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“Many marketing strategies come and go, but some stay forever.“
When you uncover any successful brand story, you will find numerous forces at work. And there is a high probability that you will find a solid email marketing strategy somewhere in that framework. And it makes sense. Email marketing brings great ROI; as per this study, email has an average of $38 for every $1 spent. This makes email an appealing option for startups.
Email marketing can be a great tool for customer acquisition, driving conversions and even increasing website traffic. The trick to making a successful email strategy lies in the optimization of the various elements that go into it. From the subject line to the CTA to the closing line, everything plays a unique role in taking the user to the actual destination.
But that’s not all. To reap the maximum benefits from your email marketing, you need to incorporate hacks that go beyond delivering higher open-rates and enhance the click-through.
Here are few such email marketing growth hacks for emerging startups:
Engage your users with automated emails
Automated emails can help you stay in the picture by creating space for engagement.
You've got many types of automated emails: newsletter emails, emails based on behavior, cart abandonment emails to increase conversions and sales, welcome emails, etc. And for startups, it is extremely crucial to stay in their audience’s radar.
But automation shouldn’t be confused with repetition. To attract more and more customers, you need to tweak your email content depending on your users’ preferences.
Looking for inspiration?
Buzzfeed, one of the sites that boasts of a good online presence, doesn’t just stop at website or social content but has managed a good email list, thanks to their 20 email newsletters designed to cater to different user interests: health, beauty etc. And guess what? Subscribers coming to their website through an email spend 3 minutes longer than visitors who land on the website through other channels.
Utilize video in email to unlock engagement
Video in email can boost click-through rate by almost 200-300%.
As a startup, you can greatly benefit from an explainer video. If you have a decent budget set aside for video marketing, get an explainer video from a video production company. Don’t restrict your video to the landing page. Send it out in your emails.
These videos can also increase email sharing by 41%. So if you have included a video in your email, there is a higher chance of that email getting forwarded. This trick helps in creating the ‘mouth of word marketing’ effect; people are 92% more likely to purchase a product/service when the recommendation is made by a peer.
Videos can be incorporated in the email either by embedding or by including a link.
Here’s a tip: use a static image from your video frame in the body of the email and take the user to the website by providing a link.
Call them through email to take action
It’s your call-to-action (CTA) that delivers the actual result in your email strategy as it takes the user beyond the email and leads to a purchase or a reservation or simply further reading. A call-to-action can either be a button or a link. CTAs, when used effectively, will help you increase your sales.
The position of CTA placement along with the CTA text, both play a role in the click through. These are the qualities of a good CTA:
- A good CTA has a compelling text
If you are saying what everyone else is saying, your CTA text won’t really impact the buyer’s decision. So there is a necessity to create unique and enticing text to call users to take the action that you want them to take.
- An optimized CTA stands out
We have come across many great emails with great content, but barely visible CTA. Sometimes, the CTA would be placed after a really long piece of text or sometimes it would just be written in a smaller font than the remaining text. Such CTA doesn’t stand out and sometimes makes it difficult for the user to even locate it.
Make your CTA stand out. Use bold formats, different colors or create a CTA button.
- It creates a sense of urgency
Are you sending out an email for a sale that is due and only lasts two days? Then use your subject line as well as your CTA to create urgency in your user. Time-critical emails need to tap into the power of ‘time limits’ and drive the user to take the action.
In fact, this technique can also create urgency for things that are not time-critical but deliver something to the user that can improve their life drastically. For instance, an e-book that helps a blogger to learn quick hacks to visibility, even though not time-critical, can make him/her download it quickly so it is not lost to the email purgatory.
Use email marketing to gather information for buyer personas
Email marketing can be greatly beneficial in creating buyer personas. For startups, email can be a great way to understand users and then target them accordingly.
For instance, you may create surveys to gather your user’s information. This is one of the 15 bright ways to make your emails interactive and engaging and grab attention. Since these responses are received through the email itself, these details are more likely to be email specific. In short, since you are using email to collect information to re-target users through the same channel again, those strategies will be me much more email optimized because of the same exit and entry channel.
Incorporate humor to add an element of surprise
There are many techniques to use growth hacking with emails and incorporating humor is definitely one of them. It is common for startups to restrict their email to a formal, business tone because the risk is less.
But that’s where a lot of companies fail to understand the role of humor in building better first impressions.
Humor helps you catch your reader off guard and dissolves the ‘marketing’ intent.
Humor can help you build a good email list and leave your readers looking for more. Introducing humor in your content can be a bit tricky but the rewards are many.
Incorporate visuals to infuse humor. Rely on memes, GIFs, etc... to uplift your email strategy.
Humor can be a great ice-breaker and improve your email interactions to help you achieve your marketing objective.
Best practices for writing your email
- Subject Line
The email open rate is largely dependent on the subject line of your email. After all, this is the first email element that the user sees. About 33% of email recipients open the email based on that subject line. And a large chunk of emails are discarded as spam simply based on the subject line used. Another growth hack you can try to increase your email open rate is by including emojis in your subject lines.
Keep your subject line crisp and enticing. Also, personalized subject lines work much better than generic ones.
- Opening line
If the subject line is the bait, the opening text is your hook. The faster you engage your reader, the easier it is to keep them going towards taking the intended action. As Hubspot suggests, move beyond “Hi, My name is” to something like “I noticed you” or “Saw that we both”.
- Body
Emails can be powerful if they are specific. Generic body content often results in disengagement. Especially for startups, there is a greater need to stand out in their email content.
When creating sales emails, ask yourself:
- What new unique pain points is my startup solving?
- How your product/service has changed the landscape of that particular industry?
The answer to these questions can be really useful as email text.
- Closing line
While the CTA does the main task of making the user perform an action, the closing line impacts the reader’s decision. A closing line which is abrupt or devoid of an actionable step, may leave the reader confused and/or unwilling to complete the action.
Use closing lines to initiate a response from the user or to take them to the destination where they can complete the transaction.
By following these email marketing best practices, we can ensure you that you will boost your email marketing ROI.
So, how to use email marketing growth hacks for emerging startups?
Email marketing is a powerful strategy that can deliver great results within a budget. For emerging startups, this email journey must begin with practices that have already worked well for existing companies. It can be as simple as automating your emails, writing great subject lines to something like a video email.
Email marketing is an essential element in the inbound marketing methodology. The success of your email marketing can sometimes come from a quirky subject line or a compelling closing line. So optimize your email strategy and offer something meaningful to your audience. And when you run out of ideas that add value, simply engage through humor.
Addition:
- Getting Started with Data-Driven Email Marketing
- 10 Tips to Do Email Marketing for Financial Advisors
- The Most Common Questions About Email Marketing
- 6 Steps to Writing a Professional Email Response
- How to Export LinkedIn Contacts With Emails
- GetResponse vs MailChimp – The Guide You Need to Pick the Right Email Marketing Tool
- Phishing as a Way to Check Email Deliverability
- Email Automation for Ecommerce
- Why Protecting Your Emails From Spam Is Crucial to Your Office 365 Email Security
- The Importance of Email Authentication for Marketing Campaigns
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