Engaging your audience with new email marketing strategies can be exciting, but knowing where to start can be daunting. While there are dozens of routes you can take when creating email marketing content that aligns with your audience’s preferences, we’re sharing some content inspiration that will ensure you’re sending compelling emails that your subscribers will look forward to seeing in their inboxes.
While this list isn’t exhaustive, it’s full of effective and inspiring ideas to help you start creating an email program that meets your objectives, engages your subscribers and keeps your content fresh and exciting (regardless of your industry!).
1. The welcome journey
Welcome emails — boasting the highest open and engagement rates in an email series — are the messages subscribers expect to see in their inboxes, especially after subscribing or making their first purchase from your brand. The welcome email is an opportunity for you to not only meet your customer’s expectations — but to also exceed them with engaging content that keeps them wanting to see more of your content and products.
The initial communication you make with a subscriber sets the tone for your relationship with them. Providing a good experience is key. In some cases, your welcome email will be a brand introduction to someone who may become a customer someday. In others, you’ll be solidifying your relationship after an initial purchase. Be sure to share the value of your offerings; this will help you gain the trust of your audience and entice them to make that all-important first purchase.
Some key questions to ask yourself when creating your welcome email:
- Are my welcome emails based on my subscribers’ behaviors, i.e. how they signed up?
- When customers buy a specific product from me, what are they interested in seeing next, and can I send them relevant suggestions?
- Is my welcome series a good mix of content, such as opportunities for subscribers to learn more about my brand, as well as promotions that provide opportunities for subscribers to purchase?
- Does my welcome email set expectations around my business and the content I share?
2. Promotions & offers
A popular approach to enticing customers to take the next step in the buyer’s journey is offering promotions and offers consisting of discounts, deals, limited-time offers, seasonal sales, or birthday and anniversary offers as well as coupon codes. Free shipping promotions can also be effective in motivating recipients to complete a transaction. And, flash sales, additionally, create a sense of urgency, encouraging customers to act quickly to secure exclusive deals.
By framing your promotional messages as a narrative in which the customer is the hero that solves a problem by purchasing from you, you can create an engaging experience, while connecting emotionally with your audience, building trust and loyalty, and encouraging them to take action.
Keep in mind that the way customers view promotional emails is changing. As technology and the availability of information continue to grow, consumers are quickly becoming more aware of messages that are overly “salesy,” or even worse, spammy. So, plan to launch promos strategically and sporadically. Be sure to focus these emails on the offer, highlighting it with a stand-out call to action, and then, below the promotion, provide useful content to supplement and complement your offer, such as “how-to guides” and “top tips,” etc. — content you know your customers want to read.
3. Guides, blogs & other content
If inbound content marketing is a part of your overall marketing strategy, make sure your subscribers know you’re creating content for them. Creating guides, blogs and other pieces of content provides you with a chance to promote your field expertise while engaging your audience. Creating this content also gives you a prime opportunity to enhance your email strategy with fresh content every time you hit send.
For example, e-commerce fashion retailers could boost engagement by sending monthly updates on the latest fashion trends. Or, if you’re in publishing and media, a weekly opinion piece from the editor could drive open rates and subscriptions.
Don’t expect readers to spend too much of their time scrolling through your resources pages. Instead, work to provide your audience with curated and relevant content in a manner that’s also easily accessible. Some companies send weekly content highlights, showcasing a handful of different content pieces for their readers to engage with. By sending emails that give a brief overview of a new blog post along with a bold call to action, you’ll create a huge opportunity to drive engagement and boost your ROI.
4. Loyalty & rewards
Loyalty and rewards programs have become essential tools for brands wanting to build lasting relationships with their customers. By offering rewards such as exclusive discounts, personalized offers or free merchandise, businesses can foster a sense of belonging and create strong emotional connections with their customers. Additionally, offering loyalty and rewards to an already-engaged audience is both a practical and convenient way to retain customers, and given the current economy, such loyalty perks are vital in driving revenue from customers who make repeat purchases.
Sending rewards based on purchases is a great start, but recognizing and rewarding the loyalty of your most important customers is imperative. By segmenting your database, you can identify your most loyal customers — those that are most engaged or who have purchased the most — and offer a special treat to thank them for their loyalty.
Loyalty and rewards can be expressed in dozens of ways — especially when you implement automation. Automations are a great way to identify important events such as a birthday or anniversary — and provide a special offer as a reward.
5. Newsletters & announcements
If your company has the resources, sending a standard newsletter can help you build relationships with your customers while keeping them updated on the latest work you’re doing, especially if your focus is on content marketing. These emails are so important because they offer a consistent touchpoint with your audience. In order to establish this consistency, creating a regular send cadence, such as weekly or monthly sends, is key.
Newsletters and announcements can help bring to life different content themes by sharing new blog content, inviting subscribers to an event, or simply letting customers know what’s new with your brand.
Above all, a newsletter will keep your company present and top-of-mind for your audience. Any sales and engagement that occur as a result of your newsletter are a prime advantage, so you should absolutely invest in optimizing these campaigns to drive engagement. Most importantly, make sure you’re sending compelling content to keep your subscribers interested.
6. Behavioral-based messaging
Behavioral-based emails are a dynamic tool in email marketing, allowing brands to deliver the right message to the right audience at the right time, which will ultimately boost engagement and result in a more positive customer experience. You can send behavioral-based emails for almost any action taken by a customer as long as you have a way to track that activity, such as asking them to log in before using your site, service or store.
With the ability to track and analyze customer behavior, such as website visits, clicks and past purchases, you’ll have the opportunity to segment and personalize your messaging based on each recipient’s preferences and interests. This refined and personal approach can lead to increased open rates, click-through rates and overall engagement, as customers are more likely to interact with content that genuinely resonates with them. Additionally, personalization at this level helps forge a stronger connection between your brand and customers, boosting the possibility of conversion and customer loyalty.
7. Testimonials & reviews
Testimonials and reviews play a vital role in digital marketing strategies, offering a number of benefits to brands. Essentially, testimonials and reviews provide social proof, which gives potential customers reassurance and confidence in your brand’s products and services.
By highlighting the positive experiences of satisfied customers, you can influence the purchasing decisions of potential customers. With testimonials and reviews building credibility and trust, brands can establish themselves as reliable and trustworthy, which is vital, especially in an era where consumers heavily rely on online feedback.
8. Surveys and net promoter feedback
Asking your customers how well your company is meeting their needs can be a very vulnerable conversation. But, these conversations also give you practical insights about your performance, the culture you’re creating with your customer base, and how to continue, stop, improve or begin new processes to engage with your customers.
Surveys also provide insight into who your customers are. Assuming certain things about whom you’re actually trying to sell to can result in missed opportunities and low metrics. Instead, ask your customers questions to see what they have to say when they fill out a survey. Email is definitely the channel to send these invitations for feedback.
Keep your content fresh and exciting!
An engaging email marketing strategy should leverage a variety of these ideas to ensure that you accomplish your marketing objectives, keep your subscribers wanting more of your content, and of course, prevent unsubscribes. As you introduce varying types of email content to your strategy, remember to continually track your metrics as you experiment. See what resonates with your audience — what works to boost engagement — and try to maximize your impact based on those results.
You’ve done the leg work and earned a new customer. But what happens once that person signs up for your products or services?
Do you brush your hands off and move on to the next lead?
If your answer is yes, it may be time to look at your customer experience again before you start celebrating. Upon signing up, the user may get distracted and forget about your services altogether, so you must have the right email marketing strategy in place to foster the relationship further.
To connect the new customer with your brand, you need to develop a strong user onboarding email strategy. The right onboarding email template is the difference between your new customer becoming more invested in your product or losing them to a competitor.
Onboarding emails receive 320% more revenue than traditional promotional emails and produce a 196% lift in a unique click rate. What does an effective onboarding email look like? Read on to discover everything you need to include in your onboarding email templates with examples along the way.
What are onboarding emails?
An onboarding email is a communication sent to the user immediately after they purchase a subscription, service, or product. Oftentimes, this email includes education around how to use the product efficiently, the next steps, or ways to get more involved with the brand.
The purpose of the onboarding email is to build a deeper connection with the user, so you’re able to convert them into long-term customers. It gives you the chance to educate your customers and reassure them that they made the right choice investing in your brand. The email should be personalized, well timed, and enhance the overall user experience.
Why should your company develop onboarding emails?
If you’re on the fence about creating another email communication, it’s important to remember that developing a full-circle user journey is critical for long-term conversions.
Think of it this way: If you were to order a subscription with no idea on the next steps, you’d be forced to search the company’s website for more information. Maybe you find the answers, maybe you don’t.
Either way, it’s not an ideal customer experience, and it’d most likely leave you frustrated with a poor first impression of the brand you just invested in.
The onboarding email solves this problem. You’ll have the ability to convert leads quicker and help retain customer loyalty over time.
Types of onboarding email templates you can create
Your onboarding email template needs to be personalized to the user’s action and sent immediately after that action is taken.
Why? Not only does your user expect it, but it’s also 26% more likely to be opened. Traditional emails are no longer effective and email marketers need to find new ways to connect with their subscribers based on location, purchase history, website activity, and more.
An onboarding email can be delivered in all shapes in sizes. Remember, the main goal is to connect, educate, and convert your customers. To get started on creating your onboarding email, consider the following types:
- Welcome email: with the highest open rates out of any marketing email, welcome emails warmly embrace your new customer and help explain how you’ll add value to their life.
- Re-engagement email: if you notice your user has fallen off in engagement, you can send a re-engagement onboarding email that introduces your value again.
- Evaluation email: if your user is active with your product, ask them for a referral or to upgrade their membership.
Step-by-step guide: onboarding email template with examples
Is your head spinning around the idea of creating your onboarding email template? While your onboarding email serves a different purpose than promotional or transactional emails, you need to make sure it still includes key elements that keep your audience engaged.
Ready to dive into developing an effective onboarding email template? Consider this guide to help you get started:
Step 1: Develop an impactful subject line.
When it comes to a successful onboarding email template, a subject line can make all difference in whether or not your email will be opened. In a crowded inbox, you need your email to quickly stand out and catch your customer’s attention if you want them to engage with your content.
The most common way to create an effective subject line is including the recipient’s name or using an announcement, such as the user’s new purchase or subscription. For your formula, test using five words or less and eliminating title case.
Onboarding subject line examples include:
- John, thanks for signing up!
- Welcome to ___
- Welcome to your first delivery
- See what you can do with ___
- Congratulations—you’re in!
- Welcome to ___! What’s next?
- We’re excited to have you.
- See your recommendations now.
If you’re in a creative rut, consider using tools like CoSchedule’s Subject Line Tester to help you test the best subject line for your audience.
Source: Gmail
You can also use subject line formulas, like the ones listed in the short video below.
Follow us on YouTube
Step 2: Offer more information with preheader text.
In the past few years, mobile usage has increased over 30%, making the preheader text a crucial part of your onboarding email template. T
he preheader text follows your subject line and summarizes what your subscribers can expect in the email. It offers you an opportunity to make a great first impression, as many users quickly screen their inbox for whether or not to open emails.
How can you optimize your preheader? Consider the following tips:
- While the length can be around 85-100 characters, you want it short enough so it’s not cut off by the email client
- Use it as an extension of your subject line, so the two messages are cohesive
- Add personal elements such as the subscriber’s name or purchase information
- Use emojis to break up your text and stand out in the inbox
- Include a CTA, so your user quickly knows what the next step is
Source: Gmail
Step 3: Provide your value proposition in the body copy.
Do you want your customers to have the “wow” moment the second they open your email? If so, your email onboarding email template needs to display your value proposition front and center and focus on how your services or products solve the customer’s problems.
As part of your value proposition, discuss the benefits and features of using your brand within the body copy and don’t be afraid of reinforcing the message multiple times.
To make your body copy more effective, customize the value proposition to your targeted audience persona. For example, a marketer has different requests than a salesperson or engineer, so the benefits should focus on the specific needs of each position.
For your onboarding email template, consider developing your body copy into an inverted pyramid format, so the entire email is directing the reader to the CTA.
Source: Campaign Monitor
Step 4: Display on-brand imagery.
Your new customer has already visited your website and was maybe even included in a previous lead generation email campaign. It’s important to utilize consistent imagery within your onboarding email template, so your brand is immediately recognizable by subscribers the second your email is opened.
Aside from using your logo and brand colors, consider the following elements within your email design:
- Create a one-column layout to avoid overwhelming the reader
- Use authentic and genuine imagery instead of stock photos
- Choose a contrasting background and text color to be more readable
- Make the CTA large and bright to encourage engagement
- Design with web fonts that all email clients support
For next-level design, you can use user-generated content from reviews or social media to give your email more authenticity and social proof.
Why? People trust people, and including testimonials from current customers could give your reader the extra push they need to engage with your email.
Source: Really Good Emails
Step 5: Use a CTA incentive.
Nailing your CTA is essential if you want your customer to take the next step with your email. Whether it’s purchasing an upgrade, leaving a review, or referring friends, your CTA helps you establish a conversation with the customer and pushes back on reader fatigue.
Include only one CTA in your template for maximum results and make sure the design stands out within the email with a different button color and larger font. For your onboarding email template, the following CTA copy will help you get results:
- Start today
- Find out how
- Get results now
- I’m ready to see a change
- Take survey
- Give us your feedback
- Learn more
- Get the app
- Start saving today
- Repeat your order
- Claim your coupon
- Create an event
Source: Really Good Email
Wrap up
The goal of your onboarding email template is to help your customers see the value in your product or service and help them succeed using it. The right email will both educate and encourage customers to engage with your brand more to create long-term loyalty.
A successful onboarding email template needs to include:
- An impactful subject line that catches you subscriber’s eye in a crowded inbox
- Preheader copy that expands on the subject line and explains the email’s content
- Your brand’s value proposition embedded throughout the body copy
- Consistent brand imagery and email design that displays who you are
- A bold call to action that entices your subscriber to engage with your email
Ready to start designing your onboarding email? Try Campaign Monitor for free today.
Are you staying in touch with your customers? Or are they dormant in your database?
While email marketing remains the most effective digital marketing tactic, it continues to evolve in order to meet your customers’ expectations.
Traditional email will always be an important piece in the puzzle; however, the smartest brands are now taking advantage of personalized automated email campaigns.
Not only are automated email campaigns personalized, but they’re also timely and more relevant to the customer. Automation delivers email to the right person, at the right time, and with the right message. As a result, more emails are opened and clicked, ultimately generating a higher ROI for your company. Companies that adopt automated email campaigns usually increase sales by 14.5%.
If you’re also looking to increase your customer lifetime value, then keep reading! We’re going to look at how automated email campaigns can help you achieve this.
What is an automated email campaign?
Email marketing automation is based on workflows that are set up to automatically send an email based on the action of a customer. Like subscribing to a newsletter, purchasing a product, or clicking a CTA.
Where traditional emails are sent manually and in mass quantity without personalization, automated email campaigns are triggered by the individual and include content based solely on their interactions with you online.
Why are automatic email campaigns important?
Automated emails are useful for marketers because it eliminates the time-consuming task of developing, sending, and managing email workflows. For example, let’s say you want to send an email to someone who recently subscribed to your newsletter.
The ideal next course of action will be to initiate a relationship with them. Your first email to them may include loads of information about your company, products, resources, and maybe even a discount code.
Imagine how extremely time-consuming it’d be to manually develop and send an email to every person that continued to subscribe to your newsletter. Eventually, you might get tired and stop altogether.
This is where automated email campaigns come into play. Once you set up the workflow, and customers take action on your triggers, the email automatically sends without any additional effort on your part.
Still on the fence? These automated email statistics don’t lie:
How to create an automated email campaign in Campaign Monitor
With Campaign Monitor’s journey designer, you’re able to deliver relevant emails at key moments to keep your brand top of mind with customers.
We lay everything out for you so you can skillfully design campaigns with a “set it and forget it” strategy in place, allowing you to focus on other important things, like growing your brand.
First, navigate to the Automation section in your account and select Create a new journey. Then, name your journey, select a list to be sent to, and choose a trigger. Triggers include:
- Subscriber joins a list
- Subscriber enters a segment
- Subscriber exits a segment
- A date or anniversary
Source: Campaign Monitor
Journey steps
Once these fields are established, you can begin personalizing the journey by clicking the + button and adding journey steps. There are three steps to choose from: Delay, Email, and Condition.
- Delay: put a delay between emails in minutes, hours, days, weeks, and monthly increments. This helps to space out the sequence to avoid customers becoming too overwhelmed. It’s also important for condition-based journeys.
- Email: email steps define the actual content of each message within the journey. You have the option to send the email to everyone on your list or specific segments for a more hyper-personalized approach.
- Condition: based on defined rules, you have the option to split a journey into two paths. The subscribers who follow the rule will go one on path and the others on a separate journey. Rules can be created based on subscriber detail, custom fields, membership, campaign activity, or journey activity.
You have the option to add as many steps as you like—giving you the flexibility to create a personalized and relevant automated email campaign for every subscriber.
Source: Campaign Monitor
After all steps in the journey are complete, you can click Turn on journey to begin subscriber movement and reporting. If you want to edit or develop additional steps in the journey, you’ll need to turn it off.
Now that you understand how to build an email journey in Campaign Monitor, let’s take a look at the different campaign options you can develop.
4 automated email campaigns you need to create
Email automation is based on triggers and activity, so you have countless options, depending on your own creativity and brand needs. To kick things off for you, we’ve compiled four popular automated campaigns that’ll increase your customer’s lifetime value.
Welcome emails
A great way to introduce your brand value and product benefits to your new subscribers is a welcome email series. In fact, these emails have a 91.43% open rate and can boost revenue by 30%.
These new contacts have already shown interest in your brand and, therefore, are in a perfect position to build a relationship with.
You can welcome them to your email list, include a fun video or image to show personality, and even offer a promotion that piques their interests.
Source: Really Good Emails
Product-feedback emails
How do you really know what your customers want? Are you meeting their needs? Customer feedback is a valuable method for not only understanding your customers, but also opening your business to new industries and revenue. You can send an automated feedback email to capture these insights and better cater to your customers’ needs.
We recommend keeping this process simple. Develop a modest design, tell your customers why you need their input, and include a strong CTA.
Once you begin collecting responses, analyze the findings and implement the feedback to provide a better customer experience. Your customers will love your brand even more if they know you care about the information they provided.
Sources: Really Good Emails
Birthday emails
We all love it when someone remembers a special event like a birthday or anniversary. In fact, birthday emails generate 342% higher revenue and a 179% higher unique click rate than traditional messaging.
Send these emails on the customer’s birthday and include fun features like mystery savings, free gifts, coupons, or even a festive gif.
Remember, these emails are all about celebrating your customers and making them feel special, not promoting your newest product.
Source: Really Good Emails
Lead nurturing emails
Fifty percent of qualified leads aren’t ready to purchase. How can you efficiently move them along the buyer’s journey without spending too many resources on them?
If your contacts are organized within a CRM system, you have the ability to tag leads that need additional nurturing and integrate the contacts with Campaign Monitor.
From there, you can develop an automated campaign that educates these subscribers about the benefits your brand provides.
We recommend sending an email workflow that illustrates the following messaging:
- Educate readers on a current problem they’re facing
- Showcase how your product helps achieve your customer’s goals and lives
- Outline the process for transitioning from the customer’s current product to yours
- Provide an overview of the tools needed to achieve your customer’s goals—introduce your product here and explain why it’s better than the competition
- Demonstrate how other customers have used your product with a case study
- Suggest additional resources, like an eBook or blog, for the customer to learn more about your product
While you can use a variety of different emails, the goal is to provide value and a solution instead of a sales pitch. With this automated email campaign, you’re able to educate the lead into making a decision.
Source: Really Good Emails
Wrap up
Developing an automated email campaign not only helps increase the customer lifetime value, but it also takes time-consuming tasks off your plate.
With automation, you’re able to create campaigns that are highly relevant and personalized without having to manually send email after email to every new subscriber.
Depending on your brand’s offering, you’ll want to consider sending the following workflows:
- Welcome emails
- Product feedback emails
- Birthday emails
- Lead nurturing emails
However, you could also send appointment reminders, upcoming expirations, blog post promotions, event invitations, and more.
With automation, the sky is truly the limit in terms of the emails you can deliver to your subscribers.
The key is keeping their needs in mind to deliver a powerful customer experience that’ll boost your ROI.
Are you ready to start building your own automated email campaigns? Campaign Monitor has you covered. We provide what you need to develop, send, and analyze your email marketing strategy. Get started today.
This is a guest post from Roberto Garvin at Mofluid.
Did you know that emails are 40% more effective than Facebook and Twitter when it comes to acquiring customers?
This is all thanks to email marketing’s high ROI potential.
However, not all your subscribers will have the same interests or respond to the same things. That’s why it’s important to spice up your emails with a little variety—send different kinds of emails, so that you reach different subscribers.
Read on to discover 18 types of emails ecommerce customers want to see.
18 emails ecommerce customers want to read
1. The welcome email
Pinterest, Really Good Emails
Welcome emails that are sent to subscribers when they first sign up are a great way to introduce yourself and give your subscribers an idea of what kind of content they can expect from you.
This way, they won’t be surprised by how many emails they’re getting.
The welcome email can allow you to build a relationship with your readers. Here are some stats about its effectiveness:
- Its open rate is over 91%
- Marketers that send welcome emails can get up to an 86% increase in their campaign’s overall open rate
- Welcome emails have 5 times the average click-through rate
2. The double opt-in email
SendGrid, Really Good Emails
The double opt-in email actually comes before the welcome email. It’s highly recommended to send these out, as they can improve your engagement rates.
3. The newsletter email
The newsletter, or value email, is one where you focus on providing your subscribers with quality content. It’s best to send these on a regular basis.
The more value you can provide your subscribers without expecting to get anything back, the better a relationship you can build with them.
Some of your emails shouldn’t be focused on promoting anything, but rather on providing people with helpful tips and useful information.
While customers like new products, ecommerce customers want messages with tips, educational content, and relevant information.
4. The promotional email
Even though it’s important to provide your customers with valuable content, it’s just as important not to forget what your email marketing goals are. That’s why you shouldn’t be afraid to send purely promotional emails now and then.
Just make sure they’re relevant to your customers’ interests.
5. The cross-promotional email
This email doesn’t promote any specific product but can help you build your overall online following.
In the cross-promotional email, you encourage your subscribers to like your Facebook page, add you on Instagram, or follow you on Twitter. If you have another email list for a separate but related topic, you can promote that as well.
Reminder emails that encourage customers to leave reviews for products they recently purchased also fit into this category.
6. The special offer email
The special offer email is just as important as the promotional email. You don’t just want to sell things to your subscribers without offering them any special offers from time to time.
Whether the special offer is a time-limited BOGO sale, a coupon code for 10% off, or a free shipping offer, surprising your subscribers can kill two birds with one stone: You can increase your sales and build a relationship with them.
7. The free offer email
Rifle Paper Co, Really Good Emails
Besides special discounts and promotions, it’s a good idea to occasionally give your subscribers something for free.
This can be a free ebook, webinar, video course, or whitepaper.
Just don’t do this too often—if you set expectations that you’re only giving away freebies, subscribers might get annoyed when you finally decide that you need to send a promotional email to boost profits.
8. The feedback email
Lyft, Really Good Emails
Asking customers for feedback is part of building a relationship with them. It shows that you value their opinions and are interested in doing what you can to satisfy them.
Asking for feedback is important because, if you don’t ask, you might never figure out if your products can be improved, if your customers are truly satisfied with your service, and whether there are additional services your customers want you to provide.
Embed short surveys in your emails, so that customers can provide feedback easily. You can also include an optional field that they can fill out themselves for custom feedback.
9. The story email
Consider sending story emails. Testimonial emails would fit into this category.
You can tell the story of how your business was created or why you decided to create your product. You can also tell stories of how previous clients were helped by your service.
Stories are engaging, touch upon emotions, and can increase conversions.
10. The curated email
Not every value or newsletter email has to be your own content. You can provide the same value with curated content.
This can be a collection of how-to guides or tips from other blogs. Another idea would be to send a list of recommended resources, such as ebook guides, video courses, apps, or software tools that your subscribers can get for free.
11. The launch or announcement email
Whenever you launch a new product or service, make sure that your subscribers know about it first. You can even offer the first people who purchase it a special discount.
Announcing your new products or services to your existing customers is a great way to leverage the email list that you worked so hard to build and can help you recoup the money you invested quickly.
12. The pre-launch email
Framer, Really Good Emails
Similar to the launch email, the pre-launch email announces an upcoming product or service that’ll be released soon. You can send several pre-launch emails leading up to your actual launch.
The goal of your pre-launch email is three-fold.
First of all, you want to build suspense. The more suspense, interest, and anticipation you can build, the higher your conversion rate will be.
Secondly, you want to presell your product. After you’ve promoted your product for weeks or even months, all you have to do is send your launch email and the sales will come in automatically.
Finally, not everyone will see or open your launch email. Sending a few emails beforehand allows you to reach more people.
13. The transactional email
The transactional or confirmation email is sent to customers after a purchase is made. Of all the emails ecommerce customers want, this is perhaps the most important.
The purpose of this email is so that they know that their purchase went through, but transaction emails can also be a great opportunity to personalize your customers’ journeys.
What’s more, you might consider using transaction emails to send reviews or advertise other services or products.
14. The shipping email
InstaCart, Really Good Emails
Send this email to customers after their product has shipped. Ideally, you should include a tracking number, so that they can keep track of when their package will arrive.
This category also includes emails with shipping updates.
15. The upsell email
Medium, Really Good Emails
The upsell email is also sent after a purchase and can be combined with the confirmation email.
Amazon, in their purchase confirmation emails, recommends related products that consumers might be interested in.
Whether you sell physical or digital products, cross-selling and upselling can lead to increased conversions.
16. The abandoned cart email
Moment, Really Good Emails
Did you know that more than three-quarters of shoppers leave items in their cart unpurchased?
There are many reasons people end up abandoning their carts. They include:
- A long checkout process
- Unsatisfactory shipping options
- Hidden fees
- Needing to create an account
- And more
Fortunately, there’s a way to get back these customers: by sending an abandoned cart reminder email.
This email gently reminds customers that they left items in their cart.
Sometimes, people abandon their carts for genuine reasons: Perhaps their baby started crying, they realized they were late for an appointment, or some other reason. A reminder email can help.
A whopping 48% of abandoned cart emails are opened, which is much higher than the average email open rate. (It’s worth paying attention to your subject line for an increased open rate.)
You can increase the conversion rates of your abandoned cart emails by including incentives for people to buy:
- You can offer a discount
- You can offer free shipping
- You can offer a free trial
- You can throw in a freebie, for good measure
17. The reminder email
Clear, Really Good Emails
The reminder email isn’t about abandoned carts. Rather, it’s for other reminders.
For example, if a customer has a subscription that’s expiring soon, you can send a reminder email for them to renew it.
18. The purge email
This sounds ominous, but it’s actually rather simple.
It’s important to keep your list clean. If there are people who never open your emails, it can skew your open rate data.
There are many reasons why people will subscribe but never open your emails.
Many people use a burner account to subscribe for free ebooks but never actually check it. Other email accounts may have become inactive, or the subscriber may simply have become uninterested in what you have to offer.
Before you clear these people from your list, however, send them a purge email. Tell them that you noticed that they haven’t opened any emails recently and offer them the option of staying on your list, if they choose to do so.
If you get no response, feel free to delete those subscribers.
Wrap up
Eighteen types of emails can sound like a lot, but not all of them will apply to your business. Plus, these are the emails ecommerce customers want to engage with.
Sending quality emails to your customers allows you improve their experience, further personalizing their journey and improving brand loyalty.
Choose the emails above that you think will be the most effective and start using them in your campaign. Then, watch the sales pour in.
Need help connecting email with your ecommerce business? CM Commerce can help.
Roberto Garvin is the co-founder of Mofluid. From email to browsers, search engines, mobile, AI, and now blockchain, Robert loves watching tech evolve and can’t wait to write about what’s next.
Twitter @mofluid / Facebook @mofluid
This is a guest post from Manish Dudharejia at E2M Solutions Inc.
Launching a new business is extremely exciting. There’s an indescribable feeling that many entrepreneurs experience when they’re able to take their dream and turn it into a reality—whether it be through an ecommerce platform, a physical storefront, or seeing their product on the shelves.
However, once the excitement of launching that new business idea wears off, many first-time entrepreneurs are faced with the tough reality of a new challenge.
As a new company, one of the most difficult obstacles that you’ll face from day one is attracting people to your business website and convincing them to convert.
This can be extremely tough for businesses that don’t have huge customer databases or massive marketing campaigns, especially since brand recognition is so influential on consumer behavior.
This is why a consistent email campaign is necessary to create brand awareness.
Most customers aren’t going to convert on their first interaction with your business (or even the second or third). But building an effective email campaign can help keep your business or product at the forefront of their minds and, ideally, shorten the sales cycle.
So how can brand new businesses create a successful drip campaign that influences sales and starts to build awareness for your brand?
Establish your targeted group.
Often, new businesses will make the mistake of setting their net a little too wide during email campaigns in hopes of catching more leads. However, a narrow approach is actually far more effective. Segmented email campaigns that target specific audiences have shown to drive in 760% more revenue than generic ones.
This is why the most important step to creating an effective drip email campaign is knowing who exactly you’re speaking to. In order to create email content that’s relevant to them, you need to understand who they are, what motivates them, and what influences their behavior.
Figuring this out from the get-go can be quite tricky for new businesses that lack large sums of consumer data to base their decisions on. This is why creating customer personas can be extremely useful to act as a guide once you start building an audience database.
Start by using any past data you have from your customers, along with market research to create buyer personas to segment your audience based on behavior and preferences. For instance, some customers tend to be more motivated by price and would prefer content alerting them about sales and promotions.
Others may be more interested in the academic side of things, such as proof that your product works or thought-leadership content regarding your industry.
Source
In order to set up an effective drip campaign, you’ll also need to start segmenting your email list based on the ways that your customers have interacted with your website.
For example, you’ll want to create separate campaigns for various segments, such as blog and newsletter subscribers, customers with accounts, free trial users, first-time purchasers, and social media followers.
Learn how to segment your list with our segmentation guide.
Create clear objectives for each drip campaign.
It’s impossible to reach a goal of any marketing strategy without knowing what your ultimate purpose is, so goal-setting needs to be the starting point of all of your effective drip campaigns.
Ask yourself what the main objective is for each segment (beyond simply gaining more conversions).
Is it:
- To nurture a lead?
- To cross-sell and upsell orders?
- Improve the customer experience?
- Encourage referrals and advocacy?
- Re-engage a customer after an initial purchase or abandoned cart?
- Promote an event, sale, or limited-edition product?
Each of these campaigns will have a different look and require various content in order to be effective. Furthermore, these emails won’t be relevant to your entire audience, so they’ll need to be segmented to various groups based on factors like past interactions.
For example, the ultimate goal of this email from Derma E is to re-engage a customer with a previously viewed product.
They’re trying to incentivize people by sending an exclusive offer.
Another good example is from Matalan, an online clothing store.
Source
The email works to cross-sell by encouraging a customer to add more items that are related to their most recent purchase.
Both of the emails above clearly speak to different audiences with different motivations. Be sure you know what your goal is for each campaign before you start creating content and strategizing.
Build a trigger map.
Drip campaigns are designed to be automated based on behavioral triggers, as well as pre-set schedules based on customer lifecycles. This means that you’ll need to figure out when and why an email should be sent out.
Start off by mapping the customer journey that’ll take them from first interaction to final conversion. Then pinpoint the opportunities where a well-timed email could be useful.
For example, imagine that they click on a PPC ad and arrive to a product page. They then create an account and make a purchase.
Subscribers should receive a welcome email after creating an account, an order confirmation email, and then, several days later, a feedback email asking how their experience was, how they liked the product, and possibly promoting other products they may be interested in.
Now, what about the more complicated journeys?
Not every customer is going to follow such a straightforward path, so you need to take a look at the different opportunities that you can use to reach out and re-engage a customer or push them from one stage to the next.
Learn to re-engage subscribers in just five steps.
Consumer data is very helpful here. But, obviously, new businesses won’t have too much to go on, so you’ll have to create your own path.
Source
Map out which emails will follow which behavior, as well as the time that should pass between each email.
Think about the kind of content that’ll influence that specific customer toward the next logical step.
For instance, if they downloaded your whitepaper, they may be interested in watching a webinar too. Sending an invitation in the next day or two could re-engage them with your website.
Look for ways to personalize.
Generic emails are often deleted faster than personalized ones, so look for ways to customize each message with details that will capture their attention.
One great tip here is to make each email appear like it was personally typed out to that specific customer by addressing their situation and recognizing past interactions.
Find out how to personalize your emails by reading this article.
An email may seem simple and personalized, but it can be created by setting up an effective drip campaign that automatically inserts customized touches based on that account’s behavior.
Just look at this replenishment email from Sephora that sends a personalized recommendation, simply based on subscriber data.
As time goes on and you start to gather more customer data, you can incorporate even more personalized touches.
Wrap up
A strategic drip campaign can help your new business grow exponentially faster by targeting the right audiences, building brand awareness, and influencing conversions.
It can be tricky for new companies to create an effective approach with little behavior data to go on, but the most important thing to do here is get started and adjust along the way.
Start by getting to know your audience and connecting the dots between email content and their behavior.
As time goes on and you start to receive feedback and consumer data, you can make the necessary changes to optimize your effective drip campaign so that it works better and better each time.
Author Bio
Manish Dudharejia is the President and Founder of E2M Solutions Inc., a San Diego-based digital agency that specializes in white label services for website design and development and e-commerce SEO. With over 10 years of experience in the technology and digital marketing industry, he is passionate about helping online businesses take their branding to the next level.
This is a guest post from Mark Coleman at MarkupTrend.
Running a full-fledged blog, website, or online business is about creating a smooth experience for visitors so you can transition them into a loyal subscriber base. Loyal customers are crucial, because they can increase traffic to your site and materialize sales for your business.
Since subscribers are so vital to your company, it’s very important to retain the existing customers on your list as well as welcome new ones. Remember, though, retention is comparatively easier, and acquisition can actually be more expensive.
If you’re someone who has been struggling with the task of getting new subscribers, here’s a tip. If you’re really looking to attract new subscribers (and keep them), it’s important to take special care with your welcome email.
The perfect welcome email can do wonders for your email metrics. After all, this introductory email is truly a first impression for your messaging.
Read on for some actionable tips that will help you craft that perfect welcome email for your new subscribers.
Why should your welcome email go above and beyond?
A simple way to put the above question into perspective? Consider how your subscribers feel. With so much content to consume and so many amazing blogs and websites out there, being a subscriber can get overwhelming fast.
So, creating a beautiful welcome email is a perfect way to show subscribers you’ll send quality content every time.
According to ChiefMarketer report, the average open rate for welcome emails is around 60%. That’s much higher than the average email open rate, which according to Campaign Monitor research, is 17.92% across all industries.
In other words, your welcome emails are likely to be opened and engaged with: In fact, users who receive welcome emails show 33% more engagement with the brand.
The anatomy of a perfect welcome email
Maybe you’ve seen Campaign Monitor’s anatomy of an email infographic: If you have, you know there are several things you can add to an email to make it look and perform better. So, what makes up a great welcome email specifically?
For one, your welcome email should be short and sweet. The copy of your welcome email should offer some great information, but not so much that you bore subscribers.
This email should clearly communicate the vision of your business, helping new subscribers feel connected to your mission. See how Warby Parker’s welcome campaign connects new subscribers to their mission.
Simply put, a great welcome email should be friendly, genuine, and it should encourage people to buy. This is because welcome emails on average generate up to 320% more revenue per email than other promotional emails.
Read on to learn how can you influence your new subscribers with these welcome email musts.
Welcome email musts
Perfect your email subject line
Your welcome email is a point of conversion. This is why the subject line of your welcome email is crucial: A good subject line can convince readers to open (or ignore) your email.
Make sure your subject line is engaging and clear. Consider using the curiosity gap, one of the main subject line formulas, to encourage subscribers to open.
Begin with a thank you
Once a visitor subscribes to your list, they should feel appreciated. You can easily do this by including a thank you message directly within your welcome email.
Another great way to thank them? Consider including promotion so they’ll start shopping right away, just like Thredup does in its welcome email, which you can see below.
Provide a stellar introduction
After you’ve hooked your readers with a great subject line, it’s time to talk about your company. We hope that you have utilized the best of the eCommerce platforms to build your online store/business. This has to be informative without being too salesy or dry.
Try plugging an explainer video or brief explanation of what all you have to offer your audience. Be sure that you stay on subject, and don’t overwhelm the subscribers with a lot of information.
Talk about the benefits
Your subscribers should know about everything you have in store for them. Setting these expectations will help your subscribers stay engaged. This includes bundling options, referral programs, and loyalty rewards.
Plug your social channels
Once a subscriber receives your welcome email, they’re ready to know more about your brand as a whole, so don’t forget to plug all your social media channels along with links to help subscribers explore further.
Pro-tip: Provide links to other additional resources or ask subscribers to take a quick preference survey. By doing this, you can collect data to further personalize your subscribers’ experiences.
Seal the deal with a CTA
Adding an actionable CTA to your first ever welcome email might sound too promotional. However, new leads are most engaged within the first 48 hours. This means your newest subscribers could be ready to make a purchase from you, so make your welcome email count with the right CTA.
If you’re not selling a product, your CTA can be something else, like a survey or a link to your blog. It’s all about urging subscribers to engage with your content or product offering.
Request feedback
A great business can become even greater by collecting, using, and learning from the feedback that comes from their customer base. In other words, make getting in touch with you simple: Offer easy-to-access support, and don’t send from a no-reply email.
And remember, not all feedback is negative. You can use positive comments as testimonials in your upcoming campaigns.
Keep it subtle
We know the competition is aggressive, and most likely, your marketing strategy is, too. However, this doesn’t mean your emails need to follow in this same style. A welcome email is your first interaction with new subscribers, so keep the salesy language to a minimum.
Instead, take a subtle approach, focusing on the value proposition for your audience and targeting their pain points.
Wrap up
At first glance, a welcome email might seem like an element that demands too much. But remember, welcome emails are your starting point for establishing a longterm relationship with your new subscribers. Plus, with automation, welcome emails can be a simple investment for your marketing team.
With the actionable tips above, you can easily hook your subscribers from the start and build a healthy, beneficial relationship.
Anything we missed? Is there something you always include in your welcome emails? Let us know by dropping a comment below.
About the author:
Mark Coleman is a passionate writer, currently working as an Editor at Markup Trend. Markup Trend offers free resources for developers, designers and webmasters and is updated daily.
Published April 2016, updated July 2019
When you think of your nonprofit organization, the first question that comes to mind probably isn’t this: “How am I going to raise awareness through effective email marketing strategies?”
But maybe it should be.
While this question may not feel like the most pressing initially, there are some important reasons why it is.
Through the email marketing efforts of your nonprofit organization, you will be able to reach more individuals, get more press, raise extra funds for your cause, attract talented board members, find volunteers that will help you grow, and, ultimately, accomplish your goals.
In this post, we’ll share must-know tips to help your nonprofit use email marketing for success.
Why email marketing is important for nonprofits
Before we talk about strategies for improving your email marketing efforts, it’s important to understand why email marketing is such a good investment.
It’s safe to say that setting up a solid email strategy is the single most important thing you can do in terms of marketing as a nonprofit organization. Why? Because email marketing has the single best ROI of any marketing tactic at $38 for every dollar spent.
When you’re working on a tight budget, no other marketing channel can get you the bang for your buck that email marketing can.
Email marketing also provides you the opportunity to build relationships with people that have expressed direct interest in your cause by signing up for your email list.
The people on your email list are asking for more information from your organization, which means, these are the people that will most likely be supporting your cause with time, money, or both.
Additionally, not only will your subscribers be your donors, but they will also be your loyal followers and your volunteers. Email marketing is your chance to draw people in, capture their attention, and keep them coming back to help you advocate your cause.
Now let’s discuss the tips for nonprofit email success:
1. Grow your list
You want to make sure you have a strategy in place to collect email addresses and continually grow your email list.
The Fundraising Authority, an excellent resource for nonprofits, is a great example of how to effectively gain permissions.
This nonprofit touts the importance of correctly branding your website and landing pages in order to urge interested visitors to subscribe to further communications.
In fact, The Fundraising Authority calls attention to their own website as a good example for other nonprofits to follow. They ask for permissions everywhere on their website and landing pages.
For example, they have newsletter sign ups in their navigation bar, on the top right sidebar of every page, on all of their blog posts, and more.
The Fundraising Authority focuses on email list signups in order to build a solid and ongoing relationship with subscribers.
The American Red Cross does the same as you can see in this example of the email signup form on their website:
When you optimize your website and landing pages for email subscriptions, you will see your email list sign-ups increase, which can help you grow your community.
2. Tell your story
It’s not a stretch to say that the main reason people subscribe to your email list is because they’re interested in your cause.
Your subscribers want to know what motivated you to start a nonprofit organization, how your organization will help make the world better, and how their donation of money or time will make a difference. In short, they want to know your story.
So, tell them.
Consider the example from UNICEF. The email copy is personal, introduces readers to a real person (13-year-old Fatima), immediately engages readers, and also tugs at the heartstrings. By telling the story, UNICEF is able to show exactly how subscribers can take small steps to make a large difference.
If you really want to draw your readers in, do the same. Tell your story.
3. Send a variety of emails
Here are some other ideas for the types of emails you should be sending your subscribers.
Welcome
What is a nonprofit if not a community of like-minded individuals doing good? A welcome email goes a long way in letting your subscribers know you’re important to the success of the organization. You can use email automation to trigger a welcome email each time a new subscriber joins your list.
Explanation
Your subscribers may need more information about how their donation is put to work before making a contribution to your cause. A great way to inform your potential donors is to send them a series of emails that explains how the organization works and how the funds are used.
Event invitations
Do you have an event your nonprofit is sponsoring? If so, let your subscribers know with an email event invitation. They will often be more than happy to show up and throw their support behind your cause.
If they don’t have time to come to the event, offer them an alternative way to donate by providing a call to action and an online option to donate.
Thank you
Donors do so much to keep nonprofits running and to make a difference. When they donate, say thank you in a timely fashion. You can trigger a thank you email to be sent each time someone makes a donation using email automation.
UNICEF has an excellent thank you email:
Update/Newsletter
People love numbers that tell them how much progress your organization has made. After you finish a campaign, send an email and share the results. Knowing that they’ve made a difference is a powerful motivator for future support.
4. Include strong calls to action
The purpose of your email marketing campaigns is to get your subscribers to take action, so remember to tell your subscribers what you need from them with a strong call to action.
Here are some great ideas for nonprofit calls to action:
- Donate now
- Join together in the cause
- Make a difference today
- Support the organization today
- Help someone in need now
- Send your love and support by…
- Offer your help today
- Get involved now
Also, see this list of 80+ words you can use in your emails to help make them more effective.
Using metrics to plan future campaigns
Email marketing ideas for nonprofits aren’t based on design tips alone. While it helps to know how to write the copy and make the graphics for email for nonprofits, you also need to consider the strategy and execution. These are two of the core components in all of content marketing, no matter what you’re creating.
As far as an email marketing strategy for nonprofits, you should always start with the data. Once you’ve been in the email game for a bit, you’ve likely figured out the type of feedback you get from your audience. And we’re not just talking about replies.
The information you get back includes metrics about open rates, response rates, and much more. When you use these metrics, you can plan future campaigns more effectively.
Target the engagement that matters
When you’re writing your copy, the goal is email engagement. The fact that you’re a nonprofit doesn’t change that. This debunks the notion that the term “engagement” always focuses on sales. Email marketing ideas for nonprofits can focus on getting a variety of interaction and input.
In some cases, engagement for these subscribers is even more important. Without the support of your audience, your efforts won’t succeed. Consider these types of engagement, and look for which emails receive the most.
- Donations: You may not be selling a product, at least not as your primary offering, but your organization has bills and expenses. Asking for donations is always a tricky topic, even for seasoned email marketers. Track the approaches that get the most traction and bring them back whenever it’s time to ask for contributions. The best approach? Try showing how previous donations have gone to good use.
- RSVPs: Setting up events isn’t something you’ll be doing all the time. Yet, when the need does arise, you need the type of emails that bring responses quickly. If a certain format or style tends to get responses quicker, save it and use it as a template whenever a new event is coming up. Our advice? Make the CTA easy to follow. Also open up with precise details about the venue, date, time, and purpose of the event.
- Shares: This one is last on our list, but it’s not last in terms of importance. You can ask for shares on the content you publish or on either example above. If you want to spread the word that an event is coming up or that a worthwhile cause is seeking help, let your audience take part as well. How can you do this? Offer an incentive for sharing the content, or do the same with donation emails by talking about how sharing the content makes a difference.
These aren’t the only types of engagement you’ll be looking for, but mastering these will provide you with plenty of metrics to go off of in the future. As you learn what works best for each, planning campaigns gets easier over time.
Don’t underestimate the value of counting how many emails get opens and responses for each type of engagement. If you have a knack for one over the others, you know where the bulk of your efforts should focus to help you improve.
Wrap up
These email marketing tips should help your nonprofit grow its email list and build relationships with potential donors and volunteers. Campaign Monitor offers special pricing for nonprofits, and our tools are intuitive, proven, and easy-to-use.
Article first published January 2017, updated July 2019
A frequent mistake many businesses make is focusing solely on the sales funnel. As soon as the deal is closed, they move on to the next target. This model does not foster business growth. For your business to experience expansion, you need to work on your customer retention. One of the best ways to retain your customers is by having a good customer onboarding strategy in place.
Expecting your customers to know what to do after they sign up is a sure recipe for disaster. This is why a customer onboarding email sequence is so important.
What is customer onboarding, and why do you need an email sequence for it? Read on to find out.
What does onboarding customers mean?
Customer onboarding is a term that is thrown around loosely in marketing circles. But what does it really mean?
Customer onboarding is the entire process users go through from expressing interest in your product or services to the time they become a customer. It encompasses a variety of interactions and engagements with your brand, typically starting with a customer onboarding email. Onboarding customers takes them on a deeper customer journey with your brand, building more loyalty as you go until they make a purchase.
This process is important as it helps to ease the transition for your customers. The easier you help them move from interest to participation, the more likely they are to become loyal customers. In fact, designing a customer onboarding email sequence is an essential element of creating a pleasurable customer journey.
How can the customer onboarding process be improved?
The customer onboarding process is one of the most important factors in determining whether a customer will remain with you or not. Therefore, making sure that it’s optimized is very important. Here are three ways you can make sure your onboarding process will entice your new subscribers to turn into customers:
1. Make your customer feel at home
The first step to an effective onboarding process is to make sure your customers feel at home with you. You can easily achieve this by sending a well-crafted welcome email. When used well, a welcome email is probably the best customer onboarding email in your marketing toolbox.
Source: Really Good Emails
Wynd does a great job of onboarding their customers in their welcome email. Not only do they welcome their customers with a warm tone, but they also tell customers what to expect.
2. Share a case study
One of the main goals of customer onboarding is to gain your prospect’s trust. An easy way to do this is by sharing a case study that highlights what your product or service has achieved for others who have used it.
The beauty of case studies is the fact they actually allow your prospect to “experience” your product. As much as demos may do a good job of showcasing what your product can do, a case study proves that your product actually delivers. The end result? Your prospect will feel comfortable enough to take the relationship further and become a loyal customer.
3. Encourage customer feedback
Customers don’t want to be treated like an order number or a mere email address. They want to know they’re valuable and that you care about their experience. By regularly asking for feedback, you not only show initiative that you’re invested in their journey, but it’s also a great way to gather valuable data that can help you improve your product and onboarding process.
Source: Really Good Emails
Tips for successfully onboarding customers at scale
Read on to learn how you can develop a SaaS customer onboarding strategy that can scale and evolve as your business does. And the keyword here is “evolve.” Regardless of whether you’re just getting started, or have a detailed behavior-based strategy in place, we hope that you’ll come away from this post with practical ideas for improvements, too.
Must-do #1: Understand your customers’ intentions and goals
If you ask two or three people in a SaaS business what a “successful” customer looks like, you’ll probably get a range of responses. For example:
Marketing: A successful customer is one that adopts our latest feature and makes a purchase
Finance: A successful customer is one that chooses a plan and spends a certain amount each year
Customer Success: A successful customer is one who has worked through our checklist of account setup tasks.
The fact is, when you’re caught up in what would make your business successful, you can easily lose track of what customers really want.
It’s not to say that you shouldn’t just have a prominent “Buy Now” button in your app (to make Finance happy), but chances are, your customers have needs and desires that should be acknowledged and addressed, both before and after a purchase is made.
By understanding your customers’ intentions and goals—through interviews, surveys, Customer Support interactions and more—you can develop resources that address buying objections, deflect Support inquiries, reduce 90-day churn and allow your customers to find their definition of value from your service.
Must-do #2: Deliver content that’s relevant to the customer’s experience
A gentle nudge can go a long way. At Campaign Monitor, our Marketing team has looked into customer behavior—and particularly, where prospects have gotten stuck—then delivered messaging via email to help them progress.
For example, it’s possible that a prospect could create an email campaign, add email content, and then become distracted and never add recipients. That’s when a gentle nudge can come in handy. Here’s the animated email that both deep links the user back into the app and also provides an animated “how to” as to how it’s done:
Paired with an understanding of the prospect’s intention and goals, marketing automation can be used to trigger emails on based on behaviors to deliver very relevant messaging that not only addresses obstacles, buying objections and doubts, but also links them directly to the tools, resources and support they need to succeed.
Must-do #3: Educate and inspire at scale
The helpful messaging doesn’t end after someone converts into a paying customer—in fact, now that the customer knows that “must-have” features exist, it’s a great opportunity to educate them on best practices, provide tips, and yes, link back to the app, so they can seamlessly put what they’ve learned into practice.
We use the Campaign Monitor journey builder to send and measure a 3-week series of educational and inspirational emails. These emails link to free guides, a training video, and our very popular Top 100 Email Marketing Campaigns:
The main advantage to using email and online resources to help educate and inform customers is that it scales effortlessly as our customer base grows. Second to that, we can also track the results, too—including who viewed the video, clicked through to a guide, and more.
25% of paying customers are now accessing on-demand video training, with 44% of all training video traffic is driven by these post-purchase onboarding emails.
There are other benefits, too—for example, our prompts to subscribe to our monthly newsletter and blog updates consistently add thousands of new subscribers to these lists each month. And through incremental improvements to our content, we’ve experienced a 112% increase in our click rates, since we began these emails just a few years ago.
Of course, these changes haven’t come without challenges. The biggest pain point for us has been in identifying and syncing the customer events we need, from our app to our email list. Thankfully, we’ve been able to use our API to sync the most essential data, but once you go down the “events tracking” rabbit hole, you’ll likely find yourself requesting more data from your developers than you initially assumed you needed.
As we continue to expand our Customer Success-led onboarding program, we’re looking to integrate more in-app messaging at key moments in the customer experience, as well as inform our Product team about needed features and improvements that help our customers achieve their goals.
Must-do #4: Research, measure, and improve
As mentioned earlier, research, measurement, and providing recommendations to our internal teams is a large part of Customer Success’ strategy. We do this through efforts such as our Voice of the Customer Program, that aims to set baselines, collect customer feedback, and convene with our Product team on a scheduled basis.
Through Voice of the Customer, we’ve been able to monitor trends in our Net Promoter Score, as well as collect more qualitative feedback around what improvements we can make—not just as it relates to key features, but also within the evaluation and onboarding process.
Linking through from email and in-app messages, we use GetFeedback for our surveys, which in turn we sync with Salesforce, in order to provide team visibility of customer feedback.
Finally, an important note to be made is in regards to closing the feedback loop. Using the Campaign Monitor for Salesforce connector, we use transactional email to ensure every completed survey receives an immediate thank you email. Also, we distribute responses from people who give us low scores to our regional Customer Success managers, so they can follow up personally with an email or even a phone call.
The most evident challenge has been using our learnings to reshape an established, 10-plus-year product to better onboard customers, based on the customer insights that we’re receiving. As in any business, every team has existing priorities—and we hope to give onboarding more of a presence on these priority lists, by collecting more data and bringing functional teams closer to our customers.
In all, we want to create a great experience for customers, regardless of whether they’ve been using Campaign Monitor for eight days or eight years. The cornerstone to that is staying on the pulse of what our customers are feeling and thinking, through formalized research and measurement.
Wrap up
So, you might be wondering, what high-level wins have we had by putting these essentials into practice? For the Customer Success team, one of our most visible business goals is 90-day churn—and this is particularly relevant to the customer onboarding process.
Through building a richer picture of our prospects and customers, delivering relevant content, providing education, delivering recommendations and finally, actively monitoring the outcomes, we’ve seen a progressive reduction in 90-day churn. And that means not just a happy team, but happy customers to match. By successfully onboarding your customers at scale, you’re not only setting them up for months—if not years—of success with your app, but ensuring that your business continues to reach its goals, growth and otherwise.
Whether you’re a marketer, a small business owner, or an entrepreneur starting out, automating certain marketing tasks can help you save time, cut costs, and increase ROI.
Three-quarters of marketers say the biggest benefit of automation is saving time, while 68% say its increased customer engagement and 58% say it’s more timely communication.
On average, 49% of companies use marketing automation, including more than half of B2B companies. If your company has yet to make use of marketing automation (or even if you’re already using an automated system) you need to know how to get the most value out of it. When done right, marketing automation can help businesses save time and money, nurture customers, attract new business, and improve conversions. Marketing automation allows you to stay connected to your audience, even when you’re not in the office.
Getting started with marketing automation
The first step to using marketing automation the right way is to set up a marketing automation strategy. Any good business person knows the value of a good marketing strategy. Start by defining your goals and what you need to achieve through marketing automation. Whether you are trying to generate more leads, reach out to past or current customers, or boost your sales figures, each of these goals needs a different strategy. So, you need to determine what your main objectives are before proceeding.
Emailing marketing is still one of the most effective channels for marketing your business, with some of the smartest companies setting up automatic email campaigns to trigger based on actions from the audience. While there are many different types of automated email campaigns you can use for your business, there are simple steps beginners can start taking right away.
Automating your email marketing
These days, many marketers are looking for modern ways to reach their audience, from social media platforms to chatbots and Instagram influencers. But tried-and-true email marketing is still proving to be one of the most effective marketing tactics. With 82% of B2B and B2C companies using email marketing technology, and with an insanely high ROI, email marketing continues to be king. Here’s how to get started.
1. Send a warm welcome.
A welcome email is the first contact your business makes to a new subscriber, so you want to really impress. Your welcome email should include a warm greeting, a “thanks for subscribing,” and possibly a confirmation of subscription. Since this email gets sent to every new contact in your list, it’s good to automate this process. This email can be set up to be sent automatically whenever a new address is added to the list.
2. Don’t forget to send reminders.
As human beings, we consume billions of pieces of information daily, so it’s important to remain top-of-mind to your customers. Sending emails reminding customers of any special offers, promotions, or events should be a part of your marketing strategy, although this process can be time-consuming and taxing.
Creating a series of email reminders in advance and scheduling them automatically can save any marketer loads of time. Insider tip: Always include a link to the relevant page on your site with more information about the offer or event you’re promoting.
3. Nurture your customer base.
One of the main objectives of email marketing automation is to create and nurture a valuable and mutually beneficial relationship with your customers. Create high-quality content and deliver this to your customer base automatically in the most effective and meaningful way.
4. Points for loyalty
On the heels of our previous point, it is just good business practice to reward loyal customers. Create a thank you email that’s automatically sent to your customer base. Include a reward as a token of your appreciation, which can be in the form of a coupon, discount, free trial, voucher, or anything else your business can offer.
Source: Really Good Emails
5. Remember those inactive customers.
While you nurture your existing customers, don’t forget about the inactive ones. Email marketing automation can help you re-engage with past customers. Automate a series of emails to be sent to past customers who are no longer active. The goal here is to potentially get the customer back and boost your sales.
Explore how Campaign Monitor helps you do this automatically with our pre-built engagement segments.
6. Contact list clean-up
When it comes to leads, it’s quality over quantity. While a large email list is great, it may actually be better to tidy up this list of invalid and disengaged email addresses. Use automation to track and determine any invalid addresses or inactive subscribers. Removing inactive subscribers can increase your deliverability rate and keep your sender reputation intact.
7. Saying goodbye
Automation can be used to create emails to send to customers who have canceled their account. While no one wants to see a valued customer go, sending an email confirming their cancellation not only gives the customer peace of mind, but also the confidence to potentially return one day.
Source: Really Good Emails
8. Automate content that engages with social media.
Instead of stopping your message after the body copy, include a link to your social profile, or encourage people to share their experiences with you using a branded hashtag. Taking the relationship outside the inbox can create great brand ambassadors.
Two do’s and one big don’t of marketing automation
Do coordinate with your sales team.
A big mistake marketers make when using automation is not collaborating with their sales team. This lack of communication can affect your marketing strategy and your ability to generate more leads. Potential customers can get inundated with emails and phone calls from both the marketing and sales team, which can leave them feeling annoyed and overwhelmed.
This inundation can lead to them not only ignoring your messages, but unsubscribing from non-sales content as well. By simply collaborating with each team involved in the process, communication will be more succinct and ultimately more effective.
Do create smarter content.
Marketing automation is about more than just sending emails to your customer base. You want to interact with your audience and provide valuable and relevant information. Consider the content on your website. Does it represent your brand in the best light? Does it correspond to the content used in your email marketing campaigns? Having a formal brand voice across all platforms adds credibility that cannot be bought.
Creating different and informational content on your website helps cater to the needs and unique interests of your audience, which will help them take the right steps in their buyer’s journey. Whatever marketing automation strategy you’re using, make sure to include a plan to deliver relevant content across all your channels.
Don’t buy lists.
Whatever you do, don’t buy a list of contacts. While these purchase lists can give you a boost up front, it can be damaging in the long run. The concept is simple: high-quality leads are not for sale. Lists that are available to buy are usually packed with invalid and abandoned email addresses, which results in wasted time and money.
Sending automated emails to a list of questionable contacts negatively affects your business in several ways. You will get high bounce rates, low open rates, abuse reports, and your email service provider may even flag you as a spammer. This will only make it more difficult to get your message to interested, high-quality customers.
Marketing automation email best practices
- Keep it clear and concise. Make your point in the quickest and clearest way. People don’t have time to read long emails, so get to the point, provide a solution to a problem, and highlight how your company can help in a unique way.
- Keep it active. Keeping people engaged can be hard, so write your emails in a way that encourages customers to take action, whether it’s downloading a report, watching a video, making a purchase, or reading a blog post.
- Keep it spam free. Certain things always look spammy in email, including capitalizing letters, the color red, and too many links in the body of the message. There is also a list of spam trigger words to avoid in your email marketing campaign. Don’t use symbols in your subject lines too often and avoid using any words that trigger spam filters. Take a look at the CAN-SPAM Act, which establishes the US requirements for businesses using commercial messaging.
Wrap up
Marketing automation is an effective way to streamline your email marketing processes and reach your desired objectives. By using marketing automation in your email marketing strategy and processes, you can:
- Nurture leads
- Increase brand awareness
- Carefully plan your email strategy
- Reduce errors
- Re-engage with past customers
- Save time and money
Since email is one of the most effective ways to communicate, build customer relationships, and boost revenue, why not look to marketing automation to help streamline the process? Now that you know the benefits of email marketing automation, it’s time to invest in the right technology.
Campaign Monitor makes it easy to create, send and automate your email marketing campaigns. Sign up for free and see what we can do for your business.
This post has been updated as of May 2019
The average open rate of commercial emails is anywhere from 18-25%, and unsubscribe rates are typically around .25-.50%, according to MarketingProfs. While no one likes to be ignored or to see subscribers go, it happens.
Thankfully, there are a number of ways to engage your subscribers from the start with a welcome email.
In this post, we’ll give you actionable tips for creating an effective welcome email that’ll hook your subscribers from the get-go, and keep them coming back for more.
Why sending a welcome email is so important
While you may be tempted to simply add new subscribers to your email list and not send them anything until your next email goes out, this can be a big mistake and a lost opportunity.
In fact, as soon as a new subscriber signs up, you should send them a welcome email thanking them for opting in to your list. If you’re not convinced, consider these stats: Welcome emails get 320% more revenue than promotional emails, an 86% lift in the unique open rate, and a 196% lift in the unique click rate, according to Entrepreneur.
One reason these stats are so impressive is that, when someone signs up for your list, your business is top of mind. When you send them a welcome email right away, you have the opportunity to engage them with compelling content and offers.
Take a look at this clever example from flower delivery company, BloomThat:
BloomThat does an exceptional job of engaging and connecting with their subscribers right from the start. They remove any initial obstacles and get out of anyone’s way who might just want to shop with their CTA, “Show you the blooms,” but then go on to offer more context in a compelling way for those who want to learn more. The copy, voice, and tone are totally on-brand, and they make it fun with a game.
Tips for creating an effective welcome email
Now that you’ve seen an example of a great welcome email, use the following tips to create one.
Highlight the value of subscribing in the signup form
While this step comes before you ever create and send your welcome email, it’s an important part of the process.
In order to solidify subscriptions, it’s vital to let subscribers know exactly what they’ll be getting when they sign up. Will they receive helpful content each week? What about promotions and coupons? Whatever you offer, make sure to let potential subscribers know in the opt-in form, as keeping them engaged starts with setting the right expectations.
Our friends at Buffer do an excellent job of this on their blog.
Buffer’s signup form specifically outlines what people can expect after subscribing, including “data and studies on social media best practices” and “in-depth guides on what works best when posting on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and more.”
This descriptive copy gets folks excited about the information to come, and, when that initial welcome email arrives, they’re excited to open it and see what new best practices are inside.
Optimize your subject line
The subject line is one of the most critical parts of your welcome email. Research indicates some of the most popular words in subject lines that get opened include: sale, thank you, welcome, new, daily, weekly, alert, bulletin, video, freebie, and any type of personalization, just to name a few.
Remember, the subject line is the first thing your subscribers see when they open their inbox, so make sure you keep it short, concise, and specific, so that your readers know what the email is about. Check out this post for more tips on writing engaging email subject lines.
Use a real name in the “From” line
As you create your welcome email, it’s also important to make sure your “From” name is the name of your business or the name of the person that the subscriber expects to hear from, rather than “no-reply@yourbusiness.com,” for example.
This encourages people to engage with your welcome email and possibly even respond to you, which is positive for your campaign.
Personalize the content with the subscriber’s name
Another simple tactic to get people excited about your content is to simply use their name. “Thanks for joining, Sam!” is a lot more effective than “Welcome, valued customer,” or “Hey there!”
In fact, emails with personalized subject lines are 26% more likely to be opened and marketers have found a 760% increase in email revenue from sending segmented, personalized campaigns.
Online fashion retailer Freemans does an impressive job of this in their welcome emails. Not only do they place the subscriber’s first name prominently at the beginning of the email, they even use their last name in the body copy as well. This makes the email feel like it was specially sent to each recipient and encourages them to click through and take action.
Copywriting counts
The content of your welcome email really is the bread and butter of engagement. The reason subscribers sign up for your emails and newsletters is so that they can receive your content. This means you should include information that interests your readers.
There are a few different formats that make for an engaging welcome email. Let’s take a look at an example from Chandon:
Chandon nails it with their welcome email, and using this example works as a great guide. In your welcome email, you should:
Welcome your new subscriber by name, if possible.
Thank your new subscriber for joining your list.
Let your new subscriber know what to expect from you and your website. In other words, reinforce the value they get for joining your list.
Keep the copy short, and easy to digest.
Use a call-to-action button to lead people back to your website or app to get them to take a desired conversion action.
Some other valuable elements you can include in your welcome email to further engage your subscribers are:
A special offer for subscribing
A request for further information, so you can personalize your future emails to them
A getting-started guide
Remember, the most important thing is to keep it short and simple, while providing all the information your new subscriber needs.
Make your welcome emails visually pleasing
People engage with emails that look good. This fact comes as no surprise, considering the recent and abundant lean towards visual content in almost every avenue of digital advertising. Eighty-six percent of buyers expressed a desire to access interactive and visual content on demand over other types of content, according to a recent study.
If you’re looking to engage your customers immediately, then you need to make sure your content is easy on the eyes.
Seafolly does this well:
Their welcome email features beautiful, on-brand imagery that helps to sell the “world of Seafolly.”
Optimize for mobile devices
When we talk about the importance of design in capturing the attention of subscribers, it’s necessary to remember that every email you send out should be 100% optimized for mobile devices.
One reason for this is that 64% of decision-makers read their email via mobile devices. And 60% of online adults in the US and UK use at least two devices each day. This means, if you haven’t optimized your email for mobile devices, chances are it’ll get deleted.
Seafolly’s highly visual welcome email looks great on mobile devices, ensuring their readers can consume and enjoy their content wherever they are.
How to keep your subscribers engaged beyond the welcome email
While it’s critical to nail your welcome email, remember it’s only the beginning of what’ll hopefully be a long relationship with your subscribers. Like any good relationship, you have to continue to stay interesting, loyal, and engaging. Otherwise, subscribers may unsubscribe, and no one wants that.
To maintain a solid and lasting relationship with your subscribers, consistently deliver the value that you promised in the beginning.
If you promised a weekly email with industry tips, then make sure you send it out weekly. If you promised discounts for subscribing, then send discounts. Keeping people engaged long term is often simply a matter of keeping your word.
Best welcome email examples and templates
When you’re looking to create great welcome emails, it pays to check out what the experts are doing. Some of the best welcome emails in the industry are proven to build trust and facilitate increased engagement.
These welcome email examples can be used to create welcome email templates and engage subscribers effectively from the very beginning. Read on for a roundup of the best designs and what makes them so great.
Source: Airbnb
Airbnb has the right idea with a welcome email—they cut right to the important points. Users aren’t just hoping to be wowed by a great-looking newsletter. They want to know exactly how the company behind it can help them. That information will determine whether they stay subscribed or not.
The features are listed cleverly, allowing users to see options for finding a home, exploring and traveling, or even becoming a host. These features are divided neatly into sections, complete with actionable CTAs and photos of people enjoying themselves. The graphics, text, and layout all work together to demonstrate who the company is and what they can offer.
Source: Asana
A company like Asana knows their tool has a bit of a learning curve. The welcome email wastes no time helping users get acquainted with the product. Also, notice the copywriting. It’s concise and reminds users they’re part of the Asana family—further highlighting the product’s collaborative nature.
The trio of CTAs function as simple “practice exercises” for users to get acquainted with the product. This also functions as a way of bringing the FAQ or Help section to the user before they have to go searching for it, but in a more focused manner.
Source: Kate Spade
Kate Spade opens up with something many people wouldn’t expect in a welcome email. Thanking the subscriber for signing up may seem out of the ordinary, as appreciation is usually reserved for purchases. The sense of heartfelt thanks is also made a bit more personal by the background, which resembles an old-fashioned letter.
To top it off, Kate Spade shows appreciation, yet again, by offering a discount. It’s a great gesture in general but, also, for the purpose of this email, it demonstrates to the subscriber that the company doesn’t just thank you; they show their gratitude through actions.
Source: MOO
The final example comes from MOO, a company known for premium business cards. The email demonstrates design expertise as soon as it’s opened—showcasing a nice design and a catchy color scheme.
It immediately has links for you to check out their products, as well as to get in contact with them or simply find out more about the company. Combine this with the strong opening that details what you are in store for, this is the perfect welcome email in both copy and design.
Any of these emails could be used as inspiration or a possible welcome email template to help facilitate engagement from the minute your readers sign up for your email list.
Wrap up
Engaging your audience is a long-term process that begins with the signup form and continues with the welcome email and the content you send subscribers throughout their relationship with your business.
By following the tips in this post, you can create an engaging welcome email that hooks your subscribers from the start, and ensures your future emails get opened and acted on.
Ready to craft a great welcome email your subscribers will love? Try out these essential elements to make sure your first contact is one your subscriber will love.
This post was originally published in August 2015
This is a guest post from Fit Small Business.
By 2021, it’s estimated that email accounts will grow by 22% from today. While some marketing disciplines will claim that email is not the powerful communication channel it once was–the data suggests otherwise.
Email communication provides businesses with an unparalleled channel to reach their target audience. Email lets you avoid pay-to-play platforms like social media and is a more scalable channel than telemarketing. Moreover, email marketing is incredibly cheap compared to other channels like television or radio.
In other words, email marketing isn’t just alive–it’s thriving.
If you want to invest more in your email strategies, you should start by assessing how well your current email campaigns are running. You might be surprised to learn that many businesses still struggle to use email effectively.
What are some reasons customers aren’t reading your emails?
From convoluted email lists to poorly structured messaging, here are four of the most common email marketing mistakes and how you can fix them.
1. Your email lists are outdated or inaccurate.
Businesses shouldn’t undervalue the power of an effective email marketing list. Unlike other channels like social, email provides a direct line to your customers. Moreover, the average person checks their email roughly 15 times a day.
If your customers aren’t reading your emails, it could be that your email lists are being mismanaged.
Research by Marketing Sherpas estimates that email marketing databases experience a 22.5% organic decay year-over-year. In other words, an email list that isn’t frequently updated is unlikely to yield. Businesses need to take a proactive approach to manage their email marketing lists.
Get creative with list-building strategies.
You will need to get creative with your email list-building to deal with the natural email churn in marketing lists. Gating valuable content is one of the easiest ways to grow an engaged email list. You can lock an eBook or free consultation behind an email sign-up form, so users have to give you their contact information before they receive the value exchange.
Getting creative with your list-building initiatives can increase your email sign-ups, while also allowing you to target leads at different stages of the sales funnel.
Collect the right data.
When you’re creating a list-building strategy, think about the data you want to collect. For example, if you’re building an active client email list, you might want to know their name, email, products/services purchased, the amount spent to date, and location.
Now, if you were to collect a top-of-the-funnel lead, you might only need their name and email since they might be further from the purchasing stage of the sales funnel. Be smart about the data you’re collecting and keep it focused on what’s most important for that individual.
Keep your lists clean.
While businesses spend a lot of energy on list-building strategies, they rarely focus on maintaining clean lists. There are several negatives to low-quality email lists. For instance, you could end up sending the wrong messaging to a contact or emailing someone who has tried to unsubscribe previously.
You also run the risk of high bounce rates on your email campaigns if you have poorly managed email lists. Stale lists that result in high bounce rates can cause your IP to be blacklisted and marked as spam from email providers. If your domain is marked as spam, it can affect your ability to reach your subscribers. Generally, you want to avoid a bounce rate of more than 2%.
2. You’re not personalizing or segmenting correctly.
Personalizing emails and segmenting marketing lists can help businesses increase open rates, engage recipients, and increase revenue. In fact, Campaign Monitor research suggests that marketers who segment their email campaigns see an increase in revenue of 760%.
Segment your lists strategically.
Segmenting your marketing lists is a macro-strategy to create a more customized email. Instead of dumping all your emails into one list, you can create segments based on whatever variables you find most relevant to your business.
For instance, if you run a local dry-cleaning business, you could segment your email lists by location, gender, and services purchased. You could then run discounts based on location or gender–or create emails to cross-sell your customers.
The more granular you segment your lists, the more opportunities for targeted messaging.
Personalize your email message.
In addition to list segmenting, you need to personalize the physical emails. Personalized emails improve engagement and create a stronger bond between the consumer and your brand. In fact, it’s estimated that personalized email messages can increase click-through rates up by 14% and conversions by 10%.
Fortunately, many email marketing technologies provide automated solutions to seamlessly integrate personalized messages into your email campaigns. One way to personalize the messaging is to leverage dynamic content–which allows you to show different messages based on email segments, lists, or variables.
You can also use customer journey automation to trigger specific emails based on the activity of a user. Did a lead click on your pricing list? You can send them a follow-up email based on that action. Personalizing emails through automated and dynamic solutions provides a scalable approach to targeted messaging.
3. You’re setting your emails up to fail.
Sadly, you can build the most amazing email list and design an incredible message and still fail. There are several small factors that can cause your perfect email never to make it past the inbox.
Use the right email address.
Does your small business still use an email address from a generic service like Gmail, Yahoo, or Hotmail? If so, you’re setting yourself up to fail.
Customers expect brands to have a business email that is linked to their domain name. A business email address makes your emails look more professional, improves brand awareness, and helps it stand out from the spam and clutter. You can get a free business email address in minutes–and increase the likelihood of your emails getting read.
Send your emails at the perfect time.
You might also be limiting your chance for success by sending emails on the wrong days or at the wrong times. Determining the best time to send your emails is fundamental to the success of any great marketing campaign. Send it when the inbox is busy, and your customers might miss your perfectly-crafted email.
However, sending your emails at the right time can help you increase your opens, reads, and conversions. While you should use your own data to make a decision about what day and time works best for your industry, general research suggests the best time to send emails is during work hours–9am – 5pm (excluding lunch) accounts for 53% of email opens.
As far as what days to send your email, most research suggests avoiding Monday because it’s usually the day people use to clear out the inbox from the weekend. This can cause your email to get bypassed. Tuesday and Thursday are seen as the optimal days for sending marketing emails.
Make your emails mobile-friendly.
Responsive emails are become more important every year–with more consumers opening their emails on mobile than desktop. If your emails do not display correctly on mobile devices, they may be deleted in as little as three seconds.
Poor formatting reflects badly on your brand and can cause your consumers to ignore any future messages from you. Mobile-testing your emails means more than just selecting a responsive email template: You should test all your emails before sending. Make sure to double check images, content flow, and the CTA to ensure it’s easy to follow and navigate on a mobile device.
4. Your email content is lacking.
It shouldn’t come as a surprise, but one of the most decisive reasons people aren’t reading your emails is because the content is lacking. Email is a communication channel just like anything else–social, TV, websites, radio, etc.
As a result, people have certain expectations that, if not met, can cause them to ignore your future emails.
Nail the welcome email.
With email, your first impression is critical. It sets the tone for your brand, and it’s the most receptive your audience will ever be to your email messaging. The average open rate for a welcome email is 86% more than typical newsletters.
To succeed with welcome emails, you need first to make sure it’s automated. When someone subscribes to a list, 74% expect to receive a welcome email immediately–any delay can decrease the recipient engagement. Also, use the welcome email as an opportunity to set consumer expectations about your brand, the frequency of communication, and other factors that might make the subsequent emails more effective.
Create a great subject line.
Just like a headline for an article, your email subject line needs to catch the reader’s eye, add context to the message, and elicit action. There are several ways to craft the perfect subject line, and a lot of times, it’ll depend on your brand, industry, and the purpose of the email.
Generally, you should try to keep your email subject line relatively short. Most desktop inboxes cut off the subject line after about 60 characters, and mobile emails are roughly 25-30 characters.
Also, try to keep it relevant to the email message, timely when a deadline is required, and use emojis to stand out from the text-heavy clutter–Experian reported that 56% of brands that used emojis in their subject lines saw higher open rates.
Provide value to your readers.
While subject lines and welcome emails can help you increase your email activity, if you’re not providing value to your recipients consistently, they won’t continue to read your emails. The more value you offer your email subscribers, the more likely they are to engage with your brand and any additional emails.
You can provide value in your emails by focusing on your consumer–and not just your business. What issues do your consumers face? Create emails that address these issues and be willing to offer advice without asking for something in return.
Email should also be incorporated into an omnichannel strategy. Don’t silo your email campaigns from your content strategy or social media marketing. The language across all channels should have a uniform and consistent feel. This is important for email marketing because you are usually pushing visitors to a landing page on your website. If the content in the email is not supported further on the landing page, it could create a poor user experience that limits the success of your email efforts.
Wrap up
Email marketing is one of the best channels to reach your customers. However, if you’re not taking a calculated approach to your email strategy, there’s a good chance you’re missing a huge opportunity to engage your target audience. From the email lists to the physical email itself, there are several ways to increase the number of recipients reading your emails.
By focusing on the steps above, you can improve the likelihood that your customers are reading and engaging with your emails.
If you’re not seeing the results you want with your email marketing campaigns, check out our features to see how Campaign Monitor can help.
About the author: Christine Soeun Choi is an SEO associate at Fit Small Business specializing in digital marketing. Currently based in NYC, she has a background in business studies and math with a passion for business development. When not helping small business owners, Christine enjoys taking photos, exploring artwork, and traveling.