Mastery of email marketing is a skill that every marketer and business owner needs to have in their digital marketing tool belt. It is one of the most effective forms of moving customers along the sales funnel, pushing them from being prospective buyers to paying customers. While it can be a very involved process at first, once you have a properly segmented email list, you can then automate the entire process for more efficiency! 

If you’re just starting out and find yourself a bit lost with the strategy, then follow these four steps to start building your own email list:

Start with a lead generation campaign

First of all, buying an email list is never a good idea! Chances are, these email addresses have received so many spam emails that their owners have abandoned them—rendering them unresponsive and useless.

Aside from being a huge waste of resources, they can even incur penalties if you aren’t careful. If the email list was harvested in an illegal manner, you could be liable for penalties of up to $16,000 for every email you send.

There is also the fact that nobody wants to receive unsolicited emails. To ensure a healthy and responsive email list, you need to ensure that the email addresses on your list were given with explicit permission from the owner.

One way to do this is through a lead generation campaign that promises and delivers value in exchange for an email address, such as being signed up to an exclusive newsletter list or a free resource, such as an eBook. 

These lead generation campaigns can be executed on websites and social media platforms that allow you to run ads. 

Deliver the promised content

The only real way for your email marketing campaign to work is to provide great content that your audience will truly value. Your emails need to be detailed, engaging, and concise—all at the same time. 

It also pays to sound like a human when drafting your mail! Write them in a conversational tone as much as possible, and affix your real name, title, and social media handles. This way, your customers are more likely to respond, since they know they are talking to an actual person. 

There is also a matter of being consistent. The important thing is to stick to a promised schedule—if you promised to send email updates once a week, then stick to that schedule to establish a pattern of expectation with the customer. 

Should you overdo it, however, then your emails could easily land in the spam folder. IN converse, sending less than you promised can make the customer forget about you and push them to unsubscribe from your email list as well. Find that sweet spot and stick to it for the best effect!

Analyze the data 

After a few emails, you should now have enough data to analyze. The most important things are your Open Rate, Click-Through Rate (CTR), and Unsubscribes. 

The Open Rate measures how many people actually open and read your emails. Meanwhile, the CTR tells you how many people have clicked on a link within your email.

A high Open Rate and CTR tells you that most of your email list is engaged and interested in your services. If your Open Rate and CTR are low, then you may need to look at your copy and see how you can make them more engaging. 

Finally, there is the number of unsubscribes. It’s normal to have people unsubscribing from an email list. What you have to watch for, however, is if the unsubscribe rate is higher than your opt-in rate—which means that you have something within your entire process that is turning people away!

A good place to look would be in the overall tone of your emails, their topics, or your email frequency. 

Divide and Conquer 

If you have defined customer profiles at work for your marketing efforts, you can use that same segmentation on your email lists. Personalize your emails according to these profiles, as well as their position on the sales funnel. This way, you can ensure that your email updates are relevant to your audience, no matter where they are on the sales map!

Conclusion 

Email marketing gets a bad reputation for being allegedly ineffective. However, the numbers don’t lie: it is still one of the most cost-effective and conversion-rich forms of digital marketing. Just follow these four steps to ensure that your email marketing is working for you—and you’re already on the road to success!

Krafted Digital is a Full Service Digital Marketing Firm based out of Miami, Florida. At Krafted Digital, we specialize in developing Custom-Tailored, innovative, data driven Online Marketing solutions for small business to Fortune 500 Brands. Interested in our Services? Click here to contact us today!