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Email Marketing – 5 Things You Need to Be Successful

Alyson Scott • May 24, 2022

Email marketing is still alive and well! (And no, it’s not too late to start). Building a list of qualified leads full of people who are interested in your products or services is a great way to market your business. It allows you to connect with your ideal clients, provide value, and stay top of mind.

Email generates an average of $42 for every $1 spent (a 4,200% return on investment)!

With a few steps, you can start growing a list of subscribers and slide into potential customers' inboxes.

5 Things You Need to Be Successful

1. Create a targeted list.

You want to get into the hearts and minds of your ideal clients – the people who have the most to gain from your products and services. Think quality over quantity. You are much better to have an email list of 100 qualified leads interested in your products or services than thousands of people who have zero interest in your offerings.

How do you grow your list? Be patient and consistent, and over time you’ll see your numbers rise.

Create an opt-in offer to give people a reason to sign up (consider promoting it on social media to get it in front of more people).
Add an exit pop up to your website asking visitors to subscribe
Put a subscribe button on your blog posts
Add your opt-in offer to your social media profiles.

2. Provide consistent value.

Look at your email list as a small community. It’s about providing value and showing what you have to offer. How can you help them? What can you do to provide value – can you share knowledge, inspiration, motivation, or just a laugh? What does your audience need from you?

Think about the emails you open regularly. I don’t know about you, but there are a few companies whose emails I often open because they are consistently helpful. They have built trust, proven themselves, and provided value.

3. Start strong with an opening line.

Grab attention – you can have the best content in the world, but if people don't open that email, no one will ever read it! You must lead with an obvious benefit, keep it short and sweet, arouse curiosity and give people a reason to click on your email.

Best practices for email subject lines:

Stay between 5-8 words
Use personalization (merge tags allow you personalize with your recipient’s name)
Be concise and descriptive (keep it to one idea)
Don't go over the top with punctuation and emojis (1 emoji and 3 punctuation marks max)
Don’t make false promises – make sure your email content backs up the promises you make in your subject line
Stay away from over promotional language to keep out of the spam filters

4. Know your audience.

The more you know about your audience and what they need from you, the better you will be at all types of content marketing. Keep in touch with your readers – what resonates with them, what gets the best response, and what questions do clients regularly ask you?

5. Have a plan and goals in mind.

Before you jump into email marketing, create an overall strategy. At a minimum, you need a way to grow your list, topic ideas, relevant content, and a plan to ask for the sale.

Create an opt-in offer and promote it on social media to get your name in front of more people and grow your list
Write a welcome email that gives subscribers what they signed up for and a brief explanation of what they can expect from your emails.
Consistently show up with helpful content to nurture your list and keep you top of mind (weekly or monthly)
Include a call to action for specific offers relevant to the content you shared

Email marketing can be as straightforward or as involved as you want to get! You can start with one list and monthly newsletters and grow to segmented lists, multiple funnels, and targeted sales campaigns. Your options are almost endless.

One of the most important things to remember with email marketing is patience – it takes time to build and nurture a booming subscriber list. Be kind to yourself and keep at it

If you're new to email marketing and looking for a provider, our post on Mailchimp vs. Mailerlite might come in handy!

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