If you know us at CANDESCENT then you know we’re obsessed with email marketing. We’ve done loads of posts across our social media platforms about how important it is for growing your small business, but we’ve never really delved deep into why email marketing is important to get more sales or how to make money with email marketing. So that’s what we want to share now. If you haven’t got an email marketing strategy yet, it’s time to get started!
We’ll Be Discussing:
- What Email Marketing Is
- How To Start Email Marketing
- How To Monetize Your Email Marketing Strategy
TOP 5 WAYS TO MONETIZE YOUR EMAIL MARKETING STRATEGY
- Sell a Product or Service
- Sell Other People’s Products or Services
- Upsell Premium Products
- Implement an Abandoned Cart Workflow
- Automate Your Email Marketing Strategy
WHAT IS EMAIL MARKETING
In case you’ve missed everything we’ve posted about email marketing, then you might need some brushing up on the subject. Essentially, it’s sending out emails to your subscribers about anything and everything: to promote a new product, deliver a free guide, send out your weekly newsletter, confirm their purchase etc. All of these emails are to build a relationship with your audience, nurturing them to get them more excited about what you have to offer, resulting in sales.
Nurturing your email subscribers is what convinces them to make a purchase and that’s why it’s so important to build your email marketing list. Get as many email addresses as you can so that you can send out your different email marketing campaigns to let your subscribers know what you’re about and why they should give you their money. This is another form of digital marketing which is arguably more effective than social media marketing as statistics show that 72 % of people prefer to receive promotional content through email compared to 17% who prefer social media.
So, how can we start this magical email marketing journey? Let’s find out.
HOW TO GET STARTED
There are a few key steps when it comes to getting started on your first email marketing strategy. I know you might be thinking: ‘but it’s just sending out a bunch of emails, how hard can it be?’
But it’s important to do it right so that you can continue to grow your email list. Having relevant content, captivating subject lines, a clear and neat structure, are all things you need to be aware of and thinking about when it comes to having an effective email marketing strategy.
CHOOSE YOUR SOFTWARE
There are loads of email marketing tools out there so you have a broad selection of software to choose from, just make sure it’s the right fit for you. Here at CANDESCENT, we use ActiveCampaign which is our ultimate fave! It’s easy to use with loads of email templates to pick from so you never have the struggle of staring at a blank page and they have a Free Trial! You can set up everything easily, from separating your subscribers into different groups, creating multiple workflows and so much more! All of this will help the ease of your email marketing journey and you can also track your analytics so you know exactly what is working and what you need to improve on.
USE LEAD MAGNETS
Next up is to capture lots of email addresses so you can add them to your address book and get started on turning subscribers into customers. To do this you need a lead magnet, which is something of value to a customer that can be exchanged for their email address. This can be a template, a checklist or a free guide. Speaking of free guides, we’ve got one exactly for coming up with lead magnets to help grow your email list so feel free to check it out here. All we need is your email address 😉
The idea of a lead magnet is to showcase what type of content, product or service your business provides as well as to capture as many email addresses as possible. Not only are you gaining more subscribers, but you’re also presenting what you’re trying to sell and if people like this then they’re more likely to stick around after they receive their freebie!
CREATE WORKFLOWS
Once your software of choice is up and running and you’ve created and sent out your lead magnet, you can sit back and relax (for a little bit) and wait for all the new shiny email addresses to roll in. This is when you can start to split up your subscribers into different groups depending on their age, gender, demographic and even their likes and interests. Workflows are sets of emails that follow a certain journey and there are many different types of them.
For example, the welcome email series will say hello and thank you to your new subscriber, deliver the lead magnet (if that’s how they joined), then a few more emails can be sent out after this to try and get the subscriber to purchase something. If a subscriber signed up for the newsletter and not the lead magnet, then the email series will look a little different and will cater more specifically to them (highlighting previous blog posts etc.) before trying to sell something.
Having multiple workflows to send through to your different subscriber groups is very important as it helps to build the relationship and nurture the subscriber. They would likely unsubscribe if the content of the emails didn’t match their interests so instead of a one-size-fits-all approach, it’s safer to split the workflows up so that you can get to know your audience more as well as keeping them reading your emails!
If you want some more information about the different types of workflows you could set up in your email marketing strategy, then make sure to have a read of our article here. It will break it all down for you in more detail so that you can get your own workflows up and running and keep your subscribers reading!
HOW TO MONETIZE YOUR EMAIL MARKETING STRATEGY
So, we’ve got our email marketing strategy up and running and email addresses are flying in thanks to our lead magnet, so the next step is looking at how we can make the number of subscribers correlate to the number of sales.
SELL A PRODUCT OR SERVICE
This may seem pretty obvious but the idea is to make your subscribers aware of what it is your business is selling. You could have an amazing open rate but if you aren’t letting people know what is still in stock, or that there will be free shipping for orders over $50, then the high open rate and number of subscribers don’t mean much. The idea is to send emails to, yes, nurture your audience and get them to fall in love with the brand, but also to tell them (nicely) to buy what you’re selling. You can do this by implementing email campaigns, carefully curated for a specific deal, promo or even a new product/ service launch. This will help turn your open rates into conversion rates.
SELL OR PROMOTE OTHER PEOPLE’S PRODUCTS OR SERVICES
This is an easy way to get some more money from your email marketing but only once you have a decent amount of subscribers, and if what you’re promoting is worth it. It’s a great idea to work with other businesses within your industry, or anything that your audience may need and see if you can be a part of any affiliate marketing programs. This means that if you promote their business or product and a subscriber makes a purchase using your code or link, then you can get a commission on the sale. This can be easy as all you have to do is talk about the product/ service in your emails and if your subscribers decide to take your advice then it’s extra money in your pocket!
It’s very important that if you do have any affiliate products/ services you want to promote, they are legitimate and worth your audience’s money. If they spend their money and are disappointed then they most likely won’t take any more advice from you and could perhaps even unsubscribe.
UPSELL PREMIUM PRODUCTS
It’s a great idea to upsell any premium or exclusive products you have launched in the near future or are soon-to-be out of stock. This is great as well if you’re ever struggling to come up with email content as you can send out quick ones reminding subscribers that if they want a certain product, they might as well splurge a bit more to get the better version.
You can also upsell any product or service in your welcome email once someone has requested your lead magnet. When you deliver the freebie you can throw in a little something-something to let them know that you’ve got a product/ service, along the lines of the lead magnet, but more in-depth and better and therefore, worth the money it costs!
IMPLEMENT AN ABANDONED CART WORKFLOW
As discussed earlier, workflows are important, but having an abandoned cart workflow can help customers follow through with their purchases. According to MooSend, 45% of cart abandonment emails are opened, 21% are clicked on and 10.7% completed their purchase. This shows that although the full conversion rate is only 10.7%, the abandoned cart emails can work and it’s worth setting it up so that your software can automatically send out these emails so you don’t have to worry and you still have a chance of getting more sales!
AUTOMATE YOUR EMAIL MARKETING
We’ve touched on the idea that you can use your email marketing software to create and curate your email marketing campaigns and split up your subscribers into different groups to send a variety of workflows. But, one of the best parts of having the software is that it is automated!
Once you’ve set things up how you want them, you don’t have to worry too much about doing anything else. You can set what time you want your emails to reach your subscribers’ inbox, how many days in between each email in a certain workflow and it will all be sent out so you don’t have to worry at all!
Did you know that revenue growth (85%) and sales productivity (69%) are the top reasons why organizations must implement lead nurturing?! But, can you imagine doing all that work by yourself, sending out countless emails to all of your subscribers!? Well, you don’t have to!! Once you automate your email marketing you’ll never go back! If you want to know what else you can automate in your business, as well as more of the benefits, then have a read of our article here.
So there you have it! Our take on how to get started with your email marketing strategy and a little insight into different ways you can earn money from your email marketing. Hopefully, all this information has given you the push you need to get started because we at CANDESCENT promise that it will change your life, as honestly, email marketing works and you’ll be making money from it in no time!
If you want more information about coming up with ideas and creating a lead magnet that you can use for your business then download our free guide here!
We’ve got so much information about several different topics available on our socials and our blog so don’t be shy to pay us a visit to see what else you can find out about to help your creative business thrive!
Photo Credits: © Giorgio Trovato