Everything You Need To Know About Email Marketing In 2021
What is it about email marketing in 2021 that you need to know? ‘’I’ve been in the email marketing game for more than three years now, there’s nothing new about it so don’t tell me nonsense!’’ That was Mark’s reaction when I approached him about the concepts that plague email marketers in 2021. However, I was able to get five minutes of his time and at the end of our discussion here’s what Mark had to say; ‘’I never knew about most of these, thank you for insisting Emma.’’ Do you have three minutes? Great! Let me share the same information about email marketing in 2021 that made Mark exclaim in appreciation. What Is Email Marketing? Let’s begin with what you may know about email marketing. And as the name implies, it is a strategy that employs email as a channel of communication to sell/convince prospects, causing them to patronize your product(s) or service(s). How Old Is Email Marketing? Email marketing is older than the Gen Zs, this means that it’s way older than the new generation social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, Snapchat, etc. However, most people have failed to recognize its power, do not understand how to maximize it for business/brand growth, or have never heard of it before (very unlikely). Is Email Marketing Still Relevant In 2021? As part of the many digital tools currently available for marketing purposes, email marketing is known to be among the best marketing tools that exist to be used by business owners and companies like yours to build trust and also create brand awareness. How Does Email Marketing Work? In simple terms, it involves sending out specially crafted messages to multiple recipients at the same time, customers, and potential clients in your company’s marketing effort using email as your broadcast tool. With this, you would assume that email marketing is something pretty easy to do but it might require some specific skills to be able to successfully run an email marketing campaign. Don’t worry, you will discover the techniques required for email marketing in 2021 here. Like other endeavors, email marketing has experts whose job is to create and render gainful email campaigns for businesses and companies. These experts are the ones referred to as ‘email marketers.’ How to use email marketing in 2021 to boost sales 1. Build Your List There is no email marketing without an email list. This is why building a solid email list is paramount to your email marketing campaign success in 2021. As difficult as this may seem, if you already offer a great product or service, you can begin building your email list by asking your existing customers to sign up on your website. Because some persons require a little more motivation than others, you could add a discount on your product or service for those who subscribe to your email broadcast. Next, you plan your email marketing journey. 2. Plan Your Campaigns “If you fail to plan, you plan to fail.’’ This also applies here because a single campaign may not run forever so you will need to have a timeline and assigned milestones as well as means to reach these milestones in time. As observed in some interesting email marketing campaigns, one way to get new prospects on your email list is by incentivizing referrals. This encourages existing customers or listed emails to recommend your services and sign up to your email list for tokens such as discounts. Once this is achieved, you begin to sieve through your email funnel for the best results. 3. Sieve Success Regardless of how good your plan and sales copy may be, some emails in your campaign will not be delivered or read. This is where you begin to classify emails on your list based on observations like email response, delivery, etc. This helps you select and treat your most promising prospects and customers with the required attention while strategizing for failed prospects. Skills for Email Marketing In 2021 Context Research Before you can easily sell a product or service, you must first understand the needs of your prospective customer. Then you will have to connect their needs to your offering (sales pitch). And there is no way you can achieve this without a good understanding of your recipient’s pain points or wants. With enough information, you can then advance to creating your sales copy with your copywriting skills or by outsourcing to a copywriter. In the case where you outsource, your context research gives your contractor the best idea of what your ideal email marketing copy should be and also helps you rate the copy on completion. Copywriting This is a high-paying skill that not only influences email marketing results but cuts across the digital marketing space like a two-edged sword – a good sales copy will rack in revenue while a bad sales copy will murder your brand. Copywriting involves the creative construction and arrangement of words and sentences with a good understanding of the desired customer need or wants to promote readers’ interest in a product or service and cause a sales conversion or new customer attraction as the case may be. Email marketing copies are a combination of easy-to-understand and relatable storytelling that drives your prospects to perform the desired action that increases revenue and generates profit for your business. However, customers need to be kept happy and this can also be done through email marketing when good communication and customer relation skills are employed. Communication/Customer Relations After getting their attention, you need to keep it. This is where your customer relations and communication skills come to play. When prospects become customers, they may have doubts but when good customer relations comes in, you are more likely to move them from just customers to fans. This should be the end product of your email marketing campaign in 2021 if you want to build a sustainable business. You don’t have to be nice only on your sales pitch, you