In today’s society we spend a lot of time checking things. We do time checks and shoulder checks. We check the mirror, the weather, and the ETA of our Uber driver. But statistics show that all these checks pale in comparison to the amount of time we spend checking our email.
According to a survey conducted by Adobe Systems Inc., professionals spend an average of 6.3 hours a day in their inboxes. That’s a full-time job in Sweden!
So before we dive into the strategy behind converting subscribers into paying customers, let’s agree on one thing: email is not dead.
Beg to differ? Check out our case study on The Skimm whose founders Danielle and Carly used email marketing to build an über successful business.
Let’s look at the basics of email marketing, including what it can do for your startup, how to gain subscribers, and how to convert those subscribers into paying customers.
First things first. What do we mean by “email marketing?”
To clarify, we’re talking about planned, regular email correspondence with a list of subscribers that supports your defined business objectives. Think weekly newsletters, promotional offers and emails triggered by users’ actions, to name a few.
So what are the benefits?
- Email marketing drives sale:
When you consistently deliver value to your subscribers (and aren’t aiming to make a sale with every campaign you send) you begin to build trust. Then, when you have something to offer, you know they’ll be paying attention. According to research from our friends at Marketing Cloud (formerly Exacttarget,) 66% of consumers have made a purchase online as a result of an email marketing message.
- Engagement builds community:
By providing your subscribers with a regular touch point and ongoing invitations to engage with you — through social share buttons, opportunities to comment on articles or provide feedback — email marketing is a great tool for encouraging engagement and building a sense of community.
- Conversations strengthen your brand voice:
Every time you send an email campaign, think of it as starting a conversation with each member of your community. If what you’re saying is consistent and on-brand, you’re reminding them what you offer, what you stand for, and how you fit into their lives.
How To Acquire Email Leads
While all these benefits are great, they don’t mean much if you don’t have a community to engage and convert. Here are a few ways you can increase the number of qualified leads who subscribe to your list.
Offer Something In Exchange
In order for an “opt-in gift” or “lead-magnet” to successfully increase signups, it needs to meet a few criteria. It should be free, valuable, and relevant. Beyond that, the possibilities are endless. By ensuring the incentive you are offering is directly related to your product or service, the emails you will attract will be attached not just to leads, but to qualified leads. And that, makes the rest of your email marketing job a whole lot easier.
Have A Signup Form Visible On Each Page Of Your Website
Make it easy for potential customers to sign up for your email list by using a free tool like HelloBar to create a variety of signup forms and prompts throughout your website. For even more options and customizations, we like LeadPages.
Want more where these came from? Click here to download How to Convert Emails Into Paying Customers, including more acquisition tactics (for instance, don’t fear the pop-up!) and recommendations on our favourite tools to help you execute on them.
How To Convert Email Leads Into Paying Customers
Once you have begun establishing a list, you’ll want to make the most of it. To do this, we recommend focusing on CRO — conversion rate optimization — to maximize the percentage of leads you convert. Here are a few tactics to help you do just that.
Segment Your Data
We’ve already discussed the importance of keeping your opt-in incentives suuuuper relevant to your audience in order to ensure you’re attracting qualified leads. Taking that concept one step further is the tactic of segmenting your list into, well, segments. Subscribers can be segmented based on where you’re collecting a lead from (a particular webinar, event, or blog post, for example), when you collected it (if your business is seasonal, for example), or many other criteria.
In a continuously updated analysis by MailChimp of its global users, stats across all segmented campaigns come up with a 14.64% higher open rate than non-segmented campaigns, and a 59.99% higher click rate than non-segmented campaigns. And of course getting subscribers to open your email is the first step towards conversion.
Put AutoResponders To Work
Perhaps the most underrated (or at least under-used) feature of email marketing software is the automation feature. Allowing you to automatically send campaigns at predetermined times (in other words “drip” emails) to subscribers when they sign up or perform an action, drip campaigns are a great way to encourage leads through the sales cycle, providing them with perfectly timed information and prompts along the way.
Taking this tactic one step further, consider taking a page out of Unbounce’s book by turning your opt-in freebie into a drip campaign. This will keep your subscribers engaged (and eagerly awaiting more!) over a longer period of time, rather than delivering all the value at once.
To recap, we’ve compiled three “Golden Rules of Monetization.”
- Focus on Providing Value (not selling!)
It may seem a bit ironic, but 80-90% of the time, your emails should be centered around teaching, sharing, and providing knowledge or support that you know your community can use. It’s through that editorial and educational content that you’ll gain the trust of your readers and establish your credibility — making it all the more likely that they’ll click Purchase when the opportunity arises.
- All Subscribers are not equal
Segment, segment, segment. If you’re a startup who sells more than one product or offers more than one service, it’s likely your subscribers are going to care only about a portion of what you do. Target applicable messages by setting your lists up by segment, then cater to those lists with different strategies for each.
- Get Personal
Simple fact: Consumers buy from people they like. General updates that include behind-the-scenes glimpses, personal messages, and relatable stories will connect you with your customers. As MarketingLand shares, personalized email campaigns were “shown to lift transaction rates and revenue per email six times higher than non-personalized emails.” Pull back the curtains and get personal.
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Want more where these come from? Learn about the other 7 Golden Rules of Monetization, along with more tactics on acquiring and converting email subscribers, download our ebook How to Convert Emails Into Paying Customers.
The post How To Win At Email Marketing appeared first on Onboardly.
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