Tag Archives: email marketing

January 19, 2023 · 12:54 pm

10 Email Marketing Terms Small Business Owners Should Know

Chances are, you get a high volume of marketing emails in your inbox each and every day. These emails may take different forms, from promotional offers to monthly newsletters, which hints at the breadth and diversity of email marketing as a discipline.

Indeed, email marketing is much more complicated than it might first seem, providing a range of strategic options for marketers and small business owners to choose from. A good first step, particularly for those who are new to email marketing, is to become more familiar with some of the basic terminology.

Email Marketing: 10 Terms Every Business Owner Needs to Know

Here are just a few of the terms and concepts we’d consider to be essential for properly understanding email marketing.

  1. A/B testing. The premise of A/B testing is pretty simple: You develop two unique versions of your marketing message (perhaps experimenting with different copywriting, different subject lines, images, and/or calls to action) and send each to a different segment of your audience. You then analyze the data from each campaign, determining which version of the email was more effective.
  2. Acceptance rate. The acceptance rate refers to the percentage of your emails that actually reach your audience’s inboxes (as opposed to getting shut down by spam filters, or bouncing back for any other reason). A high acceptance rate is obviously good, but keep in mind that it’s no guarantee of the email being opened, read, or even ending up in the user’s primary inbox.
  3. Click-through-rate. Most of the time, your emails are going to include a call to action, inviting the reader to visit your website, read a blog, or browse a product page. The click-through-rate, or CTR, refers to the number of readers who actually take this action, opening one of the links you’ve provided them. As such, it denotes a high level of engagement with your email.
  4. Conversion rate. The conversion rate is similar to the CTR, denoting the number of readers who take a desired action. This may be clicking a link, but it may also be calling your business to set up an appointment, or simply subscribing to receive further email correspondence. Proper A/B testing can be an effective way to improve your conversion rate!
  5. Hard bounce. A hard bounce means your emails cannot be delivered to the address in question, usually due to a technical issue (e.g., you got the email address wrong, or the address is no longer operational). A hard bounce can result in your emails getting flagged as spam, and it’s just generally a sign of inefficiency, so we recommend doing whatever you can to maintain an accurate and up-to-date subscriber list, pruning or correcting the addresses that result in a bounce.
  6. Landing page. Often, the best email marketing strategy is to send readers to a landing page, which is highly targeted to convert. A landing page will usually focus very narrowly on one product or service that you offer and will include several strong CTAs. Effective landing pages are essential to any email marketing strategy.
  7. Lead nurturing. The process of lead nurturing involves carefully building a long-term relationship with a potential customer, ultimately turning them into a sales lead. Email marketing is a good way to nurture leads, as you can provide enriching or educational content before transitioning into more of a “hard sell.”
  8. List segmentation. Just because you have 1,000 people on your email marketing list, it doesn’t mean you should send every message to the entire list. You may wish to break down your list into individual segments, based on interests or demographics, so that you can tailor your messaging accordingly. For example, you may have a list for leads and another list for loyal customers. At Grammar Chic, we might send some emails to content marketing clients, and others to resume writing clients.
  9. Open rate. The open rate denotes the percentage of people who actually open (and presumably read, or at least skim) your email message. An opener rate is a very good indication of your overall engagement level, and also attests to the quality of your subject line.
  10. Spam. Also known as junk mail, spam denotes unwanted emails that seldom make it into the user’s primary inbox. To avoid your emails getting labeled as spam, it’s critical to provide real value and high-quality content. Also make sure you’re judicious in how many emails you send. A/B testing and list segmentation are both important ways to avoid having your emails flagged as spam.

Go Deeper into Small Business Marketing

Looking to revamp your business’ email marketing campaign? Reach out to Grammar Chic today to learn more about our content and email marketing. Contact us at www.grammarchic.net, or 803-831-7444.

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October 24, 2019 · 2:16 pm

4 Ways to Make Your Black Friday & Cyber Monday Emails Stand Out

Is it too soon to talk about the holiday shopping season?

Not if you work in advertising, marketing, or digital commerce. After all, Black Friday and Cyber Monday— two of the biggest shopping days of the year— will be here before you know it. The time to prepare is now.

In this post, we’re going to offer some email marketing tips. You’re certainly going to want to take advantage of these prime time shopping days, sending emails to your customers and clients and stimulating some interest in current products, specials, and holiday promotions.

But here’s the thing: You’re not going to be the only one to have this great idea. All your competitors are going to be sending Black Friday/Cyber Monday emails, as well, and your customers will be deluged. The question is, how can you make your emails stand out?

We’ve got a few simple suggestions.

How to Differentiate Your Holiday Emails

Send a Teaser

First, note that you don’t have to wait until the big day to hit SEND on your marketing email.

In fact, there’s plenty of evidence to show that sending a teaser or two, a few weeks before Black Friday, can actually be really helpful.

You can send your teaser email any time now, really, letting your readers know to watch their inboxes for BIG sales and promotions.

This can increase the odds that your actual email gets opened when the time comes. And, it can give your customers and clients a reason to stay subscribed!

Emphasize Urgency

Another suggestion? Underscore the urgency of your promotions and offers. Let your readers know that they need to act now to take full advantage of your offer. Some examples of this:

  • 24-HOUR FLASH SALE!
  • One day only to save 25 percent!
  • LAST HOUR of our Cyber Monday sale!
  • Order today to ensure Christmas delivery!
  • FREE SHIPPING if you order by December 1.

Make it clear to your recipients that they can’t afford to set your email aside for later.

Extend Your Offer

Cyber Monday and Black Friday can be stressful days, even for the most seasoned shoppers. It’s not unusual for people to simply forget certain offers.

One thing you might consider is offering an extension. Send an email a day or two after Cyber Monday and tell readers you have a special surprise for them; by popular demand, you’ve decided to extend your sale or promotion for another week, etc.

Define Your Differences

Another strategy we recommend: Use your emails to outline the things that make your business different.

You’re probably not the only company to offer a particular product or service, but maybe you are the only company to offer free shipping, or moneyback-guaranteed satisfaction, or expert installation, or a 24/7 support line, or whatever else.

Make these differences clear! Give shoppers a reason to choose you over the competition.

Start Planning Your Holiday Marketing Efforts TODAY

The bottom line: Some of us are still trying to decide what we’re going to be for Halloween this year… but remember, the holiday shopping season always arrives sooner than you think. Don’t be caught off-guard. Start planning your email marketing strategy today.

Our team can help. Reach out to Grammar Chic, Inc. if you’d like to chat. Hit us up at www.grammarchic.net or 803-831-7444.

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May 24, 2018 · 12:22 pm

5 Ways to Turn Email Subscribers into Customers

There’s much you can accomplish through email marketing—driving traffic to your website, creating engagement with your blog posts, and simply building brand awareness.

But of course, the ultimate goal is to boost your sales—and with the right strategy, you can turn your email list subscribers into paying customers.

Actually, there are a number of ways to do so. Here are five strategies to consider.

Turning Subscribers into Customers

Abandoned Cart Emails

If you have any experience in ecommerce, you know all about abandoned carts. Sometimes, a customer will like a product enough to throw it into their proverbial buggy, but they end up leaving the page before they complete their transaction—for whatever reason.

With email marketing, you can gently remind these folks to go back and close out their purchase. Your message doesn’t have to be sophisticated. Something on the level of hey, remember this? can work just fine.

Discount and Sale Emails

An obvious one: If you’re running a discount or a sale to help move a particular product, make sure you let your email subscribers know about it. Sometimes, this is all the nudge people need to complete a purchase.

A twist on this strategy: Provide some discounts or coupon codes that are only available to email subscribers, helping the members of your list see the value, and feel like they are part of a special club.

Cross-Sale Emails

Email marketing can also be a good platform to cross-sell or to upsell—basically, encouraging customers who’ve just bought one product or service to consider something related, or auxiliary.

Did someone just buy an electric toothbrush from your store? Send them an email and let them know that you also sell electric toothbrush replacement heads, toothpaste, mouthwash, and other assorted dental products.

Trial Upgrade Emails

Do you offer free trials for your products? This can sometimes be a smart way to get people interested in what you have to offer.

As the trial ends, though, make sure you send an email to let the customer know it—and to encourage that customer to sign on for extended service.

Demo Follow-Up Emails

A similar idea: Say your sales team provides a client with a personal demo of a high-end product. Make sure to send a follow-up email, inviting that person to complete a purchase or to contact you with any lingering questions.

Using Email to Close Sales

When leveraged correctly, your email list can be a powerful tool for generating conversions. We’d love to show you some additional email marketing strategies; reach out to the marketing professionals at Grammar Chic, Inc. to learn more about our services in email strategy, content creation, and more.

Contact Grammar Chic at 803-831-7444 or www.grammarchic.net.

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May 9, 2018 · 3:01 pm

3 Easy Ways to Make Your Marketing Emails Highly Effective

 

Email marketing has long been the crown jewel of digital marketing; for all the advances we’ve seen in social media and targeted ad-buying, email is still the most effective way to reach out directly to consumers. It’s no surprise, then, that so many marketers still say email marketing is their top priority, their secret weapon.

But maybe you don’t see what all the fuss is about. Maybe your own email marketing efforts don’t yield those strong results. No worries: With a few simple tweaks, you can discover what makes email marketing such a gamechanger. Here are a few suggestions that are easy to implement and can make a huge difference in your email marketing ROI.

Think About Mobile

Statistics show that mobile devices have overtaken desktop computers in terms of overall Web use—and that certainly includes email. Just ask yourself: How often do you receive and read emails on your mobile device? Chances are, quite often. So, the emails you send should be optimized with mobile users in mind.

Some specific recommendations:

  • Keep it short! All your content—from the subject line to the body of the email—will appear much longer on the mobile screen, simply because the screen itself is narrower. Keep subject lines to six or seven words, if possible, and your body content to around 100.
  • Be careful with the images you use. Think about how they’ll look on mobile screens, especially when the phone is held vertically.
  • Ensure that all your CTAs are easy to tap! Big buttons are ideal.

Think About Timing

Another important email marketing consideration is when you send your messages. There are specific times that occasionally work better; the members of your target audience are more likely to read the emails they receive at certain junctures in their day. The tough part is figuring out when those prime times are.

Some tips:

  • Look at your campaign data. Experiment with some different sending times and see if you can identify a correlation between send time and open rates.
  • Also bear in mind your buyer personas. Walk yourself through a day in the life of your target consumer and think about when you would be most likely to open and read an email.

Think About Your Audience

The value of email marketing is that it allows you to send the right message to the right people—but of course, this is contingent on you segmenting your email list properly. When we talk about email segmenting, we simply mean dividing your list into different groups, allowing you to match your message to your recipients. (For example, Grammar Chic, Inc. has marketing and copywriting clients, and we have resume clients—two discreet groups with different interests, and thus, two distinct groups for email marketing messaging.)

There can be some overlap between segments, and you probably want to refine and revise your segments over time. The important thing is to ensure that the content you deliver matches the interests of your recipients, as well as their location in the sales funnel.

As you think about content creation, as well as big-picture email marketing strategy, we invite you to keep Grammar Chic in mind. Not only do our marketing professionals offer full content development services, but we can also work with you to put an email strategy in place—ensuring you get real results from your email list.

Schedule a consultation with our team today. Reach out to Grammar Chic, Inc. at www.grammarchic.net or 803-831-7444.

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March 1, 2018 · 11:17 am

Nobody’s Opening Your Marketing Emails. Here’s Why.

Email marketing is growing in its popularity and in its prevalence—but that doesn’t necessarily mean that marketers know what they’re doing. It’s as possible as ever to sink a lot of money into an email marketing campaign and get nothing out of it whatsoever.

This can happen for a few different reasons—poor tracking and lead capturing, unclear goals, or email content that doesn’t deliver any benefit to the reader. An even more fundamental and common problem is that marketing emails never get opened in the first place, either winding up in spam folders or in the trashcan.

Of course, a marketing email that’s never opened is a total waste of your ad dollars—so if you find that your open rate is criminally low, it’s good to ask yourself why that might be.

Here are some of the most common reasons.

Mysterious Subject Lines

Have you ever received an email from an unknown sender with a vague or cryptic subject line, and opened it out of pure curiosity? Probably not. Most of us only take the time to open emails when we know there’s something inside that we need to see. Your email’s subject lines should promise clear value; they should spell out what the email is about and why readers should care. A mysterious subject line is almost never a good one.

Wasting Space and Wasting Time

Do you reveal your business name in the sender line, the subject line, and then the opening sentence of each email you send? That’s redundant; it’s a waste of space; and, most critically, it’s a waste of your reader’s time. People don’t have a lot of time to read emails that don’t offer immediate value, so use your space wisely. Avoid vain repetition.

All About You

We’re constantly seeing emails with an opening sentence like this: “I wanted you to be the first to know about the new business I’m launching.” Or: “We have a new e-book on the way, and I wanted you to be the first to hear about it.” Look: Nobody really cares what you want. Your email readers want to know what’s in it for them. Marketing emails should focus on benefits, benefits, and benefits—period. Get to those benefits right away.

Names in Subject Lines

Have you ever received an email with your name in the subject line? If not, it’s because such emails have all ended up in your spam folder. Because only spammers use this tactic. Again, don’t waste space in your subject line with things your reader already knows. Get straight to the point, and to the value.

Write Emails That Get Read—and Get Results

Value-focused subject lines are an important start if you want your marketing emails to be read—and our team can help you create them. Grammar Chic, Inc. offers a full range of email marketing services, from content development to execution to tracking and reports. We’d love to talk with you about the value we can offer. Contact us today to schedule a consultation: 803-831-7444 or www.grammarchic.net.

 

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January 5, 2018 · 8:00 am

How to Write Emails That Move the Sales Needle

It’s easy to send an email—and it can cost you basically nothing. Your company can send a limitless number of marketing emails, hoping for the best—but if that’s the approach you take, you’ll find that your emails fall on deaf ears. In fact, you’ll probably find that they never get opened at all.

Just because emails are perceived as cheap and mundane doesn’t mean you should be careless in how you send them. With the right approach, marketing emails can be more than just inbox filler. They can actually move your sales needle and improve your bottom line.

How? By accomplishing a few things:

  1. First, your emails actually have to be opened and read.
  2. Your emails need to go to the right people.
  3. Your emails need to offer something of value.
  4. Finally, your emails need to earn the trust of each recipient.

Maybe that sounds like a tall order, but with the right email marketing strategy, these goals are totally attainable. Here’s how.

Get Your Subject Line Right

Remember, your marketing emails won’t accomplish anything if they don’t get read. And that largely comes down to the subject line. Your subject line sets the tone and establishes the first impression for each email you send—and a good subject line will entice the recipient to explore your message. That’s how you get your emails to be opened and read.

So what does a good subject line look like? For one thing, it’s succinct. According to one study, the best length for an email subject line is four words. Does that mean every email you send needs to have a four-word subject line? No—but you should definitely shoot for brevity.

As for the substance of your subject lines, make sure you avoid clichés. Emoji and overtly salesy language tend not to grab anyone’s attention. Instead, convey the value of your message. What does it say, or what kind of offer does it include? How will the recipient be better off for opening your message?

That’s what you should convey in your subject line—in as brief and punchy a way as you can.

Send Your Emails to the Right People

Another key to getting your emails opened and read is to make sure they go to the right people. Before you hit send, know who you’re sending to.

Accomplish this by keeping a well-curated email list. There are different ways to do this. Maybe you have lists for low-quality and high-quality leads; for returning customers and new leads. At Grammar Chic, Inc., we have distinct aspects of our business—resume writing and content marketing, for example—where the subject matter overlap is pretty minimal. Thus, we maintain separate email lists, only sending resume-related stuff to jobseekers, not to our friends who work in marketing.

Well-curated email lists are key for ensuring that, when someone receives your message, it contains something that speaks to them.

Make Your Emails Valuable

Finally, your emails must earn the trust of each recipient. To put it another way, you need to show that you respect your recipient’s time. Remember that the people who receive your emails probably receive a ton of messages over the course of the day. They have little patience for something that simply hogs space in their inbox. Rather than sending them a bunch of cursory messages day in and day out, send messages judiciously—and make sure each one really counts.

And to make a message count, you need to make sure it offers something of value. Value, of course, can come in many different forms—among them:

  • An offer for a white paper, guide, or other downloadable offer
  • A discount code or coupon
  • A first look at a new product or service, before it’s been unveiled anywhere else
  • Carefully curated, value-adding clips from your company blog

The bottom line? Don’t waste anyone’s time. Give them something that speaks to their needs and shows that you’re looking out for them—not just trying to hock your wares.

Write Emails That Improve Your Bottom Line

Good emails don’t just get read; they convert, in one way or another. As such, they can actually move your sales needle. We’d love to show you more about how that’s done. Reach out to Grammar Chic’s email marketing experts for a consultation. Call us at 803-831-7444, or visit our website at www.grammarchic.net.

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November 6, 2017 · 11:29 am

5 Tips for Email Marketing Success This Holiday Season

During the holiday season, many companies kick their email marketing efforts into overdrive, seeking to capitalize on the frenzy of end-of-the-year shopping.

This is certainly a season in which email marketing can get results—but it’s not the volume of emails you send that matters. What matters is your strategy. In this post, we’ll offer five best practices for sending holiday season emails that truly move the sales needle.

Make Things Easy for Your Customers

First and foremost, make sure that your marketing emails make the sales process easier—not harder. If your email simply functions as another cumbersome step on the consumer’s journey, it’s only going to aggravate, not entice.

Your emails should provide a clear incentive to buy one of your products or services. This means including a high-quality, appealing image, if at all possible. It means listing benefits the consumer can expect—speaking directly to their pain points and your value proposition. (Always ask: what’s in it for them?)  Include links to your products and services, rendering it as easy as possible for your readers to click through and complete their purchase.

Don’t Forget Content!

Your emails should always be selling your products, your services, and your brand—yet it is also important to educate and inform. Build trust, and show your authority.

There are different ways to do this, of course. You can send out holiday shopping guides, include videos for product demos, or repurpose blog content that you think will offer value to your readers. The important thing is to make your emails more than just sales pitches. Give away some free value even to those who don’t purchase from you right away.

Send Coupons

During the holiday season, promos, sales, and discounts are everywhere—and if you want to remain competitive, it’s important that you sweeten the deal for your customers, however you can. Coupon codes are great for ensuring your emails are read, not flat-out discarded.

Target Your Emails

It’s always important to match your emails to your audience. Segmenting your contact list and sending emails to different groups—those who have bought products before, hot leads, different demographic groups—allows you to be precise in your messaging and specific in your value proposition.

Consider Your Timing

We said before that you don’t necessarily want to barrage your audience with one email after another. As such, it’s important to get your timing right, as you’ll have limited opportunities to engage your readers. Waiting too late into the season risks that your recipients are burned out on the holidays, while emailing too early might mean your emails get discarded by buyers not yet ready to consider the shopping season.

You’ve got to thread the needle—and Grammar Chic, Inc. can help. We’re seasoned marketing professionals with ample experience writing emails as well as developing effective email strategy. We’d love to help you get your holiday email campaign on track. Contact us today at www.grammarchic.net or 803-831-7444.

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