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TRANSCRIPT
A White Paper Guide from
The
DEFINITIVE
Email Marketing Guide
TAILOR-MADE STRATEGIES THAT WORK FAST
Aggressive Growth Marketing ©2017
www.aggressivegrowthmarketing.com | +44 020 7692 8960
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION........................................................................................... 3
EMAIL MARKETING MISTAKES TO AVOID ............................................ 4
BUILDING A LARGE EMAIL LIST .............................................................. 6
MONETISING YOUR EMAIL LISTS ......................................................... 10
SUBJECT LINE DOS AND DON'TS .......................................................... 13
IN SUMMARY .................................................................................. 17
The Definitive Email Marketing Guide ©2017 Aggressive Growth Marketing 3
INTRODUCTION
Good marketing practices usually involve a variety of different
communication tactics and campaigns. Now that businesses are
embracing the power of the internet, email is now emerging as
one of the preferred communication tactics.
When it comes to email marketing, knowing the best approach
to take can be difficult. Therefore, it is only wise for businesses
to have an active email campaign to share news and keep in
touch with their targeted customers. Not only that, studies have
shown that email marketing still offers positive return on
investment.
With helpful hints and tips to help your email marketing
campaigns, this guide covers:
1. Email marketing mistakes to avoid
Getting your email marketing campaign right
2. Building an email list
How to build up a contact list
3. Monetising your email lists
Making money from your email lists
4. Email subject line dos and don'ts
Promoting best subject line practice
EMAIL MARKETING MISTAKES TO AVOID
Getting your email marketing campaign right
There are various options available with regards to online
marketing. A good online marketing strategy will combine a
variety of methods, such as social media marketing, content
marketing, and email marketing.
To stop making serious email marketing mistakes, here are
some errors to avoid.
No-Reply
Are your emails achieving a low open rate?
If yes, your first step is to check your email address!
Sending from ‘noreply@’ or ‘donotreply@’ is likely to bring you a
low open rate, as recipients prefer an address they can reply to.
Personalisation and transparency go a long way in earning
customer loyalty, so it is important to ensure your emails
include contact details such as phone numbers and links to your
social media.
Image Based Emails
Only a small portion of people have their email
accounts set to turn on images automatically. This means that, if
you send image-only based emails, most of the people in your
email list will see an empty box.
The Definitive Email Marketing Guide ©2017 Aggressive Growth Marketing 5
Text-only emails have a higher click through rate than picture
emails. If you do need to send images, repeat everything in
simple text.
Links
If the goal of your email is to get people to click through to your
website, make sure the link included in your email takes them
directly to the landing page of the offer you’re promoting;
nobody wants
to have to scroll their way through your site to find your
promotion.
Botched Subject Line
Ensure that more than one person checks your emails before
delivery. But, before you get to this stage, it is important that
you take the time to develop a subject line that really
highlights your message, and engages your audience; try out
Co-Schedule’s Headline Analyzer for inspiration.
No Mobile
People don’t just work from desktop or laptops anymore, so it’s
crucial that your emails are mobile-optimised. This means that
your text needs to be readable, the buttons, links and CTAs
need to be clickable, and the layout needs to be mobile-friendly
and responsive. Failing to do so is a way to lose customers fast.
Key takeaway: As popular as social media is, email still has a
very strong ROI. But, it’s essential that you get email marketing
right; so, if this is going to form part of your strategy, you MUST
avoid the key errors and pitfalls.
BUILDING A LARGE EMAIL LIST
How to build up a contact list
Are you interested in increased ways to grow your
email list?
Nowadays, there are many available options for businesses to
grow their email list and stay connected with their customers.
For example, there is social media, mobile texting, meetings,
and email.
With so many options it may seem overwhelming and
complicated to choose the most effective method. However,
email is one of the most effective marketing strategies and is
an excellent way to keep in touch with customers and potential
customers.
If you’re looking to start marketing, one of your first actions
should be to build up an email list, so you can reach out to
people who are interested in what you’re offering.
Let’s look at how you can do this, especially if you’re starting
from a brand-new website.
Email sign-up form
Placing a sign-up form on your website, preferably on the
homepage, is key. Make sure it’s easy to see, and shows what
your customers will be signing up for.
You can also offer a free e-book, or a discount code offer to
entice people into joining your email list. Or, you could offer a
The Definitive Email Marketing Guide ©2017 Aggressive Growth Marketing 7
link to a sample newsletter, so they know what to expect and
have an incentive to join.
Site registration
If you need your customers to create an account with you,
ensure that email sign-up is part of this process. Ensure that
your CTAs are clearly displayed, and if you’re offering an
incentive for creating an account, ensure it’s relevant to your
target audience.
Direct mail or flyers
Using direct postal mail is another easy way of gaining new
email customers; why not mail them an offer that can only be
redeemed by going online and creating an account? (where
they’ll have to submit their email address).
Additionally, if you host live events as part of your business, you
could provide sign-up forms for people to fill in to redeem a
coupon or discount. Positioning this as you thank them for
attending your event is a simple but effective way of collecting
data and email addresses to add to your list.
Blog
Sharing engaging and relevant content with people is a great
way to build relationships and to get email addresses. By
offering the option at the bottom of your blog for people to sign
up for new blog posts and content, you’ll be able to build your
email list in no time.
Social Media
Social media will always be key when it comes to digital
marketing. With regards to growing your email list, it’s simple
but effective!
Use social media to encourage people to head to your website
and either create an account, qualify for a discount or sign up
for blog content. This way they’ll have to enter an email address
first.
Loyalty rewards
By offering special rewards that require people to sign up to
your business, incentivising customers to refer their friends or
family or by offering freebies on their birthday, you should soon
find your email list beginning to grow with a base of loyal
followers.
Contest
Hold online contests! For example, a giveaway, either on your
site or on social media, and ensure that people who want to
enter must sign up (ultimately providing you with their email
address).
Publications
Content is key, whether this is by guest blogging on larger
websites or by doing interviews on podcasts or even local radio
or TV. These are all opportunities for you to drive traffic back to
your website, where people will be encouraged to sign up.
The Definitive Email Marketing Guide ©2017 Aggressive Growth Marketing 9
Similarly, you could work or partner with another entrepreneur
in your field to run a joint webinar with them, and you could
also potentially share email lists.
Quaraloo
Use software like Quaraloo! You can use this survey tool to ask
questions of visitors to your site, but you can also use it to
encourage people to sign up for your email list or newsletter.
Key takeaway: There are a lot of tools available to help with
different aspects of email marketing. Some can help grow your
list, while others can help with pop-ups. There are apps and
plugins that can help collect email addresses from visitors,
whether through giveaways/contests or through landing pages
or even Facebook.
MONETISING YOUR EMAIL LISTS
How to make money from your contacts lists
Besides using email marketing as a basic marketing tool, email
lists are another important aspect which have monetization
potential.
This is particularly important for those who do not have a
product or service to promote, for example, bloggers. Whether
you’re marketing a product or not, there are a variety of ways to
monetize your email lists.
Let’s look at some:
Affiliate
If you’re trying to promote a blog rather than a product,
consider affiliate marketing. By reviewing a product of interest
to your readers in your blog and then including this in a
newsletter, you could find yourself earning commission.
Premium content
Building a solid readership for your blog and turning this into a
premium site with exclusive content that your readers pay to
receive is another way of using your email lists to bring in extra
money.
Adverts
Placing adverts on your blog which promote other websites or
products that are of interest to your readers is another easy
The Definitive Email Marketing Guide ©2017 Aggressive Growth Marketing 11
way to monetize your blog and email list. You will get paid each
time someone clicks on an advert.
Niche product
Why not consider developing quality products or services
specific to your niche? The better the quality, the more people
will be likely to pay; marketing to your niche should be a
priority!
List renting/selling
While you are likely to make some money by renting out or
selling your email subscriber list, it is not a wise idea because
you will be giving your competitors the chance to target your
audience with their own content or products.
Commission-based offers
Offering your subscribers an exclusive discount or coupon is an
easy way to gain appreciation and loyalty, and better still, you’ll
get commission for every offer that’s redeemed.
Trading/sharing lists
While it’s not wise to trade or share your list with people within
the same market as you, it can be beneficial to share with
people in a similar niche; for example, a gaming blog’s list can
be beneficial to a comic book one, and vice versa. You’ll both be
expanding your target audiences, and should both then see the
benefit.
Smart links
Keep emails and newsletter succinct and smart. Only include
links to the pages that make you the most revenue; you don’t
want to overload your email and lose potential customers.
Autoresponders
Most commonly used when vacation time comes around,
autoresponders offer much more than this. They can be set to
be sent out at any time, such as after a certain action; for
example, you could set an autoresponder to email out an offer
for an online course when someone visits a related post.
Social
Using your email to promote your social media is key, especially
if you are on sites like YouTube or Instagram that have
monetization options. Use your emails to encourage visits to
these sites.
Abandoned carts
If you have an online store, you have probably experienced
abandoned shopping carts at some point. Re-targeting those
abandoned carts via email is crucial; sending out a friendly
reminder, and perhaps providing an incentive such as a
discount is a great way to get people to come back and
complete their purchase.
Key takeaway: Email marketing takes various forms, including
social media, traditional advertising, and online advertising. It is
also a vital asset for businesses to make money. While these are
all key components to any marketing strategy, email marketing
is a huge area which holds real potential to bring in money, so
once you’ve started building up your email lists, monetizing
them is key.
The Definitive Email Marketing Guide ©2017 Aggressive Growth Marketing 13
SUBJECT LINE DOS AND DON'TS
Promoting best subject line practice
What tactics do you use to get customers to open your
emails?
The real trick to email campaigns is to get your recipients to
open your emails. This means, you need to make your emails
enticing enough that they will open them, by getting the subject
line just right.
Think about the vast amount of emails customers receive daily
from several businesses. Do you believe that they have the time
to look at these emails, much less to read them? They are busy!
All they will do is quickly scan the subject lines to find those
emails that are of interest and ignore those that are not
captivating.
If your subject line is:
too wordy,
too lengthy, or
too boring,
customers will ignore your email. Additionally, if your email
subject line is not mobile-optimised so that it can be easily
accessed on a smartphone, it will be sent straight to the trash
folder.
The best email subject lines incorporate elements such as:
1. Short and Spicy
A quick glance at your email subject line and the message should be
clear! A long subject line will get cut off in the inbox. When
writing your email subject line, keep it short, spicy, and to the
point.
People who activate emails via their mobile phones will not be
able to read your complete subject line if it is too long.
Therefore, to ensure readability, you should only use important
words that will get your message across.
Consider these two questions:
1. Is the word “newsletter” relevant in the subject line?
Did you know that, according to a recent study, email
subject lines that include the word “newsletter” have
less open rates?
2. Is an order number important in the subject line?
You can simply write, “Your order is being processed”
rather than, “order #784509245D is being processed”.
Remember that customers scan their email quickly, so
use simple and concise language to get their attention.
2. Compelling question
Is your email going to your customers’ spam folders? If yes, your
email subject lines are not compelling.
Consider writing a compelling question for your email subject
line that is relevant to your readers.
The Definitive Email Marketing Guide ©2017 Aggressive Growth Marketing 15
For instance, if you are sending an email about marketing
strategy, you can compose a question like this: “Do you know
what your customers need?” This will pique their curiosity and
make them want to know the answer.
Also, make sure that the question you asked in your subject line
is answered in the content of your email.
3. Personalised touch
People love to know that they are involved. Personalise your
subject line for each recipient. Address them by their first name;
this will make them feel important and connected with you. It
will also increase open and click through rates.
If you prefer not to use their first name, a simple “you” or
“yours” will still spark their interest, but don’t go overboard
with your personalisation!
4. Make it special
Your readers should feel special every time they receive an email
from you.
Write email subject lines that will make them feel as though
they are part of your business and you value their input.
Use phrases like:
• “for you only”
• “exclusively yours”
A 2015 study revealed that personalised email
subject lines that include names boosted open
rates by 29.3% across all industries.
• “our gift to you”
• “private invite”
These phrases will work wonders in getting higher open rates.
You can also share something special with them. This will
increase their loyalty and email conversion.
5. Tell
In your email subject line, tell your recipients what they will find
inside your email.
For example, if they have downloaded an eBook from you and
you are delivering it, let them know in your subject line instead
of writing a simple “thank you”.
Make sure that you deliver what your email subject line
promises, otherwise your recipients will not trust your future
subject lines.
6. Create excitement
Your email subject line should initiate action; start them with action
verbs.
Action verbs will instill a sense of urgency and excitement and
will make your email subject line enticing and clickable.
Key takeaway: You can have the best email campaign, but if
your subject lines are not up to scratch, then nobody will know.
Subject lines that are concise, clear, and create a sense of
excitement are most likely to see the best results.
The Definitive Email Marketing Guide ©2017 Aggressive Growth Marketing 17
IN SUMMARY
Getting your email marketing campaigns right is essential, and
has the potential to be extremely rewarding. Whether you're
promoting a product, selling a service, or writing a blog, this
guide should help you with every step when it comes to getting
started.
Here are the key points to remember:
• Avoid using 'noreply@' email addresses.
• Ensure links within your email link to your promotion and
not just your homepage.
• Use sign-up forms on your website to collect new email
addresses.
• Reward loyalty, and use promotions and discounts to
entice new subscribers.
• Consider placing ads on your blog or site to help bring in
commission.
• Always make sure your subject lines are short, sweet, and
to the point.
• Where possible, personalise your subject lines and make
your recipients feel special.
We Innovate. You Escalate.
Forward thinking marketing that will grow your business in 7 days
We are called Aggressive Growth Marketing for a reason. Our team
offers services that are designed to stimulate clear, measurable results
within days.
Kelly Bolton
Founder and Director www.aggressivegrowthmarketing.com | +44 020 7692 8960