First, some interesting statistics
If you're planning to do email marketing, you may already know the following two statistics. If you don't, I bet you'll be more motivated to launch your first email marketing campaign as soon as possible! The statistics are:
- A report by the DMA (Data & Marketing Association, UK) in 2015 shows that the ROI on an email marketing campaign is 38 euros. This means that every euro invested generated, on average, a return of 38 euros on the campaign.
- The second statistic, from the same body, shows that 9 out of 10 companies believe that email marketing is an important channel for achieving their business objectives. You can download the full report of this study here.
Of course, when we see the first statistic, we can't convert the price from euros to reais and conclude that the ROI will be in the three-digit range. But what we can infer is that the average return was 1 to 38. Pretty impressive, isn't it?
Disclaimer: 38 euros was the average ROI obtained by the campaigns. Just as we have returns of between 1 and 10 euros at the leftmost point of the graph, we also have returns of over 70 euros at the rightmost point. (In 2014, 1 in 5 marketers achieved a return of more than 70 euros)
As for the second statistic, I don't think much more needs to be said. It doesn't matter whether you're involved in a B2B business or in e-commerce, email marketing should be considered as a revenue-generating strategy.
A proven method for email marketing
Imagine the following situation: you really want to play soccer in an amateur league, but the team needs two people. Your friend, who's good at football, doesn't want to take part because he knows that to play in this kind of championship you need to have a boot that costs 300 reais.
What do you, as a marketerdecide to do? You bet your friend that, by writing a few emails, you can raise the amount needed to buy the boot. Simple, isn't it? And after 60 minutes, you win the bet.
It sounds absurd, but this is the Brazilian adaptation of the story by Ryan Deiss, author of the book Invisible Machine Selling. However, swap soccer boots for golf clubs and soccer championships for golf matches every Friday.
This is the situation of a person with resources very similar to those we all have today: internet, computer, email list and intelligence.
But it's precisely the method used that makes all the difference. Email marketing based on "whenever you feel like it" contact attempts is useless and will convert almost no one. Believe me, it's a very common scenario and one that wastes a lot of time.
The method used by Ryan Deiss is based on five phaseswith five distinct objectives. He has trained entrepreneurs and consulted in various industries using the Invisible Selling Machine.
Invisible Selling Machine method
Before we delve into each of the five phases, we'll give you a general overview of their names and objectives. They are
- Indoctrination: Introducing new leads to you and your brand, turning "strangers" into acquaintances.
- Engagement: Talking to your leads about what interests them and encouraging them to buy a product or service relevant to their situation.
- Ascent: Wishing your customers a warm welcome and encouraging them to improve their experience by buying something again.
- Segmentation: Find out what they want to hear more about and what they might want to buy next.
- Re-engagement: Bring them back when they have lost touch or if the relationship has cooled.
Each of these 5 phases of the winning email marketing method is presented in more detail below.
Indoctrination
Indoctrination is the first phase of the method. A prospect enters this phase when he submits his e-mail (becoming a lead). For example, by downloading free material offered by you or any other action that requires an opt-in.
Remembering that we all receive a lot of emails and this scenario should be similar for your lead, what we need to ensure is that the lead really does have a different vision of your company. Indoctrination is the phase used to :
- Introduce yourself and your company.
- Establish what expectations they can expect from you/your company.
- Recall the benefits of being listed as a lead.
- Try to get micro-commitments.
- Establish a curiosity loop (so that the lead looks forward to receiving the next e-mail).
It's pretty intuitive what to do in the first two topics: introduce yourself in a direct and positive way, and make it clear what they're going to get.
As for the benefit, this refers to any advantage that leads can receive. For example, promotions for list members only.
Micro-commitments, on the other hand, are small actions that must be fulfilled by the lead, such as, authorizing their email as safe so that it never lands in the spam box.
And finally, the curiosity loop, which is nothing more than a promise you make that will be fulfilled in the next email you send. For example, "I'm going to send you our newest e-book on [useful subject]".
Engagement
At the end of the indoctrination phase, after sending a few emails to the leads, we move on to the engagement phase. Since at the end of the engagement phase there is already a real intention to buy on the part of the lead, it is necessary to change the discourse before a salesperson attempts the sales contact.
And this is done with what we call a Lead Magnet and it characterizes the entry to phase 2 of your email marketing strategy.
Lead Magnet is basically a type of value (usually content) offered to the lead that solves a specific problem for a specific industry in exchange for a new opt in.
How specific this material should be will be determined by the segmentation phase. That's why understanding the pains of your audience and the industry you're in makes all the difference.
For example, consider the two focuses that a salesperson can use to better position themselves and close the sale:
- Focus 1: On increasing lead generation.
- Focus 2: On shortening the sales cycle.
Now imagine that, during your email marketing campaign, a lead downloaded a material called "4 ways to increase your lead generation even if your marketing and sales team has less than 3 members". It's easy to see that, when selling to this lead, focusing the sale on topic 1 will be more effective and increase the chance of the sale happening, right?
Ascent
The third phase is based on the following premise: once you've made your first sale, the second and so on become easier. I think it's easier to illustrate the types of ascension:
- Immediate upsell: This is offering the customer a new version of your product or service, which solves the same pain as the previous version, but with a higher price and added value.
- Cross sell: It is offering the customer, products or services that are additional and complementary to yours.
- Premium subscription: After offering a free version of the product, try to upgrade to the premium version of the product (the one with more features).
- Kit Packs: Offering the purchase of an exclusive kit to the customer, preferably one that cannot be bought directly through the site or that is in a pre-sale, so that the reader feels part of an exclusive group.
Segmentation
As we know, email marketing is a part of marketing. But the implication of this means that some kind of segmentation is necessary. In marketing, we would do market segmentation and in email marketing we do mailing list segmentation.
The big question is: How do you determine what to send to your leads during your email marketing strategy?
The truth is that if you keep sending emails that don't make your lead engage (either by opening or replying to the email or by making micro-commitments), your lead will end up forgetting about you or leaving your list.
The aim is to segment leads according to engagement. And within engagement we have sub-categories. For example, if you sent a Lead Magnet about the sales cycle, but your lead didn't show any interest, it's likely that they don't fit into this sub-list (for this case "Sales Cycle", for example).
The secret to correctly segmenting your email marketing campaign is to know what your customer's most common pains are, create Lead Magnets to address them and really test which category your lead is in. Divide and conquer
New Engagement
This is the last phase of the email marketing method. It focuses on leads who have "cooled off" by stopping interacting during some part of your email marketing strategy. The first thing to do is to separate them from the engaged leads.
Once they have lost engagement, a new series of activities should be proposed to try to regain contact.
For example, an interesting activity for segmenting your contact list is to send all the "disengaged" people a summary of what has happened in recent months and evaluate what they have clicked on in order to segment them again. There you have it, a first segmentation.
Use more interactive content at this point, such as survey forms to understand what happened to them or excel spreadsheets that, through automated operations, make a previously manual and tiring operation easier.
Some platforms to test
Here are some of the platforms commonly used in the market for email marketing methods for companies.
1. MailChimp
MailChimp is a popular piece of software used by millions of companies that send emails on a daily basis.
It's more than just an email marketing service - MailChimp prides itself on being your "advisor" on the subject. This means you'll get insights based on the data from your campaigns and receive personalized advice for your next actions.
You can use the free plan with basic features with their brand attached to your emails. In this version, you can list up to 2,000 subscribers and send 12,000 emails per month to your subscribers . You will also receive useful tutorials on various topics to improve your campaign strategies.
In addition to email campaigns, you can also create marketing strategies to beat your targets. This includes landing pages, pop-up pop-up and even postcards. Another interesting feature is that you can set up Remarketing tags from Google Ads and Facebook Ads.
What's more, you can connect your online store to MailChimp. With this, you'll have automation features to help increase sales, you'll keep your contacts engaged by automatically sharing your latest products and you can even automatically remind those customers who have abandoned their cart.
Optimize your marketing campaigns using your audience and customer data. However, with the free plan, you only get basic segmentation, reports and A/B testing. A/B testing will help you decide which campaign works best of all. You can set a target and get an overview of which type of email will get the most clicks and opens.
If you need support using MailChimp, a directory of experts can help you create a successful email marketing campaign. As of 2021, the MailChimp Premium Plan starts at R$55/month.
2. Constant Contact
Constant Contact is one of the best email marketing tools marketing and has been on the market for over 20 years (this article was published in 2021). O software only offers plans: premium, email (basic) and email plus (advanced) with a 30-day free trial.
Constant Contact is easy to use, helping companies to create excellent email marketing campaigns. With it, you can easily personalize your click-and-drag emails. It also has powerful list-building features. You can segment contacts to send the most relevant emails based on their data. It will also automatically resend emails that your contacts have left unopened.
This email marketing tool also makes contact management easier. You can import contact lists from Outlook, Eventbrite, Salesforce and other services automatically. In addition, Constant Contact will keep you up to date on unsubscribes and inactive emails for you.
Last but not least, there is space available for you to integrate with more than 400 third-party services. There are also professional services that are ready to help you get used to Constant Contact.
The Constant Contact Email Plan is available for US$20/month and Email Plus for US$45/month (2021 data).
3. GetResponse
A GetResponse is an email marketing that promises 99% deliverability and offers a marketing marketing machine. This software has a 30-day free trial.
With this email tool marketingyou can send a series of emails with automation and autoresponder on a daily or weekly basis. Using what we call perfect timing, it will ensure the ideal delivery time for the emails at the contacts' local time.
You can obtain detailed information through the subscription process and assign tags to each of your contacts. This way, you'll send more personalized and relevant messages based on their preferences.
GetResponse is the first email marketing service that provides solutions for marketing for webinars. You can schedule the webinar easily, activate registrations and start collecting new contacts. For security, SSL encryption is used so that your conference is protected. If you want to save and share the webinarsimply record the session and keep it in free online storage.
By using this software, you also receive Customer Relationship Management (CRM). CRM will help you better understand the relationship and interactions between you and your customers.
With this email tool marketingyou can integrate CRM with email automation and send more targeted messages to your email series. The GetResponse premium plan starts from US$15/month (data from 2021).
4. Drip
O Dripa marketing solution for e-commerce is an e-commerce customer relationship management (ECRM) service.
Drip's ECRM is all about bringing you closer to your customers. The service is capable of handling millions of pieces of data and outperforms conventional CRM solutions.
You will have a marketing by using ECRM and you can use strategies more efficiently. By connecting all the data, this email marketing tool links millions of your customers' data to use across all your channels to run email campaigns at the right time.
As an online store owner, you've probably noticed that customers have a different journey when they just visit the site and when they make a purchase. Drip's marketing and flow automation for e-commerce will help you keep track of all these processes and send timely emails to each customer.
To increase the level of your automation, Drip has a vast library of applications for integrations. It integrates with CRM tools such as Salesforce, customer support tools such as Driftand popular e-commerce solutions such as Shopify, o WooCommerceand many more.
Drip's analytics and reports will provide you with information about the relationship between you and your customers. You can create customized reports for all campaigns, such as promotional plan sign-ups, demo requests, content downloads and much more.
The premium plans are available at US$ 15/month for basic (2021 data).
Another option for those looking for solutions in Portuguese is LeadLovers works mainly with email automation and the creation of sales funnels and online pages.
Among the features is the creation of unlimited email sequences for up to 5,000 leads in the basic plan. You can also create an entire "sales machine" by creating your own landing page and assigning email triggers throughout the page. LeadLovers also offers the option of implementing a ChatBot directly on your website.
For those who want to work with courses, LeadLovers has an exclusive members' area. They even issue certificates. They also offer integration with Pipedrive, Stripe, PayPal, Hotmart and more.
Plans can be monthly, half-yearly or yearly, starting from R$ 154/month (data from 2021).
For those who already know a bit more about programming or have an IT team on hand, Mautic may be the best option. This open source marketing platform is not well known, but it works wonders in the right hands.
It's extremely flexible, with almost endless customization possibilities: from dashboards about your customer relationships to offering an easy way to create your emails. It also comes with various integrations with social networks, Google Drive and even WordPress.
What's more, it offers a great advantage for companies thinking about scale: there's no limit on the number of contacts in your base. While most platforms focus their charges on the number of emails you send or keep in your base, with Mautic you don't have to worry about this.
Now you're probably wondering: "where's the catch?". Well, the biggest difficulty with Mautic is actually the installation. Without a team that can set up an SMTP protocol and other key configurations, this solution cannot be implemented.
To find out more, go to https://www.mautic.org/
Another very complete tool, ideal for those who are always thinking about scale. According to them: "Our marketing, sales and service software helps your company grow without compromise. Because what's good for the company should also be good for the customer."
They offer a range of solutions beyond basic email marketing. There are currently 5 hubs: Marketing Hub, Sales Hub, Service Hub, CMS Hub and Operations Hub. With them, you can take care of everything from lead generation and SEO to scheduling meetings and collecting customer feedback.
They have a free version, with limited resources, and the user can contract the first plan from U$25.00 per month. As the need for more tools grows, more robust plans can be contracted.
Other tools
As you may have realized, there are a multitude of email marketing tools available on the market, each with its own distinctive features. So choosing the best one for your business can be a complex task. To help you make this choice, we recommend that you use G2.com - a website specializing in software platforms, with reviews, comparisons and segmentations by type of company. In addition, G2 has a graph that can help a lot:
Link https://www.g2.com/categories/email-marketing
In this matrix, we have the main email marketing software available, with their placement between satisfaction (X axis) and market presence (Y axis).
Conclusion
So, in this article we talk about the importance of the right email marketing method for your company's growth. By following a few important steps, you can plan the entire journey of emails and contact with leads.
In addition, we have seen some e-mail marketing tools that are frequently used in the market and that can be very useful for this process.
Now, how about planning your company's email marketing and enabling sales to soar?
