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9 Tips for your next email marketing

08/19/202209/01/2021 by scmarketing

Email marketing is a great inbound marketing tactic to help generate leads. Each distribution is all about increasing your open rate and click through rate. This is helped by creating engaging and relevant content to your target audience. Here, we cover some of the things for you to do in the future to help improve engagement for your next email send-out.

1. What’s the story?

Ultimately you want people to read your email. So, make your subject line clear, short & snappy and something that will grab attention so that recipients are enticed to open it. This is the first thing that will be seen. Tell people what’s on offer in the email to give them a reason to open.

2. People like people

We all like to think we’re talking to someone we know. So, make sure that the email sender is someone from the team rather than an ‘admin’ email address.

3. On brand

Keep your design and messaging on brand. If you’re starting to regularly send out e.g., a round-up of news on a monthly basis then make sure that you create a template in keeping with your brand and stick to that format. People like familiarity and it helps to build trust.

4. Keep content relevant and original

Keep content relevant, original and regular. Once your recipient clicks on your email you need to get to the point quickly. What is the main message of this email?

Maybe it is an interesting business update with statistics. Perhaps you have an offer they should know about but make sure that you explain how this offer can truly help them to encourage click throughs.

Try and make sure that any email you distribute points back to a blog post on your website, offer or download. In fact, you can save time by re-purposing content based on the many blogs you have already created.

5. Calls to Action

Once you’ve decided on the theme of your email, you need to let the recipient know what to do next. This is where you need a bold call to action (CTA). Be clear on what you want the recipient to do, whether to ‘download now’ or ‘register today’ adding a link back to your website.

6. Links

Include links back to your website as well as all your social icons to encourage people to follow and share on social.

7. Be image led

You’ll often hear us talk about being image led which is really important for email marketing. It’s eye-catching, helps to break up text on the page allowing the recipient to easily read through the content.

8. Unsubscribe

You always need to give the option for a recipient to unsubscribe. Add a link to this at the end of your email, it’s a necessary requirement so don’t miss it off. Whilst sad when someone does unsubscribe, look at it positively as it means that your email list is much more targeted.

9. When to email

Once you’ve got the email set up, send it at an optimal time. According to Hubspot the highest click-to-open rates for an email are 10am midweek. We would suggest Tuesday and Thursday’s as a good option.

Split testing, also known as A/B testing, is an effective way of working out the best day to send an email marketing campaign. Send out groups of emails on different days and compare performance, with the best performing group giving you an indication of when clients are willing to receive emails.

Email marketing agency Croydon

If you need a helping hand building an email marketing strategy, get in touch with us at Smart Cow Digital Marketing for expert advice on how to conduct an effective digital marketing campaign! As email marketing experts in Croydon, we can create your initial email template, write content and distribute to your database.

Other digital marketing tactics we offer include web design and development, SEO services, Pay Per Click (PPC), social media management through to CRM and marketing automation.

CRM data: The good, the bad and the ugly

10/13/2020 by scmarketing

The quality of the data that you hold plays a vital role in the success of your marketing strategy.

It’s worth noting that lists used for email marketing decay between 20-30% each year so if it’s entered incorrectly into your CRM system in the first place then you’re not going to be off to a great start. You’ll experience a reduction in email delivery which will impact the success of any email marketing campaign going forward and your overall lead generation goals.

Quality data for your marketing campaigns

It’s key that your email addresses are validated. So, that would include people signing up to receive your email newsletters from an online form, as it’s something they have requested. This is a qualified lead.

What’s important is to review data on a regular basis and cleanse it.

The fact that we are required to include an unsubscribe link on email marketing communication is actually a good thing as this helps cleanse your list too. It’s not a bad thing that people unsubscribe when you send them an email. Let’s face it, if people aren’t interested in your products or services then it’s best, they aren’t on your list. It’s much better to have fewer, quality leads eager to hear from you than a mammoth list of contacts that are never going to engage with you or provide bounce backs as they are no longer valid email addresses.

A consistent CRM process

Go for consistency in your CRM process so ensuring email addresses, names, company detail, contact number are always added and they are added correctly.

Ultimately you want your firm to adopt the CRM system you deploy. But if the detail is incorrect when team members go to access data then very soon colleagues will become despondent and revert back to, what they think, is a trusted excel spreadsheet. This then creates the ongoing cycle of silos within a company. This way marketing will never sync with sales or business development teams and vital new business opportunities will be lost in the ether.

So, take time to get the process of inputting data instilled in your team in the first instance, that way you will reap rewards in the long-term as again and again the team will find success from the contacts entered into your system.

CRM data

The basics to include in your CRM for the benefit of your marketing strategy include the contacts first and last name. An email and physical address as well as phone number and web address. As well as any social handles whether their personal LinkedIn or company related.

It’s also useful to gather data about them about their life. Following your initial networking with your contact, these are great reminders to add to the CRM about what you discussed as this will help with ongoing client relationships, future meetings and give your colleagues insight.

Using a system like Hubspot CRM can help you access website activity so you can soon get an understanding of how often people visit the website, services viewed or eBooks downloaded.

CRM for accountants

As a Hubspot partner, we can help you with CRM for your business to help make a really effective lead generation campaign.

What’s important about any lead generation campaign is to continue to be insightful with your communication, providing answers to challenges that you know your clients face. With the insight you have as a result of your CRM, this can really help you tailor an ongoing content marketing plan tailored to your target audience.

We’re a digital marketing agency based in Croydon with a specialism in marketing for professional services firms including digital marketing for accountants.

Read our blog on lead generation strategies for your business.

Blog as part of content marketing strategy

Content builds trust

09/30/2020 by scmarketing

Building trust is essential for lead generation. A huge part of building trust with potential clients is through the type of content you create and publish on your website and other digital channels.

Your content marketing strategy will encompass blogs for your website and social media posts through to email campaigns and Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising. It is your chance to build brand awareness and through regular unique content, start to build trust as leads begin to familiarise themselves with your products and services.

Content marketing plan

When it comes to content, it is important to develop a schedule, this will make sure you are uploading blog posts, distributing email newsletters or sharing updates on social media on a regular basis with a constant stream of new and relevant content.

The more you share, the more people will see what you have to offer and the more likely they will remember it. However, you don’t want to bombard potential customers with information. There needs to be a healthy balance.

In your blogs, you can cover topics which showcase your expertise in specific areas while keeping content clear and concise. Remember do not be afraid to give away information for free, this is a great technique to bring people in. So, create tips and advice articles, publish case studies, offer fact sheets or ebook downloads.

Content has to add value and help people solve a very specific problem. That’s why we always recommend creating an online persona of your target audience and that you always consider solving their challenges with your products and services.

Write blogs that answer their questions. The goal is to optimise that post to appear in related searches by including keywords.

Marketing your business, whether an accounting practice, construction firm or retail environment, needs to establish trust with your target audience. The way you do that is by providing value and repetition through creating content that is unique, timely and frequent.

SEO

Improving Search Engine Optimisation / SEO is key to improving your ranking in search engines helping to get your company seen online. Your content is part of this strategy. Prospective clients type in keywords relating to your business, so the more you include specific keywords throughout your content will help your SEO.

Digital marketing Croydon

If your company is based in South London, Croydon and surrounding areas get in touch to receive advice on creating a digital marketing campaign that’s tailored to your business. We can provide support on content for websites, social media, Pay Per Click campaigns through to emails.

Blogs to check out:

We work with a range of clients including accountants and accounting firms providing professional digital marketing services including content marketing for accountants.

How to use email as part of your marketing strategy

08/16/202008/13/2020 by scmarketing

With a flurry of marketing activity and communication with existing clients when lockdown started, you could be forgiven for thinking that you can start to ease up on your communication. However, now is not the time to stop your marketing.

It’s so important to keep up the informative messages of support that you shared with clients and prospect at early lockdown stages. If your last email or social message was about closing your business or working remotely, you really need to start thinking about sharing up to date news to encourage client retention and new business.

This is where email marketing can be so effective. With so many people working remotely, email acts as advertising for your virtual shop window. Rather than strolling down the street looking at a shop or business window, the billboard is coming to your email inbox.

Here’s three tips when considering email marketing as part of your communications strategy.

1. Targeted email marketing content

When you write your emails always write to your target audience. It’s always a good idea to think that you are sending your email to one person so you can make content really personal. With relevant content it will help with open rate for a more successful email marketing campaign.

Our blog on creating an online persona for your business can help you with getting your content really targeted to your audience.

Remember to offer useful tips and advice, industry insight as well as highlight any relevant offers you are providing that may help their business.

2. Cleanse your email lists

With huge changes to businesses due to COVID, cleansing your email distribution list should be high on your agenda.

If you’ve distributed emails during this time then you’ll be aware of a higher bounce rate then perhaps you have done previously, this will be due to businesses changing staff, furloughed staff and unfortunately companies having to reduce employees.

Monitor the bounce rate and make changes accordingly. It’s better to have a smaller mailing list of qualified and quality contacts than a large list of emails that don’t reach their recipient.

All the while you must make sure that your emails are GDPR compliant. Ensure that you have a visible and clear unsubscribe option in the footer when you distribute your email.

If you have a pop-up box on your website to gather email addresses then ensure that you are transparent in that you are using their email for your e-newsletter updates and nothing else.

We can help you with adding this pop-up call-to-action function to your website to encourage potential customers to sign up to receive your e-shots.

3. Keep in regular contact

As part of you content marketing plan factor in a weekly or monthly e-newsletter. However regular is up to you. It’s about what you think you can manage to ensure that you remain consistent. If you send a monthly round up of news, then make sure you send this on the first working day of every month.

As part of this consistency ensure you have a branded email template that you can update each time, this helps with brand awareness, a professional look and recipients become more familiar with you.

A great time saver for content is to repurpose blogs that you write throughout the month. You can edit content down for your e-newsletter. Then add a link with a click through back to the full article to read more.

Email marketing agency London

We’re a digital marketing company with offices in London and Croydon. We offer a range of inbound marketing tactics for businesses including email marketing for accountants, professional services firms and SMEs.

Book a free consultation with us to chat about your next email campaign, growing your email distribution list and using email as a lead generator.