other online marketing platforms, but creating your own database of followers is marketing gold and a well executed Drip mail campaign can make the difference between an actively engaged audience and a legion of prospects who’ve forgotten what you do.
In this lesson you'll learn not only about email content and templates, but the cooler aspect of mail marketing- The fundamentals of how to execute a standard drip marketing campaign.
Why is This Important?
Email marketing can seem tedious and difficult compared to other online marketing platforms, but creating your own database of followers is marketing gold and a well executed Drip mail campaign can make the difference between an actively engaged audience and a legion of prospects who’ve forgotten what you do.
Common Email Marketing Terms & What They Mean
If you're new to email marketing then you might be wondering what everyone is talking about when they use common email marketing terms so let's go over a few of the majore ones here.
Email Service Provider (ESP)
ESP is an acronym that stands for email service provider. An email service provider is a software service that helps email marketers send out email marketing campaigns to their subscribers.
Marketing Automation
Marketing automation can have several nuances in the marketing world. When it comes to email, marketing automation refers to the process of an email marketing software sending email campaigns to your customers and prospects based on a set of triggers you’ve pre-defined.
Dynamic Content
Dynamic content is content that can be displayed and triggered based on subscriber’s data. For example, email marketers can use gender to determine which type of content to display.
Transactional Email
A transactional email is an automated email that’s triggered by a purchase. Transactional emails are significant to the email marketer because they’re actually opened 8 times more than the traditional marketing messages.
Click-through Rate
Click-through rate (CTR) is a metric that measures how many people clicked on an image, hyperlink, or CTA in an email. Measuring the CTR is a great way to determine how effective a particular email is.
Personalization
Marketing these days is all about personalization, and email marketing is no exception. Email personalization is where you customize the content based on the subscriber’s data. This could include name, interests, desires, birthdays, and more.
Email Deliverability
Email deliverability is simply the ability to deliver an email to a subscriber’s inbox. What’s really important with email deliverability, however, is to find a reliable ESP with a good reputation and high deliverability rates.
Hard Bounce
A hard bounce is when an email is returned to a sender for permanent reasons. This includes things like delivering to an invalid email address for one of the following reasons:
Soft Bounce
A soft bounce, on the other hand, is an email that failed to deliver because of temporary reasons. These soft bounces will occur when a file is too big or a recipient’s inbox is full.
Lists
Lists are what subscribers subscribe to. If someone signs up for an eBook on your blog page, they have signed up to an email list. If they signed up for weekly updates, they have signed on to your weekly updates list.
Email Service Provider (ESP)
ESP is an acronym that stands for email service provider. An email service provider is a software service that helps email marketers send out email marketing campaigns to their subscribers.
Marketing Automation
Marketing automation can have several nuances in the marketing world. When it comes to email, marketing automation refers to the process of an email marketing software sending email campaigns to your customers and prospects based on a set of triggers you’ve pre-defined.
Dynamic Content
Dynamic content is content that can be displayed and triggered based on subscriber’s data. For example, email marketers can use gender to determine which type of content to display.
Transactional Email
A transactional email is an automated email that’s triggered by a purchase. Transactional emails are significant to the email marketer because they’re actually opened 8 times more than the traditional marketing messages.
Click-through Rate
Click-through rate (CTR) is a metric that measures how many people clicked on an image, hyperlink, or CTA in an email. Measuring the CTR is a great way to determine how effective a particular email is.
Personalization
Marketing these days is all about personalization, and email marketing is no exception. Email personalization is where you customize the content based on the subscriber’s data. This could include name, interests, desires, birthdays, and more.
Email Deliverability
Email deliverability is simply the ability to deliver an email to a subscriber’s inbox. What’s really important with email deliverability, however, is to find a reliable ESP with a good reputation and high deliverability rates.
Hard Bounce
A hard bounce is when an email is returned to a sender for permanent reasons. This includes things like delivering to an invalid email address for one of the following reasons:
- Incorrect domain name
- Sending to an email address that isn’t real
- Recipient is unknown
Soft Bounce
A soft bounce, on the other hand, is an email that failed to deliver because of temporary reasons. These soft bounces will occur when a file is too big or a recipient’s inbox is full.
Lists
Lists are what subscribers subscribe to. If someone signs up for an eBook on your blog page, they have signed up to an email list. If they signed up for weekly updates, they have signed on to your weekly updates list.
Which Email Marketing Tool Is Best?
For email marketing noobs, I recommend Mail Chimp. It’s a great tool for any business, and if you keep your campaign under a certain size, its free. Mail Chimp also lets you separate your messaging efforts into groups once your marketing list and popularity grows.
There are too many email marketing tools name, but the top three I usually recommend are:
You can do a trial with all three, so pick one and start from there.
There are too many email marketing tools name, but the top three I usually recommend are:
You can do a trial with all three, so pick one and start from there.
Setting Up a Template
You'll be glad to know you don't need to go crazy with a branded email template with colorful backgrounds, logos and social media icons and there's a very important reason for skipping out on such dramatics.
The more images and design you add to an email, the more likely it will land in someones spam box.
Why? Because when friends email each other, they generally don't use company logo and social media icons. They're pretty much plain text and just get the job done.
So not only do most marketing platforms have better delivery rates with non branded emails, but they also get better responses from those on your email list.
The more images and design you add to an email, the more likely it will land in someones spam box.
Why? Because when friends email each other, they generally don't use company logo and social media icons. They're pretty much plain text and just get the job done.
So not only do most marketing platforms have better delivery rates with non branded emails, but they also get better responses from those on your email list.
Segment Your List
Let's start at the beginning!
When you start out sending your mail marketing for the first time, you will undoubtedly want to head straight into a sales slogan like this one maybe..
“Sign up today and you’ll be on your way to a ripped, muscular physique!”
Nice call to action there, but what about all of your clients who are just trying to lose weight? You may have lost them!
Segmenting your target audience is all about customizing your marketing message with language that’s relevant to each group. In the beginning, don’t worry about breaking down your email list into highly specific demographics. Instead, focus on some simple metrics.
Simple questions to ask to break the list down
You can get more specific as you collect more client data, but the important thing is that you are taking time to customize your message for different groups.
I recommend you check out this informative video by the folks at 3WeeksToLive. They go into more detail on how to segment your marketing email list.
When you start out sending your mail marketing for the first time, you will undoubtedly want to head straight into a sales slogan like this one maybe..
“Sign up today and you’ll be on your way to a ripped, muscular physique!”
Nice call to action there, but what about all of your clients who are just trying to lose weight? You may have lost them!
Segmenting your target audience is all about customizing your marketing message with language that’s relevant to each group. In the beginning, don’t worry about breaking down your email list into highly specific demographics. Instead, focus on some simple metrics.
Simple questions to ask to break the list down
- Is this a brand new lead
- Have they already purchased your product/service?
- Are they signed up for your free service?
- Are they premium members?
- Are they male or female?
You can get more specific as you collect more client data, but the important thing is that you are taking time to customize your message for different groups.
I recommend you check out this informative video by the folks at 3WeeksToLive. They go into more detail on how to segment your marketing email list.
A/B Testing
If you’re lucky, your email service provider will have a feature allowing you to run A/B tests on your marketing emails. By comparing the results of different emails, you’ll get a better sense of the types of branding and trigger phrases your customers will respond to. Don’t get caught up trying to think of the perfect subject line for your emails, simplicity works best, and is better at avoiding spam filters. A/B testing will let you compare such email variables as:
- Best day of the week
- Best time of the day
- Best wording of your subject line
- Best “Sent From” name
