Email Marketing

No. You should always build your email lists organically, using tools that encourage your subscribers to receive your emails. Purchasing email lists is a shortcut that is never worth it because it inherently avoids the trust dynamic involved with the exchange of an email address. If a prospect willingly joins your email list, you can roughly assume some level of interest, cater your content accordingly, and continue to foster that relationship. Brute-forcing a list of email addresses onto your subscriber list and sending them unsolicited emails is off-putting at best, and spam at worst. It will harm your reputation far more than it will help your marketing efforts.

The email marketing service you choose depends on several factors, including but not limited to your budget, your expected email frequency, sophistication of email strategy, integration with other services, segmentation strategy, SMS integration, and tracking needs. We have worked with a large number of email software programs, all with their own strengths and weaknesses, including Mailchimp, Hubspot, SharpSpring, Klaviyo, SalesForce, Constant Contact, Mailjet, Bronto, and more. Whenever possible, we work with you to use your existing software to ensure processes remain smooth and your list fidelity stays intact, while we evaluate your marketing needs to determine the best long-term solution for your company. We often find that there is a progression from an entry level email service provider, such as MailChimp, to a mid-level tool such as Klaviyo, to a full-service CRM such as Hubspot, as business needs evolve.

Many email software platforms are loaded with features that add value to the overall experience. Of course, these tend to come at a cost–you may find those costs to be worthwhile if bells and whistles like deep asset libraries and multi-channel software integrations are important to you. If you primarily sell products online, you might prefer a platform that has e-commerce integration capabilities. The core features an email platform should have, however, usually boil down to a few must-haves: a WYSIWYG (what you see if what you get) editor, mailing list management tools, A/B testing functionality, merge tags, analytics and reporting tools, and some form of CRM integration to connect your email lists. Many software vendors offer all of these features as a baseline of core services. You should be aware of any kind of frequency limitations, third-party integration capabilities, SMS integration, and tracking tools.

The first step is to make your email signup form easy and evident on your website. If your signup form is not right in front of a user, they are not going to sign up. Email sign up forms should be as apparent as possible without negatively impacting other site goals. The second step is to make it clear that there is value in being a subscriber. Make it evident to your prospects what they will get if they join your list. Whether it’s a compelling, interesting newsletter, an informative industry-related update, regular discount codes to your products, or entry in a contest, there needs to be a reason for joining–and that reason should be well-displayed. Third, add your newsletter signup as a secondary (non-required) action next to other actions (wishlist, checkout, chat box, etc.). Subscriber forms can and should also be on your social media and any relevant digital advertising you are doing.

The standard email cadence will vary across industries and will depend on several factors. Retailers often send out multiple emails per week, while other services-related industries may only send out an email once a quarter. When deciding on your email frequency, you need to first determine the value of the message you are sending out. Will your customers find value in the content you are sharing with them? From a data perspective, determining email frequency is a bit more complicated, but will give you better direction then “trusting your gut.” When evaluating your email cadence, you should pair your short-term email performance (transactions, leads, revenue, etc.) with long-term user behavior (unsubscribe rates, open rates, spam rates, etc.) Increasing email frequency can often lead to a bump in conversion, but can also have a negative impact on your list size. Generally speaking, successful email marketing strategies involve sending multiple per emails monthly, and sometimes as much as multiple emails per week. If you are just getting started and don’t have much data, but have valuable content to share, start with two to three emails per month and measure your performance.

We consider three primary metrics when we evaluate email performance: Open rate, clickthrough rate, and unsubscribes. Open rate is an indicator of how well you are capturing your subscribers’ attention, so often this is a reflection of the quality of your subject lines, opening sentences, and how favorably your subscribers feel toward seeing your name in their inbox in general. Click-throughs are the number of times readers clicked a link in your email, if you provided one, so clickthrough rate is the number of clicks divided by the number of opens. Clickthrough rate is a good metric for evaluating how compelling your call to action is, and how obvious you are making it that there is value in clicking the link. Lastly, unsubscribes indicate that your content is valuable in general to the people receiving it.

We consider four primary metrics when we evaluate email performance: Open rate, clickthrough rate, unsubscribe rate, and conversion rate. Open rate is an indicator of how well you are capturing your subscribers’ attention, so often this is a reflection of the quality of your subject lines, opening sentences, and how favorably your subscribers feel toward seeing your name in their inbox in general. Click-throughs are the number of times readers clicked a link in your email, if you provided one, so clickthrough rate is the number of clicks divided by the number of opens. Clickthrough rate is a good metric for evaluating how compelling your call to action is, and how obviously you are conveying that there is value in clicking the link. Unsubscribe rate gives you insight into how many people on your list have decided that they no longer want your content. Conversion rates let you know how many of your email users took a meaningful action on your website after clicking through to your site. Conversion rate is highly influenced by your web design, but will also give you a better understanding of the type of content that is most correlated with users who make a purchase, fill out a lead form, subscribing to a service, and more.