13+ Email Marketing Automation Best Practices For Small Businesses – Part 3
Many entrepreneurs understand the importance of using email marketing for small businesses. But not all know how to implement email marketing strategies that could lead to amazing results.
When using email marketing, make sure to follow email marketing best practices to maximize results, boost open rates, and increase lead conversion.
Not sure how to do it? You came to the right place! Today, you will learn:
- Email marketing best practices
- Email marketing ideas
- Ways to increase email marketing open rate
- The importance of a well-written subject line
- How to keep readers curious
Keep your readers engaged and make sure they receive your emails when they are online. Try our tips and achieve your business goals through these email marketing best practices.
🤩 Could this be the easiest way to gain your social media momentum?
Find out “How To Get Your Next 100 Days Of Engaging Social Media Posts Done… In Less Than 30 Minutes… WITHOUT Hiring An Expensive Social Media Team!”
👉 Discover more about it here: www.47links.com/t47ms-smi
—
Part 1 of this series: Follow-Ups – 10 Email Marketing Automation Best Practices
Part 2 of this series: 13+ Email Marketing Automation Best Practices – Part 1
Part 3 of this series: 13+ Email Marketing Automation Best Practices – Part 2
—
Hundreds of subject line ideas and more, based on best practices: www.47links.com/funnelscripts
—
Get ActiveCampaign Free Trial : www.47links.com/activecampaign
VIDEO TRANSCRIPTION:
“Welcome to this episode.
In the upcoming minutes, I will share with you KEY email marketing automation best practices for small businesses.
And the MOST twisted, but simple, marketing automation hack to boost email open and click-through rates OVERNIGHT.
My name is Istvan Bujdoso and welcome to The 47 Marketing Show that helps entrepreneurs like you to get more done in less time, grow your business…
…and gain freedom through marketing automation, delegation, and processes.
If these topics are interesting to you, then make sure to subscribe on YouTube and hit the bell button. so you get notified of the NEW episode every week. And now, let’s get started.
This episode is part of a series on email marketing best practices. You can find the links to the previous parts in the description.
With that out of the way, let’s continue where we left off in the previous episodes. These upcoming best practices are focused on email marketing optimization.
No. 10: Don’t Make This Common Mistake. Many entrepreneurs overlook a KEY area of email marketing automation the importance of the subject line and testing it in real life.
They quickly type in one in a few seconds and they consider it done.
But it’s a HUGE mistake because if the subject line is BAD, then very few people, or even NOBODY, will open that email…
…and that means the leads will NOT read that email, they won’t get to know, like, and trust you and they won’t click and they won’t buy.
That’s why it is so important to invest a proper amount of time and energy into crafting a curiosity-building subject line. But not only that will impact your email marketing open rate.
There is another factor. I experience this over and over again, just like every marketer. I write up a really good curiosity-based subject line.
Then I send the email out, and LESS people than normally opened the email, sometimes even barely anybody. Here’s the KEY part.
It doesn’t matter what WE THINK, it’s a great subject line, the ONLY thing matters is what people on the email list think. And they vote with their clicks and opening the email.
For each email based on best practices, invest a proper amount of time and energy into writing MULTIPLE curiosity-based subject lines…
…AND TEST how YOUR email list reacts to them, which subject line is working the BEST. Because I know it’s not always easy to come up with email marketing ideas and subject lines.
I’ll leave you relevant resources in the description that can help you. One of them is a source of hundreds of subject line ideas and more, based on best practices.
And the other one is an email marketing software called ActiveCampaign which makes it easy to test subject lines, emails, and email automation.
Okay, let’s move on to the next of the email automation best practices.
No. 11: Use This 1-Minute Trick To Boost Open Rates. Quite some years ago, I watched an amount of email marketing training that felt like an endless amount.
And I found this simple but effective open rate optimization trick that I could use in a minute with every email. I got really excited about it…
…and quickly ran some tests on an existing email automation, and here’s what happened. The open rate of one of the emails went from 26% to 44%.
This was a 65% increase in how many people opened that email. In another case, the open rate rose from 54% to 63%, a 17% increase.
Even though the original email already had a great open rate, this best practice still boosted it.
And in case of the third email in that automation, the open rate went up from 35% to 54%, which is no less than a nice 51% increase.
After seeing those results, I was completely sold on this 1-minute email marketing hack. And I use it in almost every email automations I set up.
This is that simple trick. IF somebody doesn’t open an email in an automation for 6-8 hours THEN resend the SAME email, or a tweaked one, with a DIFFERENT subject line.
Some people miss your FIRST email, or don’t find the subject line interesting enough to click with the SECOND email that has a different subject line…
…you have another chance to get them to open and read it. And because some people do that, your open rates go up.
With that said let’s move on to the rest of the best practices including the one that is the MOST twisted, but simple, marketing automation hack to boost email open and click-through rates OVERNIGHT.
And now, it’s time to focus on another email marketing strategy and best practice. No. 12: Send Emails At The RIGHT Time.
There are 2 KEY elements to this and the second one is something that a lot of people don’t even think about. Let’s start with the FIRST KEY element.
Researches show that an average person gets over 100 emails a day. Most people don’t read all the emails, and they don’t even open some emails.
It’s also a fact that the emails that arrive at a time when people normally check their emails have a higher chance of being opened and read.
That’s why sending out emails at the RIGHT time boost the open rates. Just imagine this for a moment.
If most people on your email list are entrepreneurs who work in an office, they most likely check their emails during the day, on weekdays.
So your emails have a bigger chance to be opened in that period than the one that you would send in the middle of the night, or on the weekends.
On the other hand, if your email audience has a 9-5 job, and your topic is something outside of their work, then they most likely check those emails you send in the evenings, and on the weekends.
So, the RIGHT times to send depend on your specific situation. Choose them accordingly.
The SECOND KEY element that a lot of people don’t even think about, is the RIGHT timezone.
If the leads and clients on your email list normally check their emails during the day, they will do that ‘during the day’ in THEIR own timezone.
This can mean DIFFERENT times in YOUR timezone and in THEIRS. For example, 2 am, in the middle of the night, in your timezone can be 10 am, during the day, in the reader’s timezone.
Not to mention, if your email audience is all around the world, in various different time zones, then the best time to send would be VARIOUS different times.
One of the most valuable email marketing tips I got in my early marketing days was to use a tool like ActiveCampagin, that makes it possible to automatically send emails in the READER’s timezone.
So, I don’t need to worry about setting VARIOUS different times, I can just set to send the email at 10 am in the READER’s timezone.
And wherever they are, they will get my email during the day, when there’s the biggest chance they will read it.
When you select the RIGHT time for your own email list, make sure to also pay attention to the timezones.
Alongside other resources, you can also find a link in the description to an ActiveCampaign free trial.
With that said, let me ask you to tap on the like button right now if you’re enjoying this episode. That helps us to create more episodes for you like this one.
Thank you for your “like”. And now, let’s continue with the next of the email marketing tricks and best practices.
No. 13: Optimize The Email Content.
When people open your emails BUT they don’t react to your call to actions, they don’t reply, they don’t click, then most likely, one or more of the following 4 email elements are the reason.
First, the beginning of your emails is just as important as the subject line. If the first few lines are boring, nobody will read the rest of the email. And then, nobody will click and buy.
That’s why it’s a part of this best practice to open loops and create curiosity in the first few lines of the emails so the reader gets hooked to read the whole email, and more likely will click.
Let me give you a quick example.
“What the heck am I doing?!?” I thought as I was sitting at a beach with the phone in my hand and feeling guilty that I let this happen.
It had been going on for a while, chasing that desire, only to realize, it might not even be worth the “price”: not at all.
I looked around, I saw my then-girlfriend next to me lying on our beach blanket enjoying the sunshine and her daughter cutely playing and giggling away in the sand.
My eyes glanced back at the screen of my mobile. “Is it really worth the sacrifice?” for what I was about to do.
Can you see how these 7 lines of an email open a few loops and build curiosity by raising questions in the reader’s mind? Questions like: What was the writer actually doing?
What did he feel guilty about and why? What desire was he chasing that was not worth it? What was on the screen of the phone? What was he about to do? And what was the sacrifice?
When you start an email like this, the reader will more likely read the whole email.
The second email element is the story that entertains and educates the reader and closes the loops that were opened at the beginning of the email.
Besides satisfying the curiosity of your readers, the story part of the email is also about getting to know you, like and trust you.
And the third element is the Call To Action, also known as CTA. Keep the CTAs simple and clear.
If your goal is to get them to reply, then ask questions to guide them on what they should write about and make sure that you clearly tell them to reply to that email.
If your goal is to get them to click a link, then refer to what will happen when they click, like “Watch the video here.” “Get your free copy.” Or, “Learn how to do XYZ WITHOUT the hard parts.”
And the fourth element that helps you to get MORE people to open and read your emails, and take action is the end of the story and postscript.
The best practice is to open a loop in one of these sections, which is a DIFFERENT type loop than at the beginning of the email. You open a loop that you will NOT close in this email.
The purpose of this is to build curiosity in the reader to open and read your NEXT email. And because of that, you’ll only close this loop in the upcoming email. Here’s a quick example of this type of loop.
Would you like to know what I found? Are you interested in what that special strategy is that makes me able to publish over a 1,000 content pieces every year WITHOUT my day-to-day involvement?
If so, look out for my email tomorrow. I’m going to share with you that special strategy AND how you can get similar results with it in social media and business.
The subject line will be “XYZ”: make sure to look out for it!
So, these were the 4 email elements. When people open your emails BUT they don’t react to your call to action, they don’t reply, they don’t click, then optimize these parts of the email content.
With that said, let’s talk about the next of the email automation tips on this list. No. 14: Leverage This Twisted Open Rate Hack.
This is the most twisted, but simple, marketing automation hack to boost email open and click-through rates OVERNIGHT.
No matter how great your email marketing is, there will ALWAYS be some people on your email list who get completely disengaged.
For example, your email automations keep sending them daily emails but they haven’t opened any of them for 3 or more months.
The chance that those people will start opening and reading your emails again is very-very little.
Apart from that, it’s pointless emailing them as they never engage, there’s also a negative impact on your tracking. Your email reports will show misleading open and click-through rates.
Let me show you a scenario to make it more clear what I’m talking about.
For simplicity, let’s say you send an email to 1,000 people and 371 of them open it. Which means the open rate of that email is 37%.
But of the 1,000 people, 300 of them are actually DISENGAGED for more than 3 months, and they no longer open any of your emails.
If you’d remove the DISENGAGED people from the list before sending that email, then you’d only send it to 700 people.
From that 700, 371 of them would still open it. Which would mean an overnight increase in the open rates, that would go up to 53%.
While this marketing automation optimization won’t get more people to read your emails it will make your reports to show the REAL numbers of your email marketing.
If you enjoyed this video, click on the like button. It helps the channel a bit.
And make sure to subscribe and hit the bell so you get notified of the future videos just like this one.
Thank you for watching. And see you in the next one.”
END OF VIDEO TRANSCRIPTION
