How often do you write an email? I’m quite sure you must be writing a good number of times in a day/week. Well, I’ve been too doing the same. I’m into an international business from last 6 years and I eventually realized the importance of emails as my career progressed.

I used email as a powerful business tool however lately realized the science behind email-marketing.

There is a reason why businesses are spending a good heck of money on automation, email-marketing experts, purchasing dedicated IP’s & server(s). The ROI of email is far better than any other marketing resources.

Emails are cheaper to send and highly constructive for scaling business. A study says a dollar spent on emails have yielded up to 40X in return. Isn’t that cool? Indeed it is.

Like you, I’m also fed up of promotional emails. I get tons of email every day however I do chase a few of them. Mostly others are marked Promotional/SPAM and deleted later.

How to prompt a user read your email is an art and definite science. It takes good brainstorming to hit the bullseye.

Right before we talk about the techniques, Let’s build the basics first. We’ll slowly dive deep into email ethics.

I’m sure you’ll agree about the 4 stages of the business process. This is how leads are built, converted and engaged:

Stage 1 – Attract:

This is the first and foremost stage to any business. It begins with designing a simple website with a clean layout and letting people know what you offer? Each page of the website should only be only and only talking about one thing. Example: About us page, should be about the company coupled with few testimonials.

Don’t and strictly don’t confuse your website visitors. Ever thought why businesses are publishing free materials to read? The sole intention is to attract visitors to the website.

Stage 2 – Convert:

Once the visitor has been attracted towards the website. The next challenge is getting leads. Design a landing page to capture leads. It may ask for the required business information (Nothing Personal) example: Name, Age, Gender, Occupation, Interest, etc.

Hold on! before you start sending emails, seek their permission first. Ask to confirm if they’d like to read your emails? If yes, how many times in a week? This optimizes the probability of higher open rate & better CTR(Click Through Rate).

Stage 3 – Close:

• Nurturing is important. Engage your people. This is where content marketing comes into play. Maintain a good ratio of Content + Context. Add figures, graphs and numbers. It adds more value.

Stage 4 – Delight:

• Identify the behaviour of consumers, segment them. Send them emails accordingly. Someone who has marked a no-interest in receiving emails shouldn’t be strictly contacted further.

Assuming your website has grown a list of subscribers and you have started sending emails. The question still remains as it is. What is the secret recipe of brands?

DO Visit:  https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/email-marketing...

What ethics are brands like Amazon, Flipkart, Uber, Apple, etc following?  They’re using the Power Of SEGMENTATION and further growing PERSONALIZATION.

WHAT IS SEGMENTATION NOW?

It is a process which helps you focus on the right people at the right stage. It is an approach to fragment data into various stages.

How is segmentation done? Well, segmentation is made up of 2 things.

A buyer persona is a fictional data about your buyer’s age, name, gender, interest, occupation, etc. It basically helps in personalizing the outreach. This is the data which you’ve captured from landing pages.

Next is the buyer journey. How are the leads in interacting with your business? It helps you identify the stage of buying behaviour.

Stages Of Buyer’s Journey

A question should come to your mind, why are we focussing on all these things? What is relevance?

Well yes, it is. It helps you implement behaviour targeted emails. Remember a personalized content will always yield higher and better results.

Using the power of segmentation, we can easily identify what content should be sent to whom?

Example: Someone at the awareness stage wouldn’t be interested in price dropemails. He/She should be engaged with product-related information. Someone who has made a purchase in the past should be treated with coupons, discount & offer emails.

Does it make sense now?

Hitting inbox is never the GOAL, building ENGAGEMENT is.

Much before you think about sending emails, ask these questions to yourself as a professional:

• Why are you sending it?
• What is the CTA(Call To Action) around the email?
• How will you measure the success of the email? Example: Are you pushing any downloads, form fill up, payments, etc?

Segmentation AKA lead filtration is gold. Segregate your data into respective columns mentioned below.

• Not Interested List
• Bounced List
• Not Responding List
• In-Eligible List
• Paid Consumer List

Now see how easy it gets to target people accordingly. Isn’t it?

In a nutshell:

• Follow the C.A.T.S rule i.e send Content to the Right Audience at the right TIME for SUCCESS.
• Don’t blatantly push the users. Respect their feelings.
• Research to identify the right day & time while sending emails.
• Make SMART(Specific| Measurable | Attainable | Relevant | TImely) goals.
• Write relevant content & seek user’s permission before sending emails.
• Keep them engaged.