Companies large and small rely on email marketing to reach customers, increase brand awareness and make sales. But some businesses are more successful with their marketing campaigns than others. Why is that? What are high-ranking experienced email marketers doing to achieve success? Good question.
To succeed, email marketers develop a set of habits that become routine. To help refine your marketing skills, we’ve outlined a list of six habits of successful email marketers and explain how much time you should spend on each one.
1. Automate your emails
One of the first tricks of the trade that successful email marketers incorporate into their routine is automated emails. These emails are sent to subscribers automatically when a certain trigger is met. You can set up triggers based on things like dates or customer behavior. For instance, when a subscriber signs up for your email list through your website, that action can trigger a welcome email.
By reacting to customers’ actions in real time, you can increase conversions, transaction amounts and customer satisfaction. Plus, automated emails save you time.
You simply log into your account, create the email once and schedule it to send to customers. That’s it. Emails reach your customers without spending countless hours creating emails and sending them to individual subscribers.
What can you automate?
- Welcome email
Trigger: When a customers signs up for your list
- Abandoned cart email
Trigger: When a customer leaves items in a cart without completing the transaction
- Interest email
Trigger: When a customer clicks on a product link on your website, an email is sent to his or her inbox that offers more information about that particular product
- Educational series (a.k.a drip campaign)
Trigger: When a customer opens the first email, it triggers the second email in the series to send and so on.
Pinpointe users can refer to these simple instructions to start automating emails.
Time spent: 1 hour a week
To start, access which automated emails are best for your business. Take some time to create these emails and set up the triggers. The time needed to get this process set up will vary depending on how many emails you create and schedule.
If you’re new to automation, we suggest starting with one email to get your feet wet. Once you get the hang of it, add more to your collection.
Once you have emails set up, you’ll only need about an hour each week to check on the progress of the emails. While automation allows you to “set it and forget it,” it’s still important to double check emails and watch your metrics.
2. Segment contacts and tailor content
The best marketers know that there is no such thing as a “one-size-fits-all” email. Research shows irrelevant content is responsible for 20.8% of unsubscribes.
Segmenting your contact list in order to send tailored messaging will not only decrease unsubscribes and abuse reports, but also increase engagement.
By continuing to collect customer data little by little throughout your interactions, you’ll be able to break your contact list into small, specific groups based on things like demographics, interests, location and behaviors. This act, which is called microsegmenting, provides personalized emails, which research shows can improve your click-through rate by an average of 14 percent and conversions by 10 percent.
Time spent: 30 minutes a week
Successful email marketers are constantly segmenting their email list. Spend at least 30 minutes each week analyzing your list, and make sure each contact is part of the right segments.
Keep in mind, a subscriber could fit into more than one segment. For instance, a customer might be in a certain segment based on his or her location, and part of another segment based on buying habits.
3. Monitor what’s working
Successful email marketers habitually look at their metrics. They want to know what’s working and what’s not.
On the front end, A/B testing can let you try out different formats, colors, sizes and offers. But measuring success can come in many forms. Some key metrics to consider:
• open rates
• click-throughs
• conversions
• bounce rates
• unsubscribe rates
• spam rate
Measuring your email campaigns’ success should be an ongoing process of measure, evaluate, and adjust. Or, if a campaign is very successful, measure, evaluate and repeat.
Need a little help understanding what each metric means? Take a look at this post that outlines average email response rates and what to do if your emails aren’t meeting your expectations.
Time spent: 1 hour a week
Check your metrics on a regular basis. Some marketers set aside a 20-minute block of time two or three times a week to look at their response rates and make adjustments, if needed.
4. Send diverse emails
While promotional emails are a staple of sales, it’s vital that you send a variety of emails to keep your customers’ interest and build a relationship on trust, not just purchases.
Go beyond the coupons and new product promos and consider sending tutorials, customer stories, customer appreciation messages, a holiday greeting, event invitations and surveys. Try varying the medium as well by sending videos, funny cartoons, infographics or photos.
Successful email marketers know that diversity is key.
Time spent: 30 minutes a week
Set aside 30 minutes each week to freshen up your automated emails, or create a new email from scratch. By doing this, it keeps your emails from becoming stale.
5. Combine email and social media efforts
Social media is the perfect companion to email, and successful marketers use this relationship to their advantage.
When you send an email, consider creating a similar message for your social channels. For instance, if you send an email about an upcoming sale, mention that same sale on social media.
Just as you automate emails, you can use automation tools for social media too. Hootsuite and TweetDeck are two popular options. You can set up posts in advance so you don’t have to create posts on a daily basis.
Time spent: 20 minutes each week
Using an automation tool, you can set up posts that coincide with your email content in a snap. Set aside about 20 minutes on a Monday to create and schedule your posts for the week.
6. Continue growing the contact list
Strong email marketers don’t rest. They know the value of their email list and are constantly working to grow it. Research suggests that every email contact is worth $948 in revenue, which is all the motivation you should need to keep contacts rolling in.
You’ll want to set up several sign up methods that don’t require a lot of maintenance on your part, but are easy for people to join your list. Here are some ideas:
- Set up a form on your website so customers can sign up easily. Pinpointe users can follow these instructions to set up a form on their website and have new contacts flow right into their account.
- Add a link to sign up for your newsletter to your email signature.
- Collect email address through Facebook by adding a Sign Up button to your business page. Here’s how.
- Heading to an expo or trade show? Put a newsletter sign-up sheet at your booth and ask people to register in exchange for being entered into a drawing for a gift basket.
- Have employees ask for and collect email addresses during the checkout process.
Time spent: 30 minutes a month
You’ll need to set aside a small block of time to get the methods mentioned above set up, but once that’s complete you’ll be in good shape. However, we suggest spending about 30 minutes each month implementing a new sign up method.
In addition to the ideas above, you can check out this list of 10 unique ways to grow your email list.
Wrap up
By adopting the habits listed above, you’ll be able to take your email marketing to a new level. It may take time, but by adding these habits to your to-do list they will become second nature. In turn, your email campaigns will be that much more successful.
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