Why You Need Email Marketing Before the Next Facebook Glitch

You have Social Media, so is Email Marketing even relevant for business owners today? Last October 4, 2021, Facebook glitched, and people couldn’t send messages or even view the images on their feeds. According to Santosh Janardhan, a Facebook vice president of infrastructure, the initial problem occurred on Facebook’s “backbone,” which connects its data centres around the world.

Facebook was offline for over 5 hours. For business owners, losing connection with your audience for that long is never good. When social media goes down do you have a back up strategy? In this blog I’ll be explaining why to still need to set up an email marketing strategy if you don’t have one. It will not just protect you but also help your business to grow.

What is an Email List?

It is simply a list of names and email addresses that a business creates from visitors or customers who would like to be informed about your company in a digital format. This ensures that as a business owner you can send relevant information direct to their email inboxes. With an ROI of $38 – $43 for every $1 spent, email is 40 times more effective at acquiring new customers than Facebook or Twitter.

And if you are still not convinced why email marketing is a must, here are a few benefits you can take advantage of for your business:

Email Lists Belong to You

Your email list is the only thing you own, aside from your website. Facebook, Instagram, and other social media channels are not yours. It’s important to keep in mind that you don’t control your followers and that if a social media platform shuts down, you can’t contact them unless you have their email addresses.

Lead generation campaigns will help you build your email list. You can also read more from our previous blog, WARNING! Are You Creating Lead Magnets That Won’t Work? Or you can watch the video below.

You Build Relationships with Email List

Nurturing and building relationships are essential to building a successful business. If you do it correctly, email marketing can help you reach your goals. They do not view a newsletter as a marketing tool. Rather, it serves to communicate and provide news to your email list about what you offer your company’s latest news or new features and services.

Newsletters communicate trust rather than an obvious advertisement. Creating trustworthy and valuable content is one of the best ways to build trust. It differentiates you from other marketing efforts that are too pushy.

Despite the belief that nobody opens their emails anymore, email marketing gets more attention when done properly. There has been an increase of 34.9% in average weekly sign-ups per account since March 9, 2020. The permission-based nature of email marketing makes it effective. The people on your email list have agreed to receive your messages. With that in mind, you still want your subscribers not to mark your email as spam, so ensure it is worth opening and reading.

Here are a few ways you can build customer relationships with email marketing:

Optimise your subject lines

Building a profitable relationship with your list is impossible if no one is opening your emails. Increase your open rate by utilising your subject line. 

• Incorporate numbers (4 Tips in Creating a Successful Digital Marketing Plan)
• Ask a question (Why is Brand Messaging Strategy Important for Your Business?)
• Create curiosity by using ‘this’ and ‘that’ (STOP These Digital Marketing Mistakes ASAP).

Remember, it’s important to test your subject lines to see what style and technique get the highest open rates with your particular audience.

Add a call-to-action

Marketers use call-to-action (CTA) to describe the next step they want their audience to take. Depending on your goal, you can encourage your audience to do this after they read your email:

• Click on a link to your website or your video.
• Share the email content on social media.
• Purchase an item or a service.

There are two most common mistakes regarding CTA, and you want to avoid doing this:

• Not including CTA in your newsletter.
• Putting too many CTAs.

An excellent method for getting people to act right away is to create a sense of urgency and FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out), such as the phrase limited time offer.

Ease customer pain points by meeting their needs

A relationship with your customers means you know who they are on a personal level. Finding out who your customers are, what is their needs, what struggles they face, and what success looks like for them is the first step. Provide your customers with highly relevant content that satisfies their needs and interests and solves their problems.

Knowing your customers better will enable you to deliver the content they need. Share relevant content with your list via email to establish yourself as an expert and resource. The more great content you include in your emails, the more likely your readers will keep opening, clicking, and purchasing.

Avoid being salesy

People will soon grow weary of opening sales emails if you send them every time you contact them. No one enjoys being sold to constantly. The 80/20 rule is a good guideline – 80% of your emails should include valuable content and resources. 20% of your emails should contain offers for your products and services.

By doing this, you cultivate a relationship based on mutual interests with the customer. With all the great content you’ve provided, your customer will be far more likely to purchase if you have a new product or service to offer.

Give your email subscribers a reward

Keeping your customers aware of your value is another way to strengthen customer relationships. Who doesn’t enjoy feeling appreciated and valued? You can improve your relationship with your customers by providing them with exclusive content, information, discounts, etc.

Stay consistent in sending your emails

Imagine your closest relationships with family and friends. Those relationships likely include social interactions online and offline, phone calls, and getting together regularly for dinner or coffee. The same applies to your email relationships.

Depending on your brand and style, send emails to your list regularly. If you say you’ll send out a weekly newsletter, be sure to deliver it on time. It will be easy for them to think of your business when they have a problem you can solve.

Increase Engagement in Your Emails

Engagement is measured by how recipients interact with your emails. Engagement metrics include open rates, reply rates, click-through rates, and conversion rates. Regardless of your industry, there are several tried-and-correct ways to boost email engagements on your emails. Here are a few:

Don’t forget to send out a welcome email

You usually send a welcome email to new email subscribers. Welcome emails have an average open rate of 50%, making them more effective than regular newsletters. Considering that 76% of people expect a welcome email immediately after signing up for your list, make the most of this email.

Usually, this includes coupons or freebies you promise to deliver when they sign up to your email list.

Don’t ignore the preheader text

When a reader views your email in the inbox, the preheader text, or preview text, follows the subject line. It appears next to the subject line and sender’s name. Brands that use preview texts can increase their open rates by 30% or more.

Create copy that is casual and fun

Nobody likes long, dull, jargon-heavy texts. Make your emails fun and easy to read. Be sure to explain what your reader should do next. Keep your sentences concise and use active positive language. If necessary, use humour – people love to laugh.

Remember, you want to build a long-lasting relationship with your email subscribers and nurture them to become your future clients.

Make sure your email is mobile-friendly

Most people open emails on mobile devices. Therefore, if your emails aren’t mobile-friendly, a large portion of them will go to waste. Always make sure your design is as good or better on mobile as on desktop.

Create segments for your email marketing

Your email list can be segmented to deliver the right message to the right buyer persona at the right time during their buyer’s journey. It is vital for boosting conversions. It should integrate your email marketing software with your CRM and other sources of customer data first to send segmented emails that are more likely to convert.

With this solution, you’ll be able to see all your contacts in one place, including on your email marketing platform. You can then send highly customised emails to your contacts based on their groups, memberships, and other properties.

When you do email marketing right, you’ll get higher open rates and click-through rates. They will probably read your blog, watch your video, and purchase your products. Open rate is the percent of a campaign’s subscribers who opened it.

Email open rates can vary based on the subject line and the relevance of the subject matter to subscribers, but we estimate they range from 18% (Campaign Monitor) to 22.15% (GetResponse), depending on the source. On average, you get an open rate of 20.56% across four major platforms. Approximately 70% of professionals use email to share company- or industry-related content.

One of the most effective ways to reach out to your customers and prospects is via email. We cannot emphasise more how important building your email marketing strategy is. It’s not only a way to send offers to your target audience but also helps you to nurture your relationship with them. And let them know they can trust you in helping them solve their pain points.

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