Why Is Marketing Automation The Most Effective Digital Marketing Technique?

Did you know email marketing is 40x more effective than Facebook marketing, and you get 6x more engagement that with Twitter?

Working out where to focus your digital marketing can feel like searching for a needle in a haystack and yet since starting using email for marketing 10 years ago, I’ve sent over 1 million emails, using MailChimp, Active Campaign and now InfusionSoft, with great results.

As this chart from Smart Insights shows, email marketing is still the most effective way for a small business to reach new customers.

I want to share with you why email marketing is so effective, and how you can make it work for you.

The main reason it works is that it builds relationships with your customers. You can reach a large number of people, who can then reply directly to the emails you send, and get a personal answer.

People love knowing that there’s a real person behind the marketing.

When running a campaign for a specific event, for example, I send three emails to my database: 7 days before, 3 days before, and on the day.

Once they’ve signed up, they get a series of autoresponders based on their actions, and this can be as few as 3 or as many as 9.

Five ways to create a great email marketing campaign

1. Check out the competition

Sign up for your competitors’ marketing list, and watch how they do it. Then (without copying!) use it to inspire your own campaigns.

2. Use a stand out headline

Make sure your headline tells your readers why they should open your email, and what’s inside. Then make sure your content delivers on the promise.

3. Get personal

To build relationships, share your experiences, be direct (using ‘I’ and ‘you’), and keep your style laid back, brief and exciting.

You could even try using voice to text to make your writing sound more conversational (don’t forget to check and edit!).

4. Maximise calls to action

Include your CTA in more than one link in the email – don’t leave it until the end. And make sure it links to a web page directly relevant to the CTA.

And don’t forget GDPR. From 25^thMay 2018 you MUST make sure you collect freely given, specific and informed consent from customers on your email list.

So if you haven’t already, make sure that you are compliant with:

• opt-in permission rules
• proof of consent storage
• ensuring customers can ask for their personal information to be removed

Make sure your email provider is GDPR compliant, too. Click here if you’d like a copy of my email marketing GDPR checklist.

The great thing is, that having all your customers opt-in means that you know they want to hear from you, so once you’re all-set, you can get marketing!

IMAGE CREDIT: Smart Insights