From nurturing leads to increasing brand awareness, email marketing is an important part to many company’s digital strategy.
According to Campaign Monitor, small business owners report email marketing as the highest return on investment. Plus, roughly 80% of marketers have reported an increase in email engagement over the past 12 months. Want to get started with email marketing? Here are some top tips to kick off your email marketing strategy.
How to Create an Account with Email Marketing Providers
There are many email marketing providers with different cost structures, scalability options, and benefits. Included below are links to a few popular, inexpensive email marketing providers with instructions on how to set up an accounts:
–How to create a Mailchimp account
–How to create a Constant Contact account
–How to create a Hubspot account
How to Design an Email Newsletter Template
When creating a design for your first email newsletter, don’t worry about making it too flashy. The most important thing is to make it easy for readers to read, scan, and click elements of the email. Most people open email newsletters from their phones, so be sure your template is mobile-optimized.
Most providers will default your email newsletter size to 600px wide, with an additional 30px padding on all sides of the email body. To make sure the newsletter content fits, it’s important to ensure your newsletter design is within that universal 600px width. The height can be as long as you want, but the best practice for click through rates is to make sure it doesn’t take more than one second to scroll to the end of the email newsletter content. Need inspiration for your email newsletter template design? Check out these 18 Email Newsletter Examples.
Writing Your First Email Newsletter: Content Tips
As of 2021 more than 306 billion emails are sent and received every day. 40% of consumers have at least 50 unread emails in their inbox. This makes it more important than ever to create content that your subscribers want to read, not just content you want to promote. The most successful B2B marketers prioritize their audience’s informational needs over their organization’s sales/promotional messages.
One thing users are looking for is interactivity. “It makes emails more fun to read, and on the brand side, is a great way to convert users,” says Hubspot’s director of content marketing, Megan Moller. “An interactive email includes functional elements that invite readers to engage with the content by tapping, swiping, clicking, or simply watching. Interactive elements can be anything from a GIF and illustration to a quiz or countdown timer.”
Successful B2B content marketers also craft content based on specific stages of the customer’s journey, sending the right message at the right moment. For example, when a person first signs up for your email newsletter you could make a good impression with an automated welcome series. Or, to help retain long-standing subscribers you could offer special discounts or ask customers for their feedback.
Measuring Email Marketing Success
We recommend tracking these key metrics to help ensure continuing improvement in your email marketing strategy:
Email open rate: Open rate (%) = (number of opens / number of emails delivered) * 100
Click rate (%) = (number of recipients who clicked a link in an email / number of emails delivered) * 100
Click-through rate (%) = (number of recipients who clicked a link in an email / number of opens) * 100
Bounce rate (%) = (number of failed deliveries / number of emails sent) * 100
Want help with your email marketing strategy?
From crafting an email marketing plan to designing templates or integrating signup forms on your website, Simpler Strategies is happy to support you as you integrate a successful email marketing strategy. Give us a call at (616)822-3706 or email meredith@simplersite.co
