4 Email Marketing Strategies For Businesses

Email marketing has been around nearly as long as email itself, and for good reason.

To date, nearly 2.6 billion people are using email, and this number is set to increase to nearly 2.9 billion by 2019. The potential for marketing and selling your services via email is extremely high, but without the proper implementation and use of email marketing strategy in your business, the success is likely to be insignificant.

The competition with email marketing is higher than ever before, and you should arm yourself with the best possible tools and tips now, and build success for yourself and your business with the help of email marketing done right.

What do I mean by email marketing done right?

Let’s take a look.

1. Building A Familiar and Personal Touch

I am going to be upfront with you and give it to you straight: I really hate general and tacky email senders.

I just really hate them.

You know the ones?

“Free Webinar Run Once In A Lifetime Which If You Miss You’ll Regret, By The Way Just Buy My $997 Product At The End Of It, Oh Yeah Limited Seating Too, So Get In Quick Only Available Till This Timer Runs Out, Never Seen Again Offer…”

Sound familiar?

If I signed up to your list for one reason or the other, I would prefer you being excited to start a new relationship with me.

And what’s the best way to build a relationship?

Well let’s think about it like going on a date with someone for the first time. You don’t just turn up and tell them you’re only single for a limited time until someone else snaps you up.

You start with an ice breaker and start paying attention to what your date has to say. Let them talk about themselves and get to know them.

There are literally dozens of email marketing tools and programs that automate and manage your email lists to make it so easy to get specific and send your subscribers a specific message.

So start a two way conversation with your new pal.

When they send you back a reply, don’t be afraid to reply back and build a conversation with a greeting and use the name they gave to you when they subscribed to your email list.

It’s all really that simple to begin with, but there’s a lot more you can do.

For example, you should use a tool for your email marketing purposes that allows you to see who opened that latest newsletter of yours, who visited your site as a result of it and who just deleted it straight off the bat.

Insights like these can be more valuable to you than you could ever imagine.

By building a strong personal connection with your readers you have them feeling more at ease with you and over time beginning to trust you (just like any relationship).

The Fox School of Business professor led a study into what makes your email subscribers relate to you and start to like you on a personal level, and the answer sure as hell wasn’t “Dear Sir or Madam” to begin with.

Oh, and don’t forget a personal reply address or the unsubscribe button, you don’t want your subscribers feeling abandoned or imprisoned!

Actionetics lets you see in on the key metrics you need to look out for when analysing your email’s performance.

How to View Your Email Performance

Step 1: Log in to your ClickFunnels account

Step 2: Go to Actionetics > Email Broadcasts

Step 3: The analytics can be viewed in the dashboard.

2. Content Truly Is the King

Have you ever heard of the saying “Content is king”?

Maybe you have, maybe you haven’t, but you should still respect the fact that content indeed is king.

Over the recent years, people working in the SEO and marketing industries have become accustomed to providing their companies and clients with the best content possible, and why is that?

Because Google’s search algorithms are favouring original and quality content over poor quality content in its rankings and recommendations, hence it’s absolutely vital that the content produced and used is top notch.

But it’s not only the SEO specialists that are raving about high quality content these days, the marketers are also going crazy with it, and that has nothing to do with the search engine side of business.

In fact, the more you think about things, the less you should be concerned about SEO when writing or outsourcing your content. Your aim should be to please your readers and followers, not Google.

By having a happy crowd read and follow all your communications to the world will mean a lot more to Google than you trying too hard to please their algorithm, because the algorithm understands that superb content will get traction all over the internet.

If yours is not getting any, then it’s not going to rank.

After you’ve gotten those precious subscribers to sign up for your email list, whether it’s due to a blog post or a promise of a discount, you need to keep them interested and hooked to your emails, and the way you do this is by respecting their time.

Your readers spend time reading through your emails, so focus your effort on creating absolutely gorgeous content that inspires and encourages your readers.

That way they will always be more than happy to spend some of their hard earned money when you publish a new book, start a promotion on your newest sales funnel or decide to have a good old sale at your local yard store.

Whatever your niche or market, you as a business owner need to respect your clients reading your emails by providing them with the top content each time.

Now you’re probably wondering, what does Stephen mean by “top content”?

That’s a good question. Top content isn’t just a free ebook or a blog post.

Top content is what makes your readers go “wow” and makes them want to share the article with their friends.

The first hurdle I put my content through is “Would I bookmark this blog post and share it with at least 2 other people because it’s so awesome?”.

I call it the “Awesome Hurdle”. If your content doesn’t pass your awesome hurdle, then you’ve got a problem.

If you’re feeling a bit iffy about your content or if you’re looking to hire copywriters, I suggest you try Funnel Scripts first. It’s got content generators for ad copy, email subject lines, video scripts, sales letters, you name it.

Here’s a guide as an example of how you can use Funnel Scripts to create your content.

Step 1: Log in to your FunnelScripts account. Pick up a copy here if you’re not using it yet.

Step 2: Head to the dashboard

Step 3: Click any of the scripts in the menu depending on the content you need.

Step 4: Fill in the information needed in the generator.

Step 5: Click “Save” or “Submit”

After clicking “Save”, a text file will be downloaded immediately.

After Clicking “Submit”, you will be given several ad copy samples based on the information you entered. Check out some of the samples below!

Step 6: Select from the choices, then copy and paste your content.

3. AFTW (Automation for the Win)

I’ve already mentioned that there are plenty of tools out there to automate your email marketing processes with (one of them being Actionetics which you’ll hear more about in the coming months) and now I’d like to point out why you should do exactly that.

Think of the moment someone subscribes to your email list as a similar moment to when a new colleague or neighbour rings your doorbell for the first time.

They really want to meet you and be friends with you, but that’s rather difficult if you leave them hanging outside your door.

Open the door with a big smile and welcome the person into your house to at least have the chance of turning him or her into your most trusted and loyal friend.

Are you starting to see the picture?

Being greeted by an email, regardless of everyone knowing it was an automated email, makes your subscribers feel good about their decision to sign up for your email list, and that’s why you need to have a warm and welcoming email to greet your new subscribers.

Find that balance between a friend and a family member. That’s how I like to treat the subscribers on my email list.

Actionetics lets you create and automate your emails for autoresponders, follow-ups, reminders, sales, etc.

4. Using The Tools of the Trade

Last, but not least, you need to be equipped with the proper tools for the job.

This might not fall into the strategy side of email marketing for some people, but I personally think that the right tools are at the core of your email marketing strategy, and hence I’ve put it on this list.

There are a number of email marketing autoresponder tools out there. Just some of them include:

• MailChimp
• Aweber
• Constant Contact
• GetResponse
• ActiveCampaign
• Ontraport
• Infusionsoft
• Mad Mimi
• MaroPost
• Actionetics

…just to name a few, and I could talk you to sleep by discussing each and every one of them in detail, so I’ll try my best to avoid that part.

Instead, I’ll talk a little about the overall features found in just about every one of the email marketing tools, which hopefully helps you out in finding the best solution for yourself.

Most importantly the tools will act as a database of your subscribers, often called ‘a list’.

From there you can easily see how many subscribers you have, their activity levels and much more.

When it comes to the emails themselves, most tools offer you a wide range of templates to choose from, and some include a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) builder to build and tweak your own templates without a single line of code.

How sweet is that?

Apart from these basic features you have many individual and unique features implemented into each one of them and all sorts of different pricing plans.

Just make sure you sign up for something which works for you and delivers amazing value to your audience day in day out.

There’s always going to be positives and negatives to each product, but if your core and fundamental areas of use are taken care of, you’ll be doing pretty well.

Equipped with these four strategies, you can now head into battle and build yourself an amazing email list that both converses and converts.

Tell me in the comments below, what does your email marketing strategy look like when someone joins your email list? What does the first email say and do for your users?

ClickFunnels Action Steps

How to Create Emails with Actionetics Email Builder

Step 1: Log in to your ClickFunnels account

Step 2: Click Actionetics.

Step 3: Go to Email Broadcasts and click on the “+ New Email Broadcast” button.

Step 4: Design your email! You can choose from several templates.

Step 5: Add the information needed

1. The subject of your email
2. Add the email lists. In this case, those who signed up for your webinar
3. Your SMTP Configuration which will be used to send emails.

Step 6: Open Email Editor

Step 7: Add and remove elements to your email according to your preference

Step 8: Click Save

Step 9: You can opt to send your emails upon creation or schedule them to be sent at a future time. Simply click “Send Later” and set the time and date.