11 Tips for Effective Email Marketing to Increase Business Systemisation

Major Points of the Article

• Using Email for Marketing is a great way to automate business systemisation

• Email Marketing can increase customer engagement and sales conversion

• It can create automated personalised journeys

Email marketing is one of the most effective ways to generate leads and promotes your business. It can be very beneficial to your business, acting as an additional sales officer in your team while automating your business systemisation. Furthermore, it enables you to create managed, measurable, targeted and relevant campaigns. For these reasons, it is important to not only have an email marketing plan but to also do it well.

Here are 11 tips to help increase the effectiveness of your email marketing.

1. Get a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system

The first step to any great email marketing campaign is creating a list. Without one, you cannot send emails and have no insight into how effective the campaign was. A customer relationship management system (CRM) can help in this process by not only managing your email list but also ensuring that all of your contact information remains up-to-date.

If you have been using an excel spreadsheet, it's time to update and there are many available on the market. Some have free plans while others might cost a little, and some expand into a full suite of cloud-based apps. If you are just starting out, you might consider Mailchimp or Zoho.

2. Dynamic or Linear Email Marketing

Using email for marketing is easier to do when it is systemised. Instead of sending one email at a time to 1000s of people, it is better to enter the subscriber into a journey of sequenced emails and there are two types to consider. Linear is a sequence of emails received by the subscriber one at a time. For example, joe@smith.com receives a "welcome" email, then 7 days later a "sales pitch" email, then 7 days after that a "follow-up" email. The other is dynamic, which changes based on the subscriber's actions. For example, jane@smith.com receives the "welcome" email, then 7 days after that a "sales" email, but because she opened the "email" she doesn't receive the "follow-up" email. Instead, she receives a "schedule a call" email (see example image below).

Dynamic is better in this case as the re-actions are more targeted to the journey of the individual subscriber.

Linear will be available within your CRM system, whereas dynamic will definitely have a fee attached or may not be available within the system.

3. Include SMS

One thing to add to your business systemisation is to use email for marketing but to also expand into using it with SMS. SMS has a greater opening rate than email with no SPAM folder and can be used for more immediate actions such as a sale or an event. It is possible to create SMS alerts within your linear or dynamic email marketing system, like in the image below. Just make sure that when you collect subscriber details you have their email address and mobile phone number. You might consider pendula as your CRM system for this.

credit: pendula

4. Categorize and Label

When collecting and sorting your email database make sure to categorize the subscribers by type such as an "early adopter" or "follower" and label them as "prospect" or "current customer". That way when you want to offer a discount to your loyal customers or send a group down a specific journey, you can simply select the category and/or label of the group you want.

5. Draft the Story

A book is more enjoyable if it is well written with a great beginning, character development, a climactic event, and an ending. This is the same for business systemisation and when using email for marketing as we want to nurture the subscriber towards a targeted event. Let's say we want them to purchase our new line of socks. However, they have never heard of us. It will take time for them to learn who we are, what we are all about, and be able to trust us before buying our product. In order to do that, they need a reason to open their emails, and through a story we can increase engagement and entertain them until that sale.

Essentially, stories help with email open rates, and increases the time subscribers stay engaged with your brand.

6. Send Fewer, but Relevant Emails

Now that the story has been drafted, it is best to understand that too many is too much. Think about it from the subscriber's end, if they receive an email every day they may feel spammed by your brand and instantly disengage from your emails. Even worse, they could unsubscribe, leading to no sale.

Think about how often you should send the subscriber these emails. 1 per day, 1 per week, 1 per month? Find the balance.

7. Pay Attention to Email Design

Consistency is key. Make sure your email is recognisable through its branding, so that when they open the email, the subscriber instantly knows it's from you. This helps increase your open rates, and touchpoints per potential customer.

You can achieve this with your brand colours, images, logo, layout and more... Make sure you are consistent, which will elevate your funnel when using email for marketing.

8. Track Open Rates

As mentioned a few times throughout this article, check your open rates, as they are key indicators of subscriber engagement. Try to aim for at least a 50% open rate or better, which can be increased using a dynamic email marketing system, as the unopened action can be sent again (if its a really important email).

Additionally, you can perform A/B testing with B email being slightly different to the original A email. If B has a significant increase in its open rate, then it is better and B should be implemented.

Keep tweaking the emails to get the highest open rates you can.

9. Spam Folder

Another reason for low open rates could be due to the emails being placed in the spam folder. This can occur if the email looks suspicious such as all caps, the word urgent, or buy now, in the subject line.

To prevent your emails from heading into the spam folder keep the text simple, and inform them that you will be sending more emails. The subscriber can then put you on the "safe list" if it is going to the spam folder.

10. Make the Email Personalised

Technology is great, especially when you can use systemisation to personalise a potential customer or customer's journey. It can be achieved when using email for marketing by simply changing your email from "Hi, we have a great deal for you" to "Hi Jane, we have a great deal for you". By adding their name its a simple touch that makes the subscriber feel more known, while building trust.

Using the dynamic system mentioned above, the personalised journey can be expanded to include other elements, such as products they have bought, events they have attended, and a whole lot more.

The more personalised the journey, the more trust the subscriber will have for your brand, which will increase your sales conversion rate.

11. Call to Action (CTA)

Another way to increase sales conversion (and the most important) is to include a CTA with your emails. Perhaps it's to buy your latest widget, or to schedule an appointment. Whatever it is, a CTA within your email will encourage people to take the action.

Note though, just like with the rate at which the emails are being sent. Too often is too much.

Conclusion

Email for marketing is a powerful tool which can benefit your business systemisation. A few key steps to ensure you are emailing effectively include paying attention to design, consistency and frequency. Make sure at the end of an email newsletter or email campaign that they know how they subscribed so there's no confusion around this point in future communications.

Additional 12. Privacy

You should also consider their privacy with regards to email-sign up forms as well as ensuring unsubscribing from emails - it's best not to continuously send them if they have indicated interest but then disengaged after just one email.

Within Paradelta Strategy business growth services, we provide strategies to increase your business automation and business technology strategy services to strengthen the process. Over the years, we have helped businesses across Australia to grow and expand, nationally or internationally. To get assistance with your business, simply email us at hello@paradeltastrategy.com.au or schedule a no-obligation discovery call here.