The Ultimate Email Marketing Cheat Sheet

Nurture Leads and Generate Sales with Our Quick Guide to Effective Emailing

Email marketing has proven to be an effective tool to nurture leads and generate sales if done properly. Often, startups and small businesses want to take advantage of its marketing power but struggle to get it to take off.

If you’re trying to tackle email marketing and not reaping the benefits, here’s a cheat sheet to help you get the most out of your efforts and start growing your business.

19 Ways to be on Your Email Marketing Game

What to Do Before Sending Out Emails

1. 1. Budget

It’s important to understand that email marketing is an investment. It’s not only sending out an email and hoping for the best. You’ll need to sit down and calculate what you can and cannot spend. Be realistic and make sure it’s in line with your goals.

1. 1. Goals

Before you send out any emails, you need to know what you’re trying to achieve. Why are you sending out the emails in the first place? Is it to gain website traffic? Nurture leads? All of the above? Whatever your reason for utilizing email marketing, be clear about what you want to achieve from it, and know how you’re going to measure your success.

1. 1. Plan & Strategy

Don’t even think about sending out a single email without first developing an effective email marketing plan and strategy. You’ll need to know your target audience, why you’re sending out emails, and how often you’ll be sending them out.

If you’re considering marketing automation to nurture your leads, you’ll also need to add this to your strategy. Take into consideration your landing pages, thank you pages, emails, and other relatable offers.

1. 1. Email Service Provider

Having a trusted email service provider allows you to create and monitor your emails in one place quickly. Many offer easy-to-use pre-designed or customized templates that allow you to create captivating emails quickly – saving you time. Some also provide list management and in-depth reporting so you can build on your lead-nurturing efforts and make adjustments to your campaign as needed.

1. 1. List Segmentation & Targeting

Don’t ignore list segmentation and targeting. It should be a key portion of your email marketing strategy. Developing lists allows you to know your audience and properly nurture your leads. Lists can be created based on actions taken by your audience from form submissions to social interactions. You can use these lists to hone in on your prospect’s interests, concerns and needs to help nurture them through the buyer’s journey.

1. 1. Reporting

Without reporting, you won’t know if what you’re doing is even working. You’ll need to check your open rates, click-throughs, lists, and more to determine what you’re doing wrong and build on what you’re doing right. Maybe your audience didn’t respond well to your last offer. Don’t keep sending out the same offer or something similar. It’s your opportunity to analyze what was wrong and change it up.

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What to Do When You’ve Decided to Send Emails

• Branding

Consistency is key when it comes to branding your business. You want to look professional and gain brand awareness. Everything you create is a representation of your company, so stay classy. Use your company logo, fonts, and color schemes. Having a style guide readily available is a great way to ensure you get it right.

• Subject Line

Your subject line is where you’ll make your first impression. So make it count. Don’t be annoying or spammy when creating subject lines. Your email needs to stand out from 1000 other emails in their inbox. Grab their attention, keep it brief, and be clear about what you’re offering. It’s all about building relationships with your audience.

• Professional Email Address

Your sender email should be a real person who’s part of your company. Do not use info@. Use their name. For instance, jane@yourcompany.com. It will increase the open rate and help keep your email out of the spam box.

• Personalization

Before you send out your emails, be sure to add a personal touch. You can add their first name and last name to content based on their browsing history and interests. Your readers don’t want to feel as though they’re on a mass email list. They want to feel as if their interest in you is reciprocated.

• Context and Value

You’re just wasting everyone’s time if you send an email without thinking of your customer. Make sure you’re addressing your audience’s concerns and offering a way you can help them. You need to show value, so they’ll reward you with action. Be sure to outline and highlight the benefits of your offer so they can quickly and easily understand why they need it. Show the importance of your offer by using powerful and captivating copy, but don’t be too “wordy”. Brevity is important.

• Imagery

When building your emails, be sure to use professional photos that directly relate to the email. For example, if you’re sending an email offering 10% off lawn service with a picture of puppies, your reader will be confused. You want a photo that directly relates to lawn service. Imagery helps to break up text for better readability and helps readers make a connection to the offer.

• CTA

Your call-to-actions need to clearly state what action you want your reader to take and create a sense of urgency. Make them feel as though they need to take action right away. Stay away from using any vague terms, such as “Download” or “Submit”, while still relating to the offer.

• Additional Offers

If you have other offers you’d like to share with your audience, you can also add these to your emails. However, be sure they’re related to the initial offer. You’re targeting their interests. Providing a product or service they’re not interested in could cause you to lose a subscriber.

• Social Sharing

Adding social sharing icons to your email content allows your audience to share content they like with their friends and family. It’s an easy way to expand your reach and get referrals without asking directly.

• Social Media Follow Buttons

Give your audience another way to connect with your business. Offering quick access to your social media accounts allows them to get to know you and engage with you on another platform.

• Unsubscribe Link

Not providing an unsubscribe link on your emails guarantees you’re going to be added to a spam list at some point. It’s just bad practice. You should provide an easy way for your audience to “opt out” of your emails. If they’re not interested, it’s okay. Continue to nurture your leads and you’ll see growth over time.

• Automation

Sending automated emails is the simplest and most efficient way to make sure you don’t miss an opportunity to nurture a lead. One of the easiest examples of an automated email is sending a thank you email after a customer takes action on your website. Let’s say they purchased something from your site around 1 am. Right after their purchase, a personalized email is sent out thanking them for your purchase while, chances are, you’re still in bed sound asleep. From there, you could have a series of automated lead nurturing emails to help them through their journey and provide new offers.

• A/B Testing

From subject lines to visuals, you can create different versions of the same email to determine what’s the most effective. It’s a way to test what your audience likes and doesn’t like. Don’t be afraid to make changes along the way. Just stay true to your branding.