23+ FOLLOW UP And Marketing Automation Best Practices
One of the first few things you would learn when diving into email marketing is to make sure that you communicate with your leads regularly. But did you know that there’s something you could do to increase your email open rate and click-through rates OVERNIGHT?!
Yes, you read that right! Skeptical? Read on to find out what successful entrepreneurs are doing and some email automation best practices you should be doing for your business.
When growing your lead list and converting them into customers, it’s important to nurture your relationships with them. One of the best ways to do this is through email marketing follow up.
Today you will learn:
- Marketing automation strategy to use for your business
- Marketing automation best practices that could help you boost your conversion rate
- The importance of having specific follow-up goals
- The A.D.P. strategy so you could replace yourself in doing email follow-ups
- Tools to use for email marketing
Email marketing automation is effective in helping you reach your business goals. When done right, not only would you be able to replace yourself in your business processes. You would also be able to boost your ROI.
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VIDEO TRANSCRIPTION:
“In today’s episode, we’ll go through 23+ FOLLOW UP and marketing automation best practices.
Which include how a former champion wrestler, a 90s’ TV show, and a simple 7-letter word are the SECRET to SKYROCKET your email marketing results.
Also A PROVEN 2-minute automation SHORTCUT to email marketing success.
And another best practice that is the most twisted, but simple marketing automation hack to boost email open and click through rates OVERNIGHT. And much more is coming up in this episode.
My name is Istvan Bujdoso and welcome to The 47 Marketing Show that helps entrepreneurs like you to get more done in less time, to 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.
Just a quick note this is a special collection episode, which means we put this together from previous episodes so you can find the BEST follow-up tips conveniently in ONE place.
Due to this, the numbering of the list is a bit mixed up. With that said, let’s queue up the content. Enjoy it!
The simple fact is, people buy from people who they know, like, and trust.
And gaining that RIGHT level of ‘know, like, and trust’ in your leads and customers takes time sometimes days, weeks, or even months.
And the more leads you have, the more impossible to manually follow up with all of them on a regular basis to gain that RIGHT level of ‘know, like and trust’.
That’s why in this episode we are focusing on 10 email marketing best practices for small businesses so you can automate and scale up your follow-ups to grow your business. And now, let’s dive into the list.
Best practice No. 1: Start With The End In Mind. Set yourself specific follow-up goals. What do you want to achieve EXACTLY in this area?
This is not only important because it will give the direction on which way to go but more importantly…
…your end goal is the starting point to break down that long journey into small specific steps and to work out what email marketing strategy you will need to use to get your desired results.
The next best practice is No. 2: Understand The Journey Of Your Customers. Besides follow-ups, what we are focusing on in this episode…
…it’s really important to understand the big marketing picture as well and where follow-ups fit into that. In a nutshell, this is the journey your customers usually go through.
Stage 1: Strangers find and consume some of your contents online and they get to know you, like you and trust you to a certain level. And by that, they turn into your audience.
Stage 2: Some of your audience not only consume your content they also react to the call to actions and visit your landing page and lead funnel.
Stage 3: From that traffic, the curious visitors type in their email address and they turn into your leads.
Stage 4: Some leads on your email list develop enough trust in you over time, and buy the first product from you. With that, they turn into your customers.
And Stage 5: When some of your customers, who already have a STRONG ‘know’, ‘like’, and ‘trust’ in you they turn into your RETURNING clients who buy regularly from you.
So where do follow-ups fit into this customer journey? Into ALL 5 stages.
BEFORE potential customers get on your email list the people who watch your videos, read your blog posts, or consume some of your other contents, can be followed up with retargeting ads.
AND once leads get onto your email list, the automated follow-ups happen via email automation.
Now that you understand where follow-ups fits into the overall big marketing picture, let’s talk about Best practice No. 3: Know Your Customers.
The more an entrepreneur knows their potential and existing customers the more results their follow-ups will bring.
Ultimately, the goal is to know your customers BETTER than they know themselves in your specific area.
Because that information is the fundamental of your marketing being able to get the most customers through the stages we talked about.
Every part of your marketing, including your follow-ups, have to talk to them. Let me give you a simple and a bit extreme example to make a clear point.
Let’s say your target customers are first-time puppy owners of a specific breed, who live in the countryside.
If your follow-ups would talk about how to keep elderly cats healthy in the city, you would get 0 results from your follow-ups.
But if your retargeting ads and emails talk to first-time puppy owners of a specific breed, who live in the countryside then your retargeting ads will bring you the most RIGHT leads…
…and your email automation follow ups will get you the most RIGHT clients. And that’s why knowing your customers is one of the key email automation best practices on this list.
And more is coming up including The KEY strategy to ULTIMATELY being able to replace yourself in follow-ups and business and at the same time…
…keep growing your business, and gain more freedom as well.
Best practice No. 4: Do It Step By Step. Building out a successful email marketing automation strategy that does 3, 6, 12, or more months of daily follow-ups…
…AND delivers consistent results, can feel like an overwhelming task at first. The truth is, it’s not something that is possible to do in an hour or in a few days.
It requires setting up marketing automation systems, copywriting, testing, and more. Quite a lot of work overall. But in the end, it is worth it.
And to avoid being stopped by the overwhelming feeling of the size of that entire process the BEST is to follow a simple best practice: do it step-by-step.
OK, the next one on the list of the marketing automation best practices is No. 5: Be Persistent. It’s not only a huge and complex activity. It is a long term and ongoing game as well.
Which means, if you want to successfully and consistently grow your business through follow-ups…
…you gotta be persistent and keep taking steps after steps UNTIL your follow-ups can run WITHOUT your day-to-day involvement.
No. 6: Be Consistent. Doing follow-ups here and there, every now and then, is not going to grow your business.
Be consistent with your follow-ups to keep getting results that ultimately will grow your business as well.
Although consistency is KEY, you’ll see it later in this episode, there’s a smart way to do the follow-ups so it doesn’t eat up your time every day, every week.
With that said, let me ask you a favor If you’re enjoying this content so far, then click on the like button right now. Thank you for your “thumbs up”.
Let’s continue with No. 7: KISS. When it comes to email marketing automation follow-ups, the KEY is KISS, Keep It Super Simple.
Email automation tools make it possible to create complex segmentations and automations BUT complexity always fires back.
It’s a source of confusion and errors, which leads to WORSE results. So keep your marketing automation follow-up super simple.
OK, the next best practice is No. 8: Make A GREAT First Impression.
A lot of entrepreneurs make the mistake of getting leads onto their email list and maybe send them a few random emails then they stop for a while before emailing again.
With that, leaving the leads confused and to get cold and they are losing out on a lot of opportunities. A best practice is to get started REALLY STRONG, to make a GREAT first impression.
When your leads opt-in to your email list, send them a WELCOME email sequence explaining things like: How can they get what they opted-in for? What can they expect on this email list? Who are you?
What do you do? How do you do it? How did you learn it or earn it? Who do you do it for? How can you do it for the reader?
OK, in a minute, I’ll tell you about The KEY strategy to ULTIMATELY being able to replace yourself in follow-ups and business and at the same time, keep growing your business…
…and gain more freedom as well. Before that, here’s another email marketing automation strategy, another best practice.
No. 9: Track And Optimize. When it comes to follow-ups, the rule of thumb is to avoid guesswork.
No matter how good the open rates and click-through rates of your emails seem, there’s always space for improvements. And it’s best practice to always do that based on REAL numbers.
So, from the very beginning, track the performance of your email automations then use those REAL numbers to optimize the relevant part of your follow-ups. With that said, it’s time to talk about…
Best practice No. 10: The A.D.P. Strategy.
This is the strategy that is the KEY to ULTIMATELY being able to replace yourself in follow-ups and business and at the same time, keep growing your business, and gain more freedom as well.
This A.D.P. Strategy not only can be applied to follow-ups, it is a best practice in that area. The first part of the strategy is to AUTOMATE as much as possible.
In this case, as many parts of the follow-ups as possible. The second part is to DELEGATE what’s not possible to automate. And the third part is the most important part: PROCESSES.
The processes make it possible for your email marketing automation and team to work on their most optimum level WITHOUT your day-to-day involvement.
And that’s how you can replace yourself in follow-ups, marketing, and more. Recently, we’ve published a full, dedicated episode on the A.D.P. Strategy.
I’ll leave you a link to that in the description, so you can check it out after this episode.
In this episode, we are starting a series on email marketing automation best practices.
You’ll find out about 13+ best practices for small businesses over this and the upcoming episodes including one on how a former champion wrestler…
…a 90s’ TV show, and a simple 7-letter word are the SECRET to SKYROCKET your email marketing results.
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.
Make sure to tap the like button if you enjoy this episode. And don’t forget to subscribe and hit the bell button to get notified of the future episodes. And now, let’s get started.
OK, let’s dive into the first of the email marketing best practices on our list. No. 1: Stay On Topic. Sooner or later, most entrepreneurs find themselves in the situation of running out of email marketing ideas.
And not knowing what to send to your email list can lead to one of the crucial mistakes When your potential leads arrive at your landing page they see a PROMISE to get CERTAIN information.
They enter their email address with an expectation to learn about a SPECIFIC topic. The LESS you fulfill that PROMISE, the MORE confused and unsatisfied your list will be.
Then they won’t read your emails, they probably even unsubscribe, and never come back. Imagine this: Let’s say, leads opt-in to your email list to learn about ‘how to grow an online business’.
And besides emails on that topic, you’d start sending them emails on ‘how to lose weight’, promotions of a ‘cat hotel,’ discounts of a ‘cake baking class’, and videos on ‘scuba diving.’
Topics and offers that are really different from the original promise. As you’d guess, most leads would be unhappy on your list, and would leave and never return.
The best practice is to fulfill the original PROMISE in your emails, and stay on topic or close to that.
If you want to switch topics, build a separate email list for the new topic or use the loophole you’ll find out about later in this episode.
OK, the next email marketing strategy and best practice is, No. 2: The RIGHT Frequency. It’s a common question among entrepreneurs: “How often should you email your list?”
The short answer: as often as it brings the most results, and doesn’t annoy most of your email list. Let me explain.
When I started many years ago, I used an email marketing process of getting leads on my list and emailing them a few times a week.
The first mistake was that I didn’t tell them at the beginning how many emails they could expect. So some people were unhappy because they expected more, others because they expected less.
And quite a lot of them unsubscribed. When people opt-in to your email list, tell them how often they can expect emails from you like multiple times a day, or once daily, or a few times a week.
Then, stick with that frequency for a while. The other mistake I made a long time ago: suddenly, without any announcement, I switched from emailing a few times a WEEK to a ‘multiple-times-a-DAY’ frequency.
Because of that sudden frequency change, I lost quite a lot of subscribers quickly.
The second part of this best practice is, if you want to change frequency, tell your list, do the change slowly, maybe even step-by-step, over a longer period of time so you won’t annoy and lose your leads.
At the end of the day, all lists are different. So test your list. What is that balanced frequency where you can make the most money long term, and your list stays happy as well.
Generally, emailing once a day is that balanced frequency. But obviously, test what the best for your list.
The next one of the best practices and email marketing tips is, No. 3: Never Stop. When you stop emailing your list, you can miss out on the days when your leads are ready to buy.
And they may end up spending their money with your competitors. Also, when you stop emailing your list, the leads get colder and colder. And either you lose them, or it takes time to warm them up again.
The bottom line is when you stop emailing your list, you can lose money. That’s why this best practice on the list: NEVER stop emailing your list.
If you’re like most entrepreneurs, and it feels a HUGE challenge to keep adding new emails to your email marketing sequence, then you’ll love what’s coming up.
Later in this SERIES, you’ll see email marketing hacks and shortcuts to overcome that challenge easily and fast.
Including a best practice in THIS episode on how a former champion wrestler, a 90s’ TV show, and a simple 7-letter word are the SECRET to SKYROCKET your email marketing results.
Best practice no. 4: Email Marketing Segmentation. In life, in different situations, we naturally talk to others in different ways. And to do that, is one of the KEY email automation best practices as well.
Imagine the following situations: There are always people who’ve just joined an email list, and most likely barely know anything about the entrepreneur they don’t like and trust him or her YET.
Others on a list have just looked at one sales page, BUT haven’t bought. Some people have just clicked on the order button, BUT have left without actually paying and ordering.
And then, there are those on a list who have already bought something from the business, BUT not yet regular clients.
Also, let’s mention the regular clients on the email list who are happy and maybe ready to go to the next level. These are just a few KEY scenarios that happen for small businesses who sell something online.
In each of these situations, if you want to achieve the desired results, you need to talk to those people in DIFFERENT ways.
For example, if somebody has just joined your list, the goal is to build a certain level of know, like, and trust, and direct them to a sales funnel.
On the other hand, in a different situation, like when somebody abandons the cart, you’ll have different goals and things to say like reminding them and urging them to complete their order.
And in other situations, your goals and ways are DIFFERENT again. As a best practice, think through all the KEY scenarios that your leads and customers can go through…
…and for each, create a separate email marketing automation follow-up sequence.
And based on how people behave throughout your marketing, keep segmenting your email list and direct them into the relevant email automations.
This way, you can talk to everybody on your email list according to where they are on their own specific journey. A great tool to use for email marketing, segmentation, and more is ActiveCampaign.
You can find the link to it in the description.
Let me interrupt this episode for a moment. If you find these best practices useful then click on the like button right now. With that, you can give us feedback and help more people with this content.
Thank you for your “like”. And now, let’s continue.
Best practice no. 5: Email Marketing Welcome Sequence. Once your leads join your email list, the goal is to turn them into regular readers who actually look out for your emails.
They open and read the emails, and engage with the call to actions. Because you’ll have the MOST chance with those regular readers to really get them to know you, like you, and trust you.
AND ultimately, to turn them into customers and long-term clients. The BEST way to turn the fresh leads on your list into regular readers and fans is with an email marketing welcome series.
First, let me give you an outline of that email sequence, and then we’ll talk about the details.
The first email is about how can they get what they opted-in for and what can they expect on this email list? And a hook to make them really curious to look out for your next email.
The second email, “Who are you?” A few cool things about you. Your short story on how you started what you do, and why. What happened that shifted you on your journey?
And because of that, what are you doing now and why? And of course, a call to action to reply, or click on a link, and a hook to the next email. The third email in the series is about what do you do?
The time when it became clear that others have the same problem you have already found the solution to, how you learned or earned that solution…
…and when did you realize that you were meant to do what you do? Plus, a CTA and hook to the end of the email.
Can you start seeing the pattern? Every email ends with a call to action to reply, or click on a link to check out a sales page, and with a hook to get the readers curious to read the next email as well.
OK, the fourth email is about how do you do what you do? How does it work for you? For others? How did you figure it out? What did you have to change to make things happen?
And the emotional side of why you do what you do? And finishing up the CTA and hook. The next email, the fifth one, “How did you learn or earn the knowledge and expertise of what you do?”
What was your life like BEFORE, DURING, and AFTER that? Then a call to action and hook. The sixth email is about who do you do it for? What type of people do you help?
And have already helped. How did you come across them? What was THEIR life like BEFORE, DURING, and AFTER that? Then finish it up with a CTA and hook.
And the last email of this series is about how can you do ‘what you do’ for the reader? Your mission, and why it is important for you to help others. Who is your ideal customer that you can help the most?
Explain in what ways you can help them to achieve their goals. And why do you offer those different ways? Then a call to action to visit your sales page.
Although this is the end of the email sequence, you can still have a hook to get the readers curious to read your future emails. This was an outline of the welcome email sequence.
As there’s not enough time in this episode to go through all the details, I’ll leave you additional resources in the description. Those will help you to craft your own BEST welcome email series.
With that said, it’s time to talk about No. 6: Use This Trick Every Day. This is the “loophole” I mentioned in best practice no. 1.
And also, it is the one on how a former champion wrestler, a 90s’ TV show, and a simple 7-letter word are the SECRET to SKYROCKET your email marketing results.
In 2017, from the UK, I flew to the US to a sales conference. One of the speakers was Russell Brunson, who is currently among the best of the top marketers.
That was pretty much the first time I heard about him. I loved his presentation a lot and wanted to find out more about him and his work in the marketing industry.
So I read his DotCom Secrets book when I got back to the UK. That’s how I found out about some cool things 15-20 years before Russell wrote the book, he won a wrestling state championship.
But more importantly, I learnt the SECRET on how to never run out of email ideas and how to SKYROCKET email marketing results with the same secret.
In the “Follow-Up Funnels” chapter, I found a section titled “DAILY SEINFELD EMAILS.” Seinfeld was a really popular sitcom TV show of the ’90s. But what was it really about?
Well, a lot of people used a simple 7-letter word to answer that, “NOTHING”. It was a show about nothing. 4 friends lived their everyday life.
YET it was funny and entertaining that people kept watching and episode by episode the viewers got to know and like the characters.
And as the DotCom Secrets reveals, that’s the perfect strategy to use for follow-ups as well after the welcome sequence. 90% entertainment and 10% content in the emails. Stories about you and your life.
Things that you are doing, experiencing, learning, planning, etc. in your life. And ALL the stories related back to your offers, products, and services.
With that, email by email, the leads on your email list are getting to know you, like you, and trust you.
And as people buy from people who they know, like, and trust, it can SKYROCKET your email marketing results your readership, opens, clicks and sales.
In the book, you can find more details on this follow-up best practice, and multiple email examples. I’ll leave you a link to it in the description.
Welcome to this episode. Today, you’ll find out about a few awesome email marketing automation best practices. One of them is A PROVEN 2-Minute Automation SHORTCUT To Email Marketing Success.
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.
One of the best practices I talked about in the previous episode is “NEVER stop emailing your list”.
Because when you stop, your leads get cold, and they can end up spending their money at your competitors. Which is NOT good for your business.
Without a question, one of the most challenging parts of email marketing for small businesses is keeping up the consistency, writing new emails, and emailing your list EVERY day.
That’s why in this episode, we are focusing on 3 email marketing shortcuts, so you can easily overcome that consistency challenge.
Okay, let’s go through the list, from the point where we left it off in the previous episode.
Best practice No. 7: Hack And Model Emails. One of the most frequently asked questions among beginners is “What emails should I send to my list?”
And even experienced entrepreneurs end up running out of email marketing ideas every now and then or maybe even often.
In those times, the quickest and easiest way to avoid staring at the blank page and getting more and more frustrated minute by minute is to get out of your own head and look for inspiration.
A GREAT place to do that is inside your email inbox. The best practice is to CONSCIOUSLY find people who are successful in email marketing, in your industry, and even outside of your area.
Simply sign up to their email list. And that way you can build up a swipe file collection over time that you can use for inspiration any time. But don’t stop there.
Organize or filter each person’s emails into separate folders. That way, you not only can see the emails as individual emails but also you can get more insights into the email marketing process.
How the emails are related to each other. In what order they arrive. What time you get them. How regularly. And so on.
When a subject gets your attention, peaks your curiosity, then flag the email as a subject line idea. Open the emails, read them, analyze them, flag them, use them as inspiration and even model them.
It’s a great and free email marketing automation shortcut that can really save you from ever running out of email ideas, staring at the blank page and being frustrated.
Not to mention, that modeling successful people, not only can speed up your progress but also can get you better results than what you could achieve by yourself.
Okay, in a minute, I’ll tell you about the PROVEN 2-minute automation SHORTCUT to email marketing success. And before that, here’s another one of today’s email marketing hacks.
No. 8: Leverage Email Templates. Another one of the great email automation shortcuts is leveraging email templates.
They serve a specific purpose: you can get started really quickly with your email marketing and get your momentum going even IF you don’t have copywriting skills yet.
And in the long run, templates make it easier for you to keep up your momentum with less work.
Some email marketing templates are ready-made that entrepreneurs can simply copy and paste, and use as they are.
The advantage of copy/paste email templates is that it’s really quick to get started, and use them with barely any work.
They are better than nothing, and can help you to gain initial email marketing momentum.
But the disadvantage of copy/paste email templates in the long run is that they lack the KEY to build a strong, resultful relationship with your email list.
That’s why, long term, a different type of templates are better, and leveraging them is even an email automation best practice. And those templates are ‘framework templates’.
They give you the RIGHT email sequence and structure, plus some of the KEY elements and you’ll add your stories, personality, and details that fit your business and audience on your email list the BEST.
And with those, you can efficiently keep up your email marketing momentum, and build a strong, resultful relationship with your list.
A great collection of those framework-type templates is called FunnelScripts.
The way it works, you answer a few questions in minutes, click on a button and the tool generates the copies that you can simply leverage in your email marketing.
It’s a template software that was created with the purpose of helping people, who don’t have copywriting and sales experience to CREATE successful sales copies, emails, ads…
…and content EASY and FAST. And the gentleman who created it is Jim Edwards. He’s a copywriting and sales expert with over 25 years of experience in those fields.
Although FunnelScripts is useful in many copywriting areas, in this episode we are only focusing on the email copies and templates.
Inside the tool, there’s an “Email Scripts” section where we can find plenty of useful email marketing templates…
…including almost 200 proven ‘Subject Line’ templates that we can use to get people to actually open the emails. And the more people open your emails, the more sales and results you can get.
Also, we can find templates for ‘Onboarding’ and ‘Welcoming’ new leads on our email list. In email marketing, the first impression matters a lot as well.
Because if your first emails are boring, then people won’t read your next emails, and may even unsubscribe quickly.
That’s why a GREAT ‘Onboarding’ or ‘Welcoming’ sequence is so important, to make a GREAT first impression so your email marketing can bring you results long term.
Besides those email marketing templates…
…we can find ones that give dozens and dozens of email topic ideas so you NEVER have to stare at the blank page and wonder in frustration: “What should I write about?”.
Those are a few of the most important email templates you can get your hands on in FunnelScripts. There are a lot more you can use as shortcuts to get MORE done in LESS time and with LESS work.
And not only in the area of email marketing, you can also find templates for sales copies, videos, ads, content, and more. I’ll leave you a link to it in the description.
And now, let me ask you a favor. If you’re enjoying this episode, then click on the like button right now. Thank you for your thumbs up and feedback.
With that said, let’s continue with the next of the email marketing tips.
Best practice No. 9: Use This 2-Minute SHORTCUT. This is the PROVEN 2-Minute Automation SHORTCUT To Email Marketing Success. I call this ‘The Loop Hack’ and solves the following problem.
When you stop emailing your list, your leads get colder, and you can miss out on the days when they are ready to buy.
And with that you can lose money. But coming up with DAILY email ideas, writing them, and scheduling them takes a lot of time.
And if you’re like most entrepreneurs you have a lot of other marketing and business activities to do as well.
This tiny, 2-minute hack is a great way to send daily emails to your list, even if you don’t have time and resources to write daily emails.
Really simply, you send out your daily emails with an email automation and the hack is, instead of letting people to finish the daily email automation…
…and then not get any email until you add new ones, instead of that, you create a loop, and once they get the last email in the automation from the next day…
…the loop will start sending them the daily emails from the first one again.
This way the leads on your email list will get something every day, they never idle and get cold. And because of that, you can also experience a boost in your sales.
I recommend you to have at least 3 months of daily email in your loop. If your leads on the list don’t read an email for the first time, it will be NEW for them.
And even if they read it the first time, a few months is enough time for people to forget, or simply see it as a reminder email.
And whenever you have time and resources, you can keep adding new emails to the loop, and expanding it. In most email marketing software you should be able to create an automation loop like this.
And I’ll leave you a link in the description to ActiveCampaign which can definitely do that loop.
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%. which 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.
Which 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.
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