Email Marketing - Who Is Living Inside Your List?

Email Marketing

Email marketing can often be looked down on upon as the poor man of the digital marketing world, yet if you look a little closer and remove any prejudices you will start to see a robust tool capable of nurturing existing clients and contacts until they are ready to buy from you.

In addition to this, if you are attracting new prospects into your marketing funnel you can use email marketing to educate these people about your and your proposition in order to pull them through your funnel to set up an appointment, or better still, make a purchase.

Does Anyone Actually Read Your Emails?

Sure, we all get emails and don’t read them. I’m guilty of this too. In fact, if anyone actually knew how many emails I don’t read, I’d probably be embarrassed… So with all the trouble it takes to produce your beloved newsletter and very few people opening it, well what is the point I hear you ask? Before I answer this let’s start by looking at the various groups of individuals that exist within your email list.

Level One - The Thinkers

On the first hand let’s bear in mind that whilst someone might not even open your email the very fact they are seeing your name pop up in their Inbox on a semi-regular basis can help keep you top of mind. Eventually they may wonder what you're up to and start to dig a little deeper. Let’s call these people “The Thinkers” as they may start to think a bit about you and what you’re up to.

Level Two - The Openers

Say your prospect goes ahead and actually opens your newsletter and reads it all the way through but doesn’t actually click to go to your website to find out more? These people are your Openers. They have taken the first step. Something made them think and they came along to your newsletter to have a quick look. At least they now know what it is you're focused on…

Level Three - The Interested

The third group of people in your email list are those very few people who take the time to open up your newsletter, read it and then click to visit your website to read more. Even if these people aren’t ready to buy or even set up an appointment they are telling you something very important. They are segmenting themselves and telling you what it is they are interested in. Think about it. We want to know as much as possible about our prospects and find out what it is they are interested in. The very fact they have clicked on one of your articles is telling you that they are interested in this subject matter - very useful information indeed.A lot of people fail to see the significance of these three groups of prospects. OK, they may not be a lead or a customer this month, but they may actually be moving closer to it than you think. Better still some people will have segmented themselves for you so that a clever follow up campaign can be more specifically targeted towards them. Very useful indeed.

Level Four - The Leads 

This is where it starts to get interesting. Depending on how you have set your funnel up, someone has now clicked to get in touch. They have digested your content and they are now ready to reveal themselves as a potential new client. These people are gold dust but do bear in mind that they aren’t a paying customer just yet. They are still only a lead and they still need to be sold. If you are in the B2B space you really should be trying to move them to an appointment. This could take the form of a face-to-face meeting if they aren’t too far away or a Skype call to have a chat.

Level Five - The Customers

Depending on what you are selling you may be able to automatically transact your business online. But even if you can’t do this and you are using your digital marketing to generate leads you will hopefully end up with a customer. For obvious reasons these people are the most important of all as they help to pay your wages. It also means they have been a customer once and the chances of them buying again should be much higher if you provide a quality service. As time goes by your emails need to consider these people too and begin to nurture them as the client they are and the client they could be in the future.

Email Marketing - is it really worth the hassle?

As I sit here late at night penning this blog there must be a reason I am doing this? To be brutally honest, I’m not just doing this for the sake of it. I’m doing this it to nurture my existing clients and I’m also using it win some new ones.

I asked the question at the beginning of this blog if email marketing is actually worth it. So what better way to demonstrate this than to open my very own kimono and spill the beans if it actually works for us. I am a great believer in digital marketing and using content to lead from the front. Granted it does take effort but for anything worthwhile in life I tend to find that this is always the case. To be honest, the future of Enlighten IC is dependent on this stuff actually working. Not because every Tom, Dick and Harry is telling me to do it, but because I actually believe it works.So, has it worked for us? OK, we’re only a few months in with “Insight” (which I do hope you are enjoying by the way - if you do be sure to let me know) but if I told you that with a tiny list we’ve already generated about £20,000 in opportunities? OK, we might not convert all of these and some people may just be tyre kickers looking for some free info (what are the odds, eh?), but that’s £20,000 more opportunities than if I hadn’t even tried.

When I started “Insight” I had a vision and this newsletter and blog has only been phase one. We are about to GO BIG with phase two and have some really exciting developments coming down the line. So much so we see the majority of our business coming from exports within the next 6 to 9 months.

So keep watching this space and I promise you one thing, I will put my money where my mouth is and report back as we go. If you aren't quite convinced or don’t believe me then keep watching or better still give me shout and I can talk you through our plans.