What’s a Good CTR for Emails?

Is your email marketing campaign succeeding or failing? Everything’s relative and the same goes for your newsletters. Having some numbers to compare determines whether you’re reaching your potential.

Click-through rate (CTR) is one of the defining metrics of email marketing, and with 81% of businesses using CTR as a core marketing strategy, this is something you must focus on. Today, we’ll explore CTR, what a good number is, and how to improve it.

What is click-through rate (CTR) on email?

Your CTR measures how many people click on something within an email. It could be a hyperlink, contact form, image, or a CTA. Some emails may even have more than one thing to click.

The precise calculation is done by dividing the number of clicks within an email by the number of people you sent that email to in the first place. You can also find your Click-to-Open-Rate (CTOR) when you divide the number of opens by the number of clicks.

What is the average click-through rate for email?

The average CTR depends on your industry, with significant variations between each. According to MailerLite, the average email click rate across every email campaign was 2%, but they also found that average rates ranged from 0.77% to 4.36%.

Don’t forget that most stated figures are often linked to specific platforms or industries, potentially giving a distorted view of the average.

What’s a good email click-through rate?

Defining what’s good requires choosing your industry and comparing your numbers to your competitors and the overall industry average. According to ActiveCampaign, they consider a good CTR to fall between 1% and 5%, with anything above 3% considered to be a good return.

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Is CTR an important metric to track in email marketing?

CTR is not just important, but one of the most important metrics to track. Strong CTRs indicate that you’re sending relevant and engaging emails to your audience. Businesses with high CTR percentages are more effective at using email to drive traffic to their websites, products, and other destinations.

On the other hand, a low CTR shows that there’s something wrong with your messaging, target audience, or design. Keeping track of this metric tells you whether there’s room for improvement.

Essentially, CTR is important because it tells you whether your emails are doing their job. If people are opening your emails and clicking away, you’re not holding their attention.

Factors that impact the click-through-rate on emails

Not achieving the CTRs you expect? It could indicate any number of problems with your emails. Remember, you’ve already got someone to open your email, so you’re trying to answer why people aren’t following through on what you want them to do.

Examples of factors impacting your CTR include:

Target Audience – Are you providing content that your target audience actually wants?
Subject Line – Does the content of your email follow through on the promise made in your subject line?
Call to Action – Many businesses don’t provide a direct call to action and may only have a couple of hyperlinks. Readers will only click away if you don’t have a call to action – or it’s a weak one.
Content – Is your email content engaging enough to encourage people to keep reading and take action after they finish?
Design – Emails don’t just have to be walls of text. To make your communications stand out, you can incorporate extra design elements, including pictures, videos, fonts and colours. Is your design leading people toward taking action?

If only CTR were as simple as these five elements. Many businesses don’t go any deeper, but there’s evidence that minor elements like:

Device optimisation
Sending time
More intricate audience segmentation
Link position
and link evidence;

…can also have an enormous impact.

Ways of improving email CTR

Email marketing isn’t effective if you can’t get your audience to engage. CTR is just one of several metrics indicating that your audience is interested in what you say. Let’s run through how to get more of your mailing list to click through on your emails.

It doesn’t matter how interesting your content is if it isn’t relevant to your audience. Assuming you’ve already got a curated list, it’s time to segment them. List segmentation lets you split your audience into different categories by issues like:

Age
Gender
Location
Previous purchases
Past interactions

One-size-fits-all email won’t have the same impact as sending newsletters to specific audience segments.

Most people don’t read but scan. Think about how quickly you read an email or a webpage. It takes grabbing the audience to get them to stop and read.

Design your emails to be easily scannable, highlighting your CTA and anywhere else you want them to click. Here’s a crash course on the principles of highly scannable emails:

Put the most important information at the top.
Rely on subheadings.
Shorten your paragraphs and use lists.
Supplement with images.

Above all, don’t risk confusing your readers by adding multiple CTAs. Make each email relevant to one subject. Guide your readers toward one specific destination.

Imagery doesn’t have to feature in every email, but visual elements make a difference. It’s no secret that images and videos are more engaging than plain text.

Incorporate some high-quality imagery (not fillers) to break up the walls of text and keep your audience’s eyes where you want them.

The 2020s is the decade of personalisation. Generic experiences are out, and bespoke ones are in. According to one study, personalised content improves email CTRs by a whopping 39%. After all, people want to be names, not numbers.

The key is dynamic content. The art of dynamic content is automatically swapping images and text based on the data you already hold on the recipient. In other words, it’s a form of automated segmentation.

Thankfully, most popular email marketing platforms already have features and functionality for hyper-personalised email marketing campaigns.

It all comes down to testing. Split testing still has an essential role in allowing you to incorporate new elements and eliminate what isn’t working. No business can achieve the perfect mix every time without constant testing. Test more, and your email performance will improve over time.

The problem is that testing takes time, and the chances are you don’t know where to start. Let the experts take control rather than crawling around in the dark, hoping to find what works.

At Tao Digital Marketing, we’re specialists in helping you find and connect with your target audience. To learn more about how we’re supporting UK businesses to succeed in a highly competitive market, contact us today.

A Guide to Email Marketing for Insurance Brokers

The UK’s insurance industry is amongst the most vibrant in the world. According to the latest stats, the UK was ranked third for life and non-life premiums written globally, behind the U.S. and China.

Taking advantage of the UK’s vast insurance industry means it’s time to get smart with how you build your brand and market yourself. Email marketing is one of the most powerful marketing tactics because of its low barrier to entry and proven effectiveness.

Today, we’re going to discuss how insurance brokers can use email marketing to grow their businesses.

What is insurance email marketing?

Email marketing means sending messages from your brand to a consenting subscriber. It’s a type of direct marketing that allows you to welcome new customers, educate your subscribers, share interesting news and deliver promotions.

In all cases, the goal of email marketing is to change how you engage with your audience and drive more sales. With four billion people globally using email daily, it’s a marketing channel that makes sense to utilise.

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How can insurance brokers benefit from email marketing?

Insurance brokers are no exception to the rule. Any industry benefits from email marketing because it’s such an effective channel for getting your message directly to a consumer who’s already consented to getting messages from you.

In short, global results demonstrate that for every $1 spent, email marketing returns an average of $36. What other marketing channel provides a return like that? The answer is none.

Plus, UK consumers are highly receptive to email as a marketing channel. A report published in Mobile Marketing Magazine found that 54% of UK consumers made a purchase directly because of an email they received in 2023.

Other than the straight monetary returns, there are other advantages to incorporating email marketing into your brokerage, including:

Building brand awareness
Keeping your audience engaged
Up-selling/cross-selling opportunities
Driving web traffic
Creating personalised engagement

Creating an email marketing strategy for insurance brokers

The beauty of email marketing as a strategy is that the principles of a great strategy work across industries. It’s all about getting the basic principles in place to build your strategy, regardless of what you want to achieve from individual campaigns.

Here’s how all insurers can build the exoskeleton of a successful email marketing strategy:

Build Your List – Begin by building your list. Every insurance broker starts small, but you can start with your existing customers before expanding into lead magnets. For example, if you sell auto insurance, you might offer a free guide on saving money on your auto insurance.
Choose a Platform – The platform matters because of the features that come with it to aid your email marketing efforts. For example, many platforms come with marketing automation to help you save time.
Set a Goal – What are your goals and lines for success? For example, an insurer might set the goal of using email marketing to increase lead engagement via their Facebook page.
Learn and Test – Start creating emails to send and then test. Not every insurance brokerage is the same, and neither is their audience. Practice segmenting your list to provide more personalised communications.
Optimise and Repeat – Take the time to analyse your email metrics, such as the number of emails opened, number of clicks and number of responses. Use these numbers to tweak and optimise every future campaign.

Regardless of what you want to achieve through email marketing, it depends on building a list and using data to give your audience what they want. The ingredients of great email marketing never change.

Email marketing best practices for insurance brokers

Insurance agents face several challenges to success in email marketing. The most common include getting your emails marked as spam, educating new customers, retaining policyholders and understanding what your customers actually need.

How do insurers address these challenges? It’s all about creating value from your messages and generating consistent engagement.

Follow these best practices for creating better insurance emails:

Double Opt-In – Alongside complying with anti-spam laws, you want anyone on your list to actually want to be there. All major email marketing platforms require double opt-in as standard. Yes, you’ll lose people who can’t be bothered confirming, but a small, engaged list is better than a large, uninterested one.
List Segmentation – Break your list into chunks based on consumer behaviours and buying preferences. If you sell both life insurance and auto insurance, what’s relevant to life insurance customers won’t be relevant to auto insurance policyholders.
Engaging Subject Lines – Brainstorm engaging subject lines and A/B test them. Over time, you’ll determine what stands out in your recipients’ inboxes.
Personalise Your Emails – Through segmentation and data analysis, you can produce messages that interest your target audience. Remember, consumers expect and demand personalisation.
Real–Time Triggers – Deliver real-time marketing by setting up email triggers. Whether that’s an abandoned purchase page or visiting a particular product page, you can set emails to trigger based on behavioural metrics.
All in the Data – Data is the hub of everything, including the messages you send, who you send them to, and what you do after sending that first message. Set aside time to analyse every campaign before moving on to the next one.

Again, you’ll see that the keys to success are essentially the same as divining your overall strategy. It’s about knowing who your audience is, finding out what they want, and then giving them it.

Best email marketing software for insurance brokers

The best email marketing software is the one that works for your insurance brokerage. Whether you’re looking at cost, no-code options, AI features, or integrations, it depends on what you prioritise the most.

Here are our top three picks for insurance email marketing software:

Types of emails to send as an insurance broker

Emails an insurance broker might send differ from those another business might send because of the differences in the audience. Generally, we can split emails into nine separate categories:

Welcome Emails – Welcome emails should be sent the moment someone signs up for your list. They may even form part of an automated sequence introducing your brokerage and what it does.
Educational Emails – Educational emails focus on teaching your audience something. It could be how a specific life insurance clause works or what the government’s latest laws mean for your auto insurance policy.
Policy Updates – Policy updates are designed for customers who’ve already made a purchase. Examples of policy updates necessitating an email may include modifications to existing cover.
Reminders – Sending timely reminders about upcoming renewal dates helps your customers prevent their policies from lapsing. These are usually personalised and designed to trigger at a specific time, such as one month before policy expiration.
Claims Process Guide – These guides focus on the claims process. Guide your customers through filing an insurance claim. These emails are ideal for including interactive features.
Product Recommendations – Send out product recommendations for upselling and cross-selling. For example, you might mention that certain policies can be bundled for a lower cost.
Holiday Emails – Unlike an eCommerce business, holiday emails usually relate to seasonal greetings. It could also form a happy birthday message if you have that information about a subscriber.
Milestone Emails – Similar to holiday emails, milestone emails show that you value your customers. These could be sent in response to a successful claim or a policy anniversary.
Survey Emails – Garner feedback from your customers to show that you value what they’ve got to say. Sending out surveys also provides a valuable cache of feedback data you can incorporate into future emails.

Knowing which emails to send and when to send them is part of becoming a master email marketer. However, rather than going through a costly trial-and-error process, why not outsource it to the experts at Tao Digital Marketing? To learn more about how we set your insurance brokerage up for email marketing success, contact us today.

Email Marketing for Law Firms: Software, Tips & Best Practices

Getting your firm in front of your audience is the hardest part of gaining clients in today’s digital world. In the UK, the average marketing cost for law firms ranges from 0.5% to 5% of annual revenues, far below that of other industries.

It’s no secret that law firms often find themselves behind the curve in digital marketing, but in that lies tremendous opportunities for forward-thinking legal professionals to take advantage. One such avenue to explore is email marketing.

With 59% of marketers claiming that email is their most effective channel, harnessing its power can supercharge your bottom line. But starting an email list isn’t enough. You need to go about it the right way.

Do law firms use email marketing?

Law firms are gradually discovering the benefits of email. Although stats from UK firms are unavailable, the American Bar Association revealed that 41% of law firms were using email newsletters for marketing in 2021, up from 26% in 2020.

This is far below other industries, meaning that unlike other forms of marketing, such as PPC and social media ads, this is a blue-water zone to be exploited.

What can you expect from adopting an effective email marketing strategy? According to the Digital Marketing Association, email marketing has an average ROI of 42:1, meaning for every £1 spent, you generate £42 in business.

How can law firms benefit from email marketing?

Email marketing is yet another channel solicitors must add to their marketing mix. Unlike other channels, email marketing offers several unique benefits.

Understand that an email is a personal conversation. It’s an intimate communication technique that allows you to speak directly to prospects. This is why it’s so effective at building relationships: the message can be customised and delivered to the right people at the right time. It’s an alternative to the legacy scattergun approach.

Mastering email marketing is an opportunity to humanise yourself while demonstrating thought leadership. It’s the action that builds trust and formulates genuine relationships between you, your prospects and your existing clients.

Ultimately, this results in more brand awareness, leads and business.

Considering the low-cost barrier to entry of email marketing, this is a cost-effective marketing option requiring little investment. You can benefit from email marketing, whether you’re a large firm or a one-man operation.

Creating an email marketing strategy for your law firm

Gathering emails and blasting out corporate news is no strategy at all. People want information that’s relevant to them. For example, if you specialise in tackling unfair dismissal cases, there’s little point in sending out a newsletter on human rights.

Understand that despite the high ROI of email marketing, MailChimp research reveals average open rates for the legal industry are a relatively low 22%, with a paltry 2.81% click-through rate. So, it’s vital to avoid being disheartened.

You need a strategy that reflects your firm and the interests of the future clients you’re targeting. So, what aspects make up an optimal email marketing strategy?

Target Audience – Who are your target audience, and what do they care about? This will be specific to every law firm. Typically, you should begin with your primary practice areas when divining content for your newsletter.

Competitor Research – What are your competitors sending? One of the easiest ways to conduct competitor research is to sign up for a few of their newsletters and create a database of the subjects they’re tackling.

Goals – What is the purpose of your email list? Not every firm’s primary goal is generating direct business. Some use them to create brand awareness and generate industry authority. Defining your goals establishes the line between success and failure and the KPIs you prioritise.

Content Type – What sort of content are you planning to send? This could be anything from promotional emails and legal guides to invoices and special offers.

Frequency – The frequency of your emails is another defining factor. Setting expectations early is crucial to avoid annoying/abandoning your audience. Make it clear what your subscribers can expect from you.

Thankfully, email marketing strategies don’t require a budget because of the minimal startup cost. The primary challenge for law firms is setting aside the time to write newsletters and measure the results.

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Email marketing best practices for law firms

Email marketing requires constant learning and development to master. After all, the habits of subscribers change over time. However, certain best practices remain. Let’s discuss some top tips for law firms getting to grips with email marketing.

Set Clear Goals – Every email marketing campaign should have its own goals. Whether it’s acquiring more clients, retaining existing ones, or increasing awareness of your legal niche, you need a goal because this is what influences your measurables.
Keep Your List Pruned – Building your email list is always a priority, but so is keeping your list clean. Only 56% of email subscribers stay on a list for 12 months, meaning you may be swayed by results from emails that are no longer monitored.
Offer Value – Your emails are not a place to discuss why you are the best solicitor in the country. Instead, seek to offer value in as few words as possible. Stay away from complex legalese and leave your subscribers coming away feeling like they’ve learned something.
Monitor Your Performance – Pay close attention to your metrics for each campaign, and don’t be afraid to change if something isn’t working. A/B testing is as relevant to email marketing as any other channel.
Beware of Legal Compliance – The legal industry has more stringent policies to protect client confidentiality. This extends further than legislation like GDPR. Familiarise yourself with what you can and cannot feature to prevent potential problems.

Best email marketing software for law firms

Countless email marketing platforms exist to help you write newsletters, consolidate lists and launch campaigns. Let’s look at some of the leading options law firms use today.

Active Campaign is widespread across multiple industries because it integrates email and marketing automation. Although it’s often used for B2B clients, it’s also perfectly serviceable for B2C clients.

It allows you to tag contacts based on their behaviours, enabling you to drill down into different subscriber segments for more targeted communications.

MailChimp is one of the largest email marketing platforms in the world. It’s mainly designed for small and medium-sized businesses and offers several unique features.

For example, you can build landing pages in minutes, deliver personalised email postcards, and even send surveys to gather client feedback. However, beware that MailChimp gets expensive as your list grows, so some prefer MailerLite.

Most email marketing platforms’ fees are based on how many people you have on your list. However, Sendinblue is among the few that charge based on the number of emails sent.

Newbies to email marketing will love their drag-and-drop editor to design their emails, and their customer support team is proficient in helping with things like GDPR compliance.

If you’re ready to step into the law firm email marketing world, Tao Digital is waiting to support you in growing your firm. To get started, read our Beginner’s Guide to Digital Marketing now.

Beginner’s Guide to Email Marketing

Email marketing is great for anyone looking to expand their reach to customers and prospects alike.

It has become progressively more difficult over the years as spam filters get wise to marketing emails, but done right it can be a highly effective marketing tool.

In this guide we will discuss some of the basics to help you start moving your email marketing in the right direction and turn it into a profitable channel for your business.

Email Marketing: How and When

When you send your emails, the timing is so important. Get this wrong and you could see no interaction at all or mass unsubscribe from your hard-earned lists.

Bear in mind though, most email platforms like Active Campaign will bill you by the number of email addresses you have in your platform.

Sometimes it might be better to let some go who are never going to interact. They’re costing you money, lowering your open rates and potentially hiking up your spam rates too.

Best day or time of the week for email marketing

If you run a bar or restaurant, you’ll likely see better returns from your email on a Thursday or Friday as people get in the mood for the weekend.

A B2B company would normally find a Tuesday works great, but it’s well worth testing this as you never know. The different industry quirks can mean better open rates on other days.

Within eCommerce, the best day will always be pay day, which is normally the last Friday of the month in the UK.

How often to send emails

This always depends on the industry you are in and what the subscribers on your list are happy with.

It is so important to test these factors to make sure you aren’t losing subscribers due to not being active enough. On the flip side, being too active can annoy people with too much communication and lead to unsubscribers too.

That being said, we always recommend starting off with either monthly or fortnightly emails before starting to increase the velocity of your sends. This is purely down to making sure your subscribers don’t suddenly feel overwhelmed with the number of emails you send and head for the hills, in this instance hit the unsubscribe button or even worse, “mark as spam”.

Through trial and error you’ll be sure to find the sweet spot for the frequency of emails. You can even set up automations to create weekly/bi weekly emails. We do this within ClickUp – you can read about it here.

Best image size for email marketing

The answer to this is an SEO’s favourite saying – “It Depends”.

According to Campaign Monitor, they use an email header image of 960px wide. This is due to the vast number of email clients there are in the world to open emails along with the fact most email clients are now fully responsive. Their email builder supports images of up to 20MB in size.

Active Campaign recommends you keep your image between 400 and 650 pixels wide. This completely depends on the layout you choose, however – some may be square images, some much wider. The maximum file size they recommend is 5mb.

Again, with Klaviyo, the image specifications depend on the design you choose. Like Active Campaign, the maximum file size they recommend is 5mb, however they recommend using less than 1mb where possible to avoid slow loading time.

Mailchimp recommends an even smaller guide of 1mb for all images.

What is a Good CTR for Email Marketing?

Again, this depends on your industry. Overall, a click through rate of around 2-5% is considered to be good. Mailchimp has a great table of average open rate and click through rate by industry, you can check it out here.

Click through rate can be improved in various ways, for example:

Making buttons or call to actions (CTAs) obvious
Improving your design, making it easy to show what you want readers to do or where you want to draw their attention to
Use powerful phrases in your CTAs, for example ‘save, start, now, join, win, exclusive’.

Best Practices for Email Marketing

In order to be successful, it’s essential to follow best practices. Here are some tips:

Ensure your list is opt-in: This is one of the most important rules of email marketing. If you don’t have permission from your subscribers, you could be facing spam complaints, unsubscribes, and even legal battles. Always make sure people have the option to subscribe to your list and that they are aware of what they’re signing up for.

Send relevant content: Don’t send your subscribers information that isn’t relevant to them. If they opt-in to your email list, they want to hear from you. Send them information that will interest them and help them in their everyday lives.

Personalise your copy: Personalise your copy with the subscriber’s name or other personal details. This makes them feel like you’re talking directly to them, increasing the chances that they’ll read your emails and take action.

Keep your messages short: Most people are busy and don’t have time to read long emails. Keep your email messages short, concise and to the point so they can be easily read and understood.

Use a clear subject line: Your subscribers should be able to quickly understand what the email is about by reading the subject line. Make sure it accurately reflects the email’s content so that subscribers don’t get confused or decide not to open it.

Test different types of copy: Not all copy works for everyone. Try different types of email copy to see what works best for your subscribers. This could include videos, images, articles, or even infographics.

Use A/B testing: A/B testing is a great way to see which email copy and subject lines are most effective with your audience. Test different versions of each to see which gets the best results.

Optimise your emails for mobile devices: More than half of all emails are now opened on mobile devices, so ensure your emails are optimised for these devices. Use a responsive design or ensure your text is easily read on a small screen.

Track your results: It’s important to track the results of your email marketing campaigns so you can see what’s working and what isn’t. Use analytics tools to track things like open rates, click-through rates, and conversion rates.

Use a reputable email service provider: Using a reputable email service provider will help ensure that your emails reach their destination and that they look great no matter what device they’re viewed on.

Use images sparingly: Too many images can slow down the loading time of your email and may cause spam filters to block the email.

Ensure your links work properly: Broken links can be frustrating for customers and may cause them to unsubscribe from your list.

Test your email before sending it: It’s always a good idea to test your email on different browsers and devices before sending it out to ensure that it looks correct and functions appropriately.

Use a responsive design template: A responsive design template will automatically adjust the size of your email to fit the device it’s being viewed on, ensuring a good user experience regardless of the device someone uses.

Segment your list: Segmenting your list allows you to send targeted content to specific groups of customers, increasing the likelihood that they will open and read your emails.

Email Marketing Tick list

Subject Line Tips

Subject lines are arguably one of the most important factors in email marketing. While it may only seem like a small part of your message, they are the very first impression you have on your recipients. This is why it is so important to craft a subject line which is compelling enough to get people to click through.

Here are some tips for successful subject lines:

Learn by example. Seeing clever word plays or emojis is one of the best ways to get you thinking about how you could alter your subject line to be more compelling. Sign up to the newsletters of competitors in your industry and see what tactics they are using.

Keep it short and sweet. Email subject lines can be cut off if they’re too long, especially on mobile devices. Try to make your subject line 50 characters or less to ensure people scanning your email read the entire message.

Avoid ‘no-reply’ send names. Thanks to the amount of spam people get these days, many people will ignore or delete email with an address like ‘noreply@company.com’. It makes the email less personable and prevents people from adding the email to their address book.

Don’t make false promises. Your subject line is used to make promises to your reader about what your message will be. Make sure you are making a good commitment, and try not to get your email opened by false promises. This may bother your audience and they’ll lose trust in your subject lines.

Don’t shy away from humour. Most people love a good pun, and it’s a great way to spice up your recipients emails. Don’t go overboard, but think of small ways you can incorporate humour into your subject lines.

UK Email Marketing Law

When you send emails for marketing purposes, you must be compliant with UK email marketing laws outlined in the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations (PECR).

These rules outline specific things you must include in your marketing emails, such as disclosing your identity and providing a valid email address to all recipients.

The PECR also covers:

Use of cookies or similar tracking technologies
Any form of electronic communication made for marketing, including text messages and emails
To make sure the communication service providers are secure, including customer privacy-directory listings, location-based data and other identifiers.

Under the General Data Protection Rule (GDPR), recipients can prevent companies from accessing their personal data, which is any information related to an identifiable person.

The seven principles of the GDPR include: fairness; lawfulness and transparency; purpose limitation;data minimisation; accuracy; integrity and confidentiality; and storage limitation.

Under the GDPR, an individual’s consent is considered as a critical aspect. The consent can either be expressed or implied freely by the individual.

Here are some tips to make sure your emails align with the UK laws:

Identify your emails as an advert. This can be as simple as having a clear subject line indicating the purpose of your email, such as phrases like “discounts this week”.

Make sure you have permission from your recipients.

Include your business details such as a postal address.

Give importance to the unsubscribe requests. The opt-out process should be made as uncomplicated as possible and done within 10 business days.

Pros and Cons of Email Marketing

As with all methods of marketing, there are positives and negatives to both.

Pros:

Lead generation: Emails are an incredibly powerful form of lead generation and can lead to sales.

Segmentation: You can segment, tag or create lists for the exact kind of audiences you want depending on their interests. This is especially useful for eCommerce businesses who may offer products for a variety of different audiences, e.g. a footwear business that sells mens, womens and kids shoes. By segmenting them, you can avoid sending irrelevant emails to your main list and avoid unsubscribers.

Advertising directly to your audience: Other forms of advertising, such as social media, may not get directly in front of those who like or follow you due to the different algorithms on each platform, however with emails you are directly in their inbox.

Opting in: These people have opted in and WANT to hear from you. This is much different to other forms of advertising, such as paid socials, where you may not always be relevant to the audience.

Access to valuable analytics: There are so many analytics you can access that can give in-depth insights into your audience, such as the best times to send emails, which subject lines are working best, where your subscribers come from, how many times links are clicked in the emails and by who, how many sales have been made, etc.

Can be easy to build a list with competitions: There are a few incredibly easy ways to build your email marketing list. One way that has worked really well for our clients is via holding competitions where entrants enter their emails to enter. Through just a few social media posts for our client, Hirst Footwear, we generated over 700 email subscribers – you can read the case study here.

Cons:

Can be costly for small businesses: Startups and SMEs may find that some email marketing platforms are out of their budget until they have the financial backing and resources to see a return on investment.

Can take time to understand platforms and segmentation: If you’re a newbie to email marketing, it can take some time to get your head around using different platforms. If you get stuck and your email provider’s guides aren’t much help, some email providers can take up to a week to respond to an issue.

Can get caught in spam: If you suddenly receive a lot of spam complaints, some email providers can automatically filter you into your subscriber’s spam folders, rendering your efforts ineffective.

Design issues: Some email marketing platforms have an easier design interface than others. There can be limitations on some platforms, e.g. not being able to change the colour of buttons or images not aligning without having to edit code.

Can take a while to find a balance between sales and messaging: It’s important to find that ‘Goldilocks Spot’ of your messaging – not too many pushy sales emails and not too many blogs/advice. Striking the balance will depend on your industry and how your subscribers respond, which can be determined by your CTR.

Summary

The more hands on you get with your email marketing, the more efficient you’ll become. Although it may feel overwhelming at first, following the steps above will help your campaigns achieve success.

The more you learn what resonates with your audience, the more you can scale your marketing goals and deliver meaningful messages that will drive results.

4 Ways That Email Marketing Can Increase Your Sales Funnel

Email marketing has proved to be one of the most cost-effective ways of communicating with your audience.

For any company that wants to engage and inform their subscribers, setting a proper email marketing strategy is the best way.

More specifically, it can increase your website’s traffic, form stronger relationships, increase the recognition of your brand, and give opportunities for engagement.

One of the most important aspects of email marketing strategy is the way it affects the sales funnel of your company.

Regardless of the stage of the funnel, email marketing can help you maintain and improve your funnel.

So, the first thing you have to do is find an email marketing service that provides all the features and data you need for your company.

This is the fundamental principle, as not every platform offers exactly the same.

1. Generate Subscribers

The first thing you need to have to make your sales funnel successful is a great list of subscribers.

You should make clear why someone should subscribe, what someone has to gain. If there is nothing specific there for your subscribers, then no one will give his email address.

So, your brand awareness should focus on getting your brand identity across and your USP so consumers can differentiate you from the rest of similar brands.

Also, you should make it as simple as possible to enter their email address to decrease the number of click-throughs a person needs to be subscribed.

Share content posts on your social media accounts that lead them to a subscribing page.

Also, you can create QR codes so even if they see a product of yours, they are directed to a mobile-ready, mobile-responsive email subscribing form.

After they get subscribed, you should send a “thank you email” to welcome them.

This will make some feel valued and appreciated, while others will value it as a confirmation for their subscription.

The last thing is that you should pay attention to your email sequence, content, subject lines (which will be more analysed later), in case you see your unsubscribing rates increase.

2. Increase Recognition

Once you have created your subscribers’ list, then you should create a comprehensive, consistent channel of communication with them.

If you want to have an effective email marketing strategy, you should create some recurring email campaigns, based on the type of your company and your products.

One option is to send a weekly email with the company updates, or at least a monthly newsletter with new data, information, and offers.

These email campaigns should highlight your brand identity, colours, and personality. Your logo characteristics should be there in every email; but always consider to make it friendly, while formal.

Then, your emails will be enjoyable and fun for your subscribers, but still, you will pass all the needed information.

You should use any automation features of your email marketing service and through different tests find the best time to send an email to your subscribers.

Then, your opening rates will improve, which will bring extra traffic to your website.

3. Improve Consideration

Once you have your subscribers’ list, you build your recognition, then your subscribers should start considering your company, instead of other companies they already trust.

Consideration marketing campaigns are difficult but can be your key players.

The first crucial thing is to create exclusive limited offers and discounts for your subscribers.

This will create a feeling of urgency, value, and appreciation for your company.

Human beings love to feel that they receive unique personalised gifts and offers.

In these campaigns, you can also promote any private label products you have by including the companies that produce these items.

With that, you gain credibility by the name of the manufacturing company, which will make your subscribers consider you more.

Also, based on the actions they take on your website, you can send personalised emails to educate them about the products they are interested in.

These educational emails can be tips and tricks for how to cleverly use your products or their extra features.

Another automated email campaign you can design is based on the products your website visitors abandon in their carts.

The cart abandonment strategy is highly personalised, time-saving, cost-effective, and forces people to return to your site to complete a purchase.

To ensure that your subscribers receive these emails, you should run an email deliverability test.

This will guarantee that your emails end up in their inbox folder, not their spam folder.

4. Motivate Action

The last stage of the sales funnel process is to motivate your subscribers to take action.

You should pay attention to your email copy and content. Use active words that motivate people to take a specific action.

Make clear that you have on a specific target and centralise it in your emails. This purpose should be your central Call-To-Action in the email, which pops-up from the rest of the email.

Another important aspect is your email subject line and the preview shown.

Your email subject line should be precise, clear, and intrigue people to open their email for one reason.

Write your subject lines as you are a salesman that likes to be more friendly.

As it was stated before, you should provide them with limited offers and discounts. T

his feeling of urgency will make people take immediate action and buy your products.

Final Thoughts

Creating, designing, running an effective email marketing strategy is complicated, but it can be simplified by setting specific goals and objectives.

If you set creative, target-oriented, agile goals, based on the different stages of the sales funnel, you can see your metrics increase and improve.

A great way to make your company grow is by paying attention to every single stage and always use your data analytics to redesign your strategies.

Always use quantitative research to increase your quality, and focus on bringing extra value to your company.

These are the basic things you should know to shape an effective email marketing strategy.

Let me know what you think. Do you have a specific email marketing strategy? What would you change and what have you implemented?