How email marketing will be the core sales channel of your startup business online

Email Marketing for startups

Getting email marketing going is fundamental to any online business. If you are blogging about a niche, selling a t-shirt or the next big disruptor app you need to have email marketing campaigns in place to do several actions.

  1. Capture Cart Abandonments.
  2. Nurture to purchase.
  3. UpSell.
  4. Cross Sell.
  5. Build your brand and educate your consumers.
  6. Produce network effect through Refer-A-Friend.

Another critical aspect of Email Marketing is managing your Transactional email campaigns, otherwise known as Onboarding Emails. This article will primarily focus on Email Marketing Campaigns but is still of some relevance for Transactional Emails.

What is email marketing?

Email Marketing is the act of using emails collected from prospects and customers to increase your business goals. Email marketing is one of the oldest channels online for communicating with prospects and customers, pre-dating websites. Today it is undergoing a resurgence in importance. With many companies redoubling efforts to improve their email marketing experience.

The benefit of focusing on email marketing for your business is that once you have permission from the prospect or customer to communicate with them via email you can be highly innovative in your conversation with the user. Using Email Marketing Automation you can be SMART in how you deliver your message. With the right mix of data collected and actions performed on your web assets, you can trigger the best pieces of content to the user at the right time.

The main benefit of leveraging email marketing for your business is the ability to talk directly with the prospect or customer. You are not hoping to cut through the noise of social media or the competition for the keyword bid. You have the permission and the access to the user’s email inbox.

How email marketing can help your business

By focusing on getting your email campaigns structured correctly you will be able to talk to the users at every stage of the funnel.

Awareness – Top of the Funnel

In the awareness stage, prospects are educating themselves about the problem they have our how you can help answer their questions. You need to focus on the user intent correctly through addressing the problem and educating on the solution. Pushing a sale at this stage of the process is counterproductive. What problem does your business offering solve?

Through providing an answer to the problem the prospect may have is vital to making them open to your business as a provider of the solution to their problem.

Evaluation/Consideration – Middle of the Funnel

They know the problem. Now they are weighing up the possible alternatives to providing the solution to the problem they have. You are perhaps one of those providers. In my experience, it is good to be upfront and honest with where your offering fits in in comparison to the competition. What can you provide that the competition can not? What is your unique sales proposition?

Conversion/Purchase – Bottom of the Funnel

What is the catch? Can you provide a trial period? Money back guarantee? Is there a discount offer for being on the email list? Something as simple as, an end of quarter sign up incentive. You have nurtured prospect for several emails. They have shown engagement. What is the sweet deal you are going to offer to get them over the line?

Once you have an understanding of where the user is in the funnel you can correctly structure your content to talk to their specific needs and wants in a SMART way.

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How to build a successful email campaign
email marketing strategies and workflows

  • Subscription

    In order to have a successful email campaign, you need subscribers. The most effective way to get subscribers is simply to ask people to sign up to your email list in an honest and straightforward manner. Be aware, that you need to be GDPR compliant and only ask for the minimum amount of information required to supply the user with the required information. You do not have the right to ask them for their first born!

  • Opt-in

    What the user is opting in to receive is important. You need to state clearly what, when and why you will be emailing the user. Honesty is the best policy. Always tell the user what they will expect through providing their email. Don’t abuse the trust. In the world of Internet Marketing, an Email address is the gold standard.

  • Lead Magnet

    What is your offer for the user providing their email address? Do you offer access to an exclusive video, an ebook or case study, a special offer? You need to provide an incentive above and beyond the mailing list itself. Unless your content is in the top 1% of content available on the web, you need to provide an incentive for prospects to sign-up to your list. Downloadables are good; sending them instantly to the user on signup is even better.

  • Drip Campaign

    Once a user signs up to your list you need to give consideration to what emails they will receive and when. Depending on the offering and the signup point, you need to send several emails to your prospect over a number of days to convert them. A typical drip campaign will take 10 emails before the prospect is ready to purchase. You need to provide incremental value in each email to them.

    Incorporating action intent through website behavior into the drip campaign with Marketing Automation scripts will only enhance the impact of your drip campaign.

  • Cart Abondonment

    Mission critical to email marketing is to have a Cart Abandonment Email Campaign. Your prospect has added a product to cart, you should first try and collect their email address. If they abandon the purchase process you can approach them in their email with an invitation to continue the purchase process. If this fail, you can offer a discount on their abandoned purchase to get them over the line.
    If you have already spent money on paid advertising to get them to your site this is a highly cost-effective way to close the sale.

  • UpSell Email

    They have purchased the product. If it has been some time since the user has purchased, you can offer them a repeat purchase or top up. Getting the timing right is very much trial and error. You know your own offering best. Testing is the key to success.

  • Cross-Sell Email

    Recognising that you have an offer complimentary to the product or signup intent the user has shown is critical. Can you use website-intent as a means to understand the User interest in another product offering you may have or partnership with another business through an affiliate offer? Delivering the right message to the user through email marketing allows effective cross-sell.

  • Refer A Friend Email

    So your user has become a customer. Peer pressure is powerful. If your customer loves your product and will recommend it to a friend there are no better means to introduce it. Invite the customer to ‘refer-a-friend’. Either offer an incentive to ‘refer-a-friend’ or if your brand is awesome enough just invite them to share the love.

  • Customer Feedback Request

    A vitally important aspect of selling online is asking for feedback. If you sell on Amazon, customer feedback and ratings are the juice that grows your business. Invite your customer to leave feedback, especially doing so at the right moment, knowing the user has just had an exceptional experience will help communicate your brand to a wider audience.