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 have to follow up with good customer relations via email. This helps your customers feel special and comfortable enough to give you their hard-earned money.
Advantages of Email Marketing
Personalization
This is the most interesting and productive aspect of good email marketing. It gives you the ability to personalize your sales pitch (sales copy) because as you may have noticed on some of the interesting emails that don’t end up in your spam folder, they begin with your name.
Automatically you feel comfortable reading on because you believe it was crafted ‘’just for you’’ or ‘’at least they cared enough to address me properly.’’ With personalization comes partial acceptance until maybe your pitch doesn’t meet standards – sad but true.
Cheaper to Execute
Unlike its trending colleague, social media marketing, email marketing is quite cheaper to execute because it is mostly an organic activity (no platform boost with ads). However, you may have to purchase or rent an email marketing tool such as Mailchimp and it requires some effort to build your email list.
Long-term Marketing Funnel
Do you remember the list of emails in your high school yearbook? Yeah, your old schoolmates. That yearbook was used to collate all of those emails and is now in your hands. Since people hardly do away with emails, that your yearbook is an example of a long-term asset.
The same goes for the emails you acquire along the way in your business journey. These emails become a major part of your long-term marketing funnel and they continue to generate revenue for as long as possible.
Constraints of Email Marketing
Internet Dependent
Yes, the internet is good but this time it falls into an unfavorable category. You may be wondering why this is. To help you with a clearer view, imagine a situation where your company’s server unexpectedly shuts down or your local internet service provider decides to carry out uninformed maintenance. At this point, you start to wish that you could continue your communication with clients through SMS.
Since email requires internet connectivity to perform optimally, you may be held hostage by this dependency and in a worst-case scenario, generate a bad brand image.
You can overcome this by working with reliable connectivity service-providing firms but this may not satisfy so, you could invest reasonably in more than one service provider as a form of backup. As it is said, ‘one should never put all their eggs in a basket.’
How to Start an Email Marketing Business In 2021
Research
No matter what you may have heard from your friends and neighbours about any business venture, you ought to carry out your findings of such business before diving in because most times what is said doesn’t match the reality of things.
With this in mind, you will read through this article again so that you pick every piece of information, especially those you may have skipped in a hurry to get to the end because here you have been presented with everything you need to know about email marketing in 2021.
Immediately you are satisfied with your research, you can then proceed to select your niche.
Pick A Niche
There are several responsibilities involved in email marketing and these responsibilities are opportunities that you can explore individually and operate as a standalone business for profit-making.
An email marketing campaign involves the assembly of an email list, sending out good sales copy to prospects and customers alike, and lead generation. These three areas are niches that you can pick from and focus on to operate profitably in the email marketing business of 2021.
Next, you write your business plan to guide you.
Business Plan
This one needs no introduction because there is a 99.9% chance that you have heard about ‘business plan’ once in your life even though you may not understand what it means. It is as important as every other listed process here so if you want to succeed in this business, don’t neglect it.
Your business plan should answer vital questions like; how will I operate? What are the cost implications attached to this business? I have a marketing plan? What are my future projections and backup plans? Etc.
A business plan will serve your business in many ways and one of such is when you go seeking funding from investors or even a bank loan as it will present all the necessary information about your business. It will also serve as your reference for business growth.
Purchase An Email Marketing Software
You may not like this because it involves some financial commitment but it is what it is. If you want to succeed in this business, at this time, you will have to purchase email marketing software that can help you do your job.
The emphasis on purchasing marketing software is not mistaken because you are not likely to find good software for free. However, there may be options for free trials with some of the good ones.
Good email marketing software should be able to create an email list, track and report email status like delivered, read, or not. They should also have the capability of developing content and send bulk emails. Some good ones include Mailchimp and Sendinblue.
Business Marketing
Your email marketing business is a real business and it needs marketing to flourish. You can start with social media to attract your preferred audience to your website or page from where you can then get them to subscribe to your emails.
What more would you like to know about email marketing?
