Session 12: What is email marketing

In session 12 of A Marketing Podcast I talk all about email marketing strategy. I go over the objectives that any email marketing strategy should work to achieve, and review 6 email marketing strategies that you can implement for your small business. I talk about the ins and outs of each strategy and some things to keep in mind when developing those strategies.

Session 12: Show Notes

The objectives of an email marketing strategy

A comprehensive email marketing strategy works to achieve all of the following:

* Email list building

* Subscriber conversion

* Customer development

Building your email list

* Email marketing is nothing without email addresses

* so building your list is your first priority

* The only way to build your list is to provide potential subscribers with a level of value that they feel is worth sharing their email with you.

* That level depends on many factors. I’ll talk about some strategies for list building later in the article.

I’m not going to get into specific tactics to build your list – we’ll save that for another session.

Subscribers into paying customers

* Once you have subscribers you want to build trust and convert them into paying customers

* Again the trick is to provide value that is worth paying for

* This is a process – not a single email

* Depending on business product/service the time will vary (your sales cycle)

* The conversion is achieved by delivering a solution to a problem and having the required amount of trust and value in your product or service to make the purchase a non-issue

Developing your customers

* Once you have paying customers you should use email to support them

* Not only that, you want to keep them engaged for the potential of another purchase

* Treating your customers right will also entice sharing and social proof which in turn equates to sales

Drip email marketing explained

Before we get into the different types of email marketing strategies that are available, let’s discuss drip email marketing.

Drip email marketing is the act of sending multiple emails, usually in an automated fashion, to develop your subscriber into performing a desired action.

The main reason for performing a drip campaign is to build trust and this is done by providing value before attempting to sell a product/service.

Developing trust with your subscribers

The benefit to executing a drip email marketing strategy is to develop your subscribers’ trust in you and your product.

Here’s a quick rundown on a theory I use to developing that trust.

* Email 1 – Welcome and thanks

* Email 2 – Some value (educational in nature)

* Email 3 – More value (more education)

* Email 4 – More value + soft sell on product

* Email 5 – More value (more education)

* Email 6 – Hard Sell (it’s time to buy)

* Email 7 – Why not (question as to why they didn’t buy – politely of course)

Let’s look at several email marketing strategy types to sum everything up.

Strategies to discuss

* Community building/generic list

* contests/giveaways

* Email based challenges

* Email courses

* Lead magnets

* Emails’ involvement in your inbound campaigns

Community building email marketing strategy

* Community building, or a general list, is the idea of building up your email list to distribute general update style emails

* An example is your monthly newsletter

* This is the type that most small businesses begin with (and maybe end with)

* This is the “sign up to receive our newsletter” call to action

* It can be effective but has become slightly less effective due to the development of the following strategies