I hate to tell you this, but no one is sitting around thinking about you or your business.
Except your mom…maybe. Don’t worry, email marketing is a great way to stay top of mind.
Yes, good ole fashioned email is still one of the most effective tools in the marketing tool box. According to Hubspot’s 2024 State of Marketing Report, an email has an average ROI of $36 for every $1 spent. Not too shabby. However, most marketing teams are spending two or more weeks on a single email, which seems like a long time, but sounds about right.
What to do if you’re an entrepreneur, start up or early stage growth company without a marketing team (pro-tip: hire a fractional cmo)? How can you leverage email marketing and where do you even start?
Let me break it down for you, step-by-step plus a few key tips to think about when planning your email marketing strategy.
Step One: Have a content plan and a calendar.
Planning three months out is a good start, six is better. This is probably the most important step because without content, do you even have an email? No.
When I was running marketing and comms internally, my formula for email success (consistently getting 40ish% open rates) was to offer scannable content that walked the line between helpful at keeping my brand top of mind, but not burdensome or overly annoying.
I aimed for 4-5 pieces of new content in each monthly email newsletter.
- Visual element. Usually a graphic or video from a previous event engagement. Include people in these visuals.
- Headline conveying useful information that my key audience might have missed or would be smarter by knowing.
- 1-2 blog article snippets linking back to my website. Sometimes these were guest blogs! Blogs based on keyword research and a pillar strategy are a must.
- An opportunity for engagement with my brand. We used webinars alot because they are low risk, and low cost to produce.
- Upcoming calendar of events that my team was participating in, we were hosting or presenting at.
But not every email is a newsletter. Sometimes it’s just an email with one piece of content and one call to action. It can be that simple. No matter what; always, always close with a call to action and a clear way for your readers to get in touch with you.
Step Two: Get your list ready.
This step can be as simple or as complex as you like. If you are just starting out with email marketing just gather up all the emails in your contact list, customer list and anyone else that might be interested in hearing from you. Probably also include your mom–she definitely wants to hear from you. Include everyone on the first email, but you must have a clear UNSUBSCRIBE link, because there are rules about email spam.
If you have a bigger customer and network list you can segment the list into different customer types, geographic regions and interest levels so that your email can be personalized and custom to that individual.
If you can personalize your emails, you should definitely do this.
Personalized emails (yes, name included in subject is good, but that’s just the start) that show you know your clients and customers have even greater ROI, open rates and click thru rates. People want to be seen and heard, and tailored emails demonstrate that and build trust with your brand.
Step 3: Find a tool with analytics.
Email marketing offers a great place to start diving into user analytics. You’ll want to pick an email tool that has great back end analytics so that you can see who clicked on what, when. This helps you create more content that your customers want to engage with and find interesting.
There are many good email marketing platforms available in a wide range of price levels. I used Hubspot and loved it, but there are so many now to choose from. This helpful article gives a good overview of the many platforms and their pricing structure.
You can also use Gmail for email marketing, which is super handy if you already have a workspace account and you want to keep costs near zero. The only thing you give up is the number of emails you can send per day is limited and you don’t have access to analytics. Here is a guide to help you create an email marketing campaign from google.
Now that you’ve got three essential steps to email marketing, you’ll want to consider these three tips.
Length
“If I Had More Time, I Would Have Written a
Shorter Letter”
Marketing guru Neil Patel recently emailed me (personally-ha! No, not really) and shared that in his email marketing tests, emails containing 100 to 249 words consistently got the highest click rates (above 3.5%).
- Next came emails with 99 words or less and emails with 250 to 459 words.
- Emails over 500 words performed the worst, with click rates under 1%.
Are you surprised to learn that shorter emails performed better? Keep it short and concise.
Frequency
Decide how often you plan to email your list. This is helpful for both internal alignment and to set expectations with your audience. B2C and D2C companies email me seemingly every day, multiple times a day. I’m looking at you Bath & Body Works. For organizations just starting out and depending on how much content you have, and your service offering, I’d suggest a monthly email is a great start. You can build up from there and run different campaigns to see what performs the best.
Authenticity
You’re going for progress not perfection, so just start and get going with email marketing. Need a few tips on how to create authentic content, check out this blog. Switch your mindset from; “Oh gosh, I don’t want to bug these people”, to “I have something really interesting and useful to say to my audience and they will love me for emailing them!” and if they don’t, they can unsubscribe.
If your organization needs help creating an email marketing strategy, you’re in the right place! I can help you prioritize your limited time and budget while leveraging this powerful marketing tool to grow your business.
Click the Let’s Connect button in the header, or email me directly at Caroline@ForwardMarch.xyz.
Forward March Communications 