Inbound Email Marketing: Everything You Need to Know
As a business leader, you’re driven by the constant desire to expand your brand’s influence and visibility. What better way to increase the effectiveness of your marketing campaign — and lead generation results — than with the proven strategy of inbound email marketing?
With email marketing, you can improve your marketing strategy lead generation efforts, plus boost your brand awareness by messaging your customers directly and showing them that they play a valuable role in your business.
Ready to learn more about inbound email marketing? Get all your answers below!
What is inbound email marketing?
A few decades ago, businesses relied on direct mailing lists to market their brand.
That meant sending carefully curated messages in envelopes straight to a client’s front door. In essence, they engaged in outbound marketing — or more traditional advertising methods to drive their message to the public.
These advertisements have become saturated by businesses, however.
Inbound marketing focuses on drawing your audience’s attention to your brand rather than seeking out any audience, including the wrong one. You don’t want your business to fall into your subscribers’ junk mail folder after all, right?
Rather than sending out mass emails with the hope they’ll generate new leads, you adopt a strategic approach with email marketing. Inbound email marketing focuses on sending emails to people interested in your products, services, and brand.
Think of outbound marketing as pushing content onto users and inbound marketing as pulling users in with content. Which seems more effective? When you motivate your target audience to come to your website, rather than lure them to it, you maximize the success of your campaign.
To gain new customers from inbound marketing, contact us here.
Why is inbound email marketing useful?
Effective communication is the key to a successful marketing campaign — which makes inbound email marketing the ideal strategy for companies of all sizes. Whether you’re an enterprise, startup, or small-to-midsize business (SMB), you can benefit from email marketing.
Far too often, companies fall into the habit of being “spammy” when it comes to their email marketing initiatives. You want to send messages about your brand and inform clients about your products and services, but you need to do it in moderation and with personalization.
Fortunately, inbound email marketing avoids the unwanted traps of outbound campaigns.
Outbound techniques appear aggressive, pushy, and in-your-face. Inbound email marketing, however, still reaches your intended audience with your desired message — but filters out users not interested in your brand.
So what does this mean for your business?
For one, you save countless dollars you would have otherwise spent on an untargeted campaign. With that benefit, you maximize your email marketing spend by reaching users that are more likely to open your email and act on its message.
How to improve your inbound email marketing
While many businesses use inbound email marketing techniques, not every company knows the best way to put their marketing efforts into action. Whether you’re looking to improve the click-through-rate (CTR) of your emails or maximize their potential, you can follow these five simple tricks to spruce up your inbound email marketing tactics.
1. Mind the details
You might think that writing a killer email is a surefire way to grab your audience’s attention, but there’s so much more involved in an effective inbound email marketing campaign. While your messaging is crucial, your grammar, tone, and style matter too.
In an inbound email marketing campaign, you’re often crafting messages for people who willingly joined your subscription list. You don’t want a few sloppily written emails to undermine the work you’ve put into building your subscriber list.
Reflect the quality of your company and values upheld by your brand by proofreading your emails before you send them out. You can look over them, as well as ask a co-worker to browse through them.
2. Revamp your subject lines
Although emails are a fast and easy way to communicate, people don’t dedicate their entire day to browsing and filtering their email messages — especially ones unrelated to work, family, or friends. Often, people only spend a few moments glimpsing through their email.
That means you need to craft messages with intriguing subject lines that interest readers.
Avoid making your subject lines wordy — it’ll only encourage subscribers to ignore your emails. Instead, create a sense of urgency in your messages and convince readers that they’d benefit from opening and reading your latest email.
3. Provide value
Words are powerful, which means your emails have the authority to convince and persuade people to act. If you want to nurture your company’s leads, however, you have to provide a sense of worth in the messages you send out.
Why should your subscribers open your emails?
If there isn’t a good reason why they should, you may find it difficult to reap the benefits of an effective email marketing campaign. Write an exciting, user-focused email that provides valuable information to your target audience to maximize your open rates.
One way to create email that entice readers? Offer free content.
Consumers love free content, so consider including discount and referral codes in your emails. Or, provide your subscribers with free, exclusive content — like a guide — to keep them engaged and entertained.
4. Pick your timing with care
If you’re running a promotion that ends tomorrow, don’t wait until today to send out emails to your readers. Time is always a valuable resource — and nothing rings truer when it comes to the success of your inbound marketing email campaign.
Think about your audience and when they’re most likely to view your emails. If you’re a healthcare provider, sending your messages on a Monday at 3 a.m. isn’t the best time. Discover the best time for your audience by experimenting with send times.
Often, late mornings on weekdays — around 10 a.m. — is the best time to email consumers. While weekends may seem like a great time to send an email to your target audience, Saturday and Sunday tend to have lower open rates than weekdays.
5. Make conversions your goal
Provide calls-to-action (CTAs) at the end of your email that invite your subscribers to explore your page further. Redirect them to your website or provide them with the incentive that motivates them to purchase your product, call your company, or another action.
Consider using a promo code that lets your clients enjoy an added discount on your products or services. Not only does it provide a rewarding feeling for readers, but it may just convert them from potential customers into long-term and loyal customers.
Try to create a personal and welcoming tone whenever possible too.
Your subscribers don’t want to feel detached or removed from the content you’re creating. Whether you provide a sense of added worth in your emails or address your customers by their name in your messages, remember that personalization can drive conversions.
Enhance your inbound email marketing campaign
No inbound email marketing campaign is one-size-fits-all, so you have to experiment to discover what works best for your business. Once you uncover effective techniques and strategies for enhancing your inbound marketing email efforts, you can reap the rewards.
Need help with your email marketing campaign?
At WebFX, we bring more than 20 years of experience — and more than $1.5 billion in results — to our clients’ email marketing campaigns. Discover how our team can help your company grow by contacting us online today!