Category Archives: Email Marketing

It’s a regular day and you’re checking off your to-do list: drafting emails for a welcome sequence, going through analytics from a recent email campaign, and more. 

As you’re about to start your next task, you hear the notification bell on your phone. 

Curious, you check it out and see an email from your favorite newsletter—and there’s an intriguing subject line that has you itching to read it.

Without hesitation, you click on the email and spend the next five minutes laughing and enjoying its contents. Once you’re done, you can’t help but share it with your close friends to brighten their day.

As you get back to work, you find yourself eagerly anticipating the next newsletter.

A brand that sends such engaging emails earns the attention, trust, and loyalty of its email subscribers. 

They accomplish this by implementing effective email nurturing strategies, which we are going to discuss today. We’ll also cover:

• How to leverage the power of crafty and intriguing subject lines to increase open rates
• The best practices for email nurturing that increase brand awareness
• How to implement design thinking principles into your email nurturing strategy to foster customer loyalty

Without further ado, let’s dive straight into how you can cultivate strong customer relationships through email nurturing.

1 – Leveraging the Power of Email Nurturing to Cultivate Strong Customer Relationships

Nurturing an email list is a delicate art that involves building and maintaining relationships with subscribers over time through a series of strategic and personalized email communications. We do so with the following overarching goals in mind:

• Engaging and interacting with subscribers
• Providing them with valuable content
• Moving them closer to becoming loyal customers

At OnDigitalMarketing, we understand the importance of customer engagement in digital marketing. That’s why we advocate for implementing design thinking strategies in email nurturing.

Design thinking is a problem-solving approach that emphasizes empathy, experimentation, and iteration to create innovative solutions. When applied to marketing, it helps businesses better understand their customers, uncover valuable insights, and develop effective strategies.

By delivering personalized and valuable content through email, businesses can create customized user experiences that boost engagement and open rates.

To illustrate, let’s imagine a scenario featuring an online fitness program that offers workout programs, nutrition guides, and motivational content. 

Your goal is to nurture its email list by providing valuable and engaging content that resonates with subscribers and encourages them to maintain an active and healthy lifestyle.

Here’s a step-by-step guide to how you can use design thinking to build a stronger customer relationship with your email list:

1. Understand your customer: Start by gaining a deep understanding of your email subscribers through surveys, interviews, or by engaging with them on social media to gather insights into their fitness goals, challenges, and interests.
   For example, you may discover that many of your subscribers struggle with finding motivation to exercise regularly due to a busy schedule or a lack of variety in their workouts.
   To address this, empathize with them through an email sequence that provides actionable advice to keep their motivation levels up.
2. Identify their needs and generate ideas: Jot down your subscribers’ needs, goals and pain points using your user persona template.
   This step allows you to brainstorm creative ideas that will provide value and engage your customers. Think outside the box and suggest innovative and creative ways to address their needs.
   For instance, a “Fitness Adventure Challenge” email series. Each email presents a new virtual fitness adventure where subscribers can unlock achievements and earn rewards by completing specific workouts or challenges.
3. Design a prototype, test it, and collect feedback: Create a prototype of your email nurturing strategy by designing a sample email series for the “Fitness Adventure Challenge.”
   We recommend using visual elements, storytelling techniques, and interactive features to make it engaging and immersive. Test it with a small group of subscribers to gather feedback and refine your approach.
   Subscribers may provide positive feedback, expressing excitement about the interactive features, motivation from the virtual rewards, and enjoyment of the variety in the workouts.
   However, some may suggest adding nutritional tips or a community aspect to enhance the experience further.
4. Implement and scale: Based on the feedback received and improvements suggested, launch the full “Fitness Adventure Challenge” email series to your entire email list.
   Monitor engagement metrics such as open rates, click-through rates, and subscriber responses to assess the impact of your nurturing strategy. Continuously iterate and refine the series based on ongoing feedback and analytics.

Statistics: By implementing the strategies contained in our worksheets and textbook, we’ve helped over 54 companies generate revenue totaling $350 million.

We’ve successfully presented these tactics at three undergraduate universities, following an in-depth and intense peer review process.

By leveraging the expertise of OnDigitalMarketing, businesses can elevate their email nurturing efforts to new heights.

Watch the video below to learn more about why email personalization is important.

2 – Crafting Effective Email Nurture Campaigns Through Personalization

Building meaningful relationships with your customers takes time and effort.

The nature of email nurturing allows you to maintain regular and consistent communication with your customers.

By staying in touch and consistently providing valuable content, updates, and offers, you create opportunities to engage and build a connection with your audience over time.

Consistency is key. 

It builds trust and keeps your brand top of mind for your customers.

Let’s explore how you can leverage personalization to create effective email nurture campaigns that engage your prospects and customers and ultimately drive better results:

Personalize Your Content

“A person’s name is to him or her the sweetest and most important sound in any language.”

—Dale Carnegie.

Think about it.

How does it feel to hear someone say your name?

Absolutely fantastic.

So, instead of sending generic emails that greet your customers with a dreadfully boring opening such as “Dear customer” or even worse “Dear (company name) subscriber,” leverage personalization to make your emails feel tailored to each recipient. 

Say you run an online bookstore, and a customer named Emily has shown interest in mystery novels and historical fiction. 

To make the book recommendation sound like it’s coming from an old book-loving friend, consider addressing her by name and recommending new releases in those genres or offering exclusive discounts on similar books based on her past purchases.

It might go a little bit like this: “How’s it going, Emily? Discover Thrilling Mysteries and Engaging Historical Fiction Just for You.”

Write Engaging Email Copy

Engaging email copy is essential for capturing the attention and interest of your audience. 

It involves writing email content that speaks directly to your recipients, maintaining a conversational tone, and delivering value-driven information by leveraging the power of user personas.

Going back to our online bookstore example, we would recommend writing copy that adopts a conversational tone and addresses the recipient as a fellow mystery enthusiast.

Copy written in such a manner creates a sense of excitement and anticipation, highlighting the captivating nature of your bookstore’s collection. 

We would also advise you to make the copy emphasize the value-driven aspects of your bookstore by showcasing a diverse range of mystery genres in the email’s visuals and mentioning an exclusive discount as a special perk for being part of the community.

Additionally, use storytelling techniques in your copy to evoke emotions and engage the reader’s imagination. 

For instance, phrases such as “Step into the shadows,” “Enigmatic characters,” and “Heart-pounding suspense” create vivid imagery and build anticipation for the reading experience.

Write Compelling Subject Lines

Did you know that emails with compelling and personalized subject lines generate a 50% higher open rate?

To illustrate, let’s consider the subject lines of Morning Brew, a newsletter with a 4 million plus subscriber base and an open rate of 50%—way above the industry standards.

Morning Brew follows a meticulous approach when it comes to choosing email subject lines. First of all, they often use subject lines with fewer than five words that are super creative and curiosity-provoking. 

They have one or two writers on their team come up with four intriguing subject lines based on the content of the newsletter. They then conduct A/B testing on the different subject line suggestions.

Instead of sending the newsletter to their 4 million readers at once, they first segment their audience into four smaller batches of 80,000 readers. During this process, they assign different subject lines to each batch.

After the newsletter is sent, Morning Brew relies on analytics to evaluate the performance of each subject line to identify the one that generated the highest open rate.

They subsequently send this winning subject line to the remaining subscribers, increasing the likelihood of higher open rates. 

This approach allows them to fine-tune their email marketing strategy, improve engagement and relationship building, and deliver content that is captivating and relevant to their readers.

Expert Tip: Use personalized emails to create a customized user experience and increase email engagement and open rates in email nurturing campaigns.

The table below provides an overview of the demographic data of customers, including their age, gender, location, education level, employment status, and income bracket.

By understanding these segments, businesses can tailor their email nurturing strategies to target specific customer groups effectively. 

This information can help businesses personalize their email content, promotions, and recommendations to resonate with their customers and drive engagement and conversions.

3 – Best Practices for Email Nurturing to Enhance Brand Awareness

Email nurturing isn’t just about promoting your products or services.

It goes beyond promotional content and plays a crucial role in shaping brand awareness. It involves cultivating a strong brand image and building lasting relationships with your customers.

“The most important thing to remember is you must know your audience.”

—Lewis Howes

Every email you send provides an opportunity to showcase your brand’s values, personality, and unique selling points. 

By consistently aligning your email content with your brand identity, you reinforce the desired perception in the minds of your subscribers. 

It’s also about cultivating a strong brand image and building lasting relationships with your customers.

Here are some best practices for email nurturing that can help your business enhance its brand awareness:

• Segmenting and personalizing emails: By segmenting your email list and personalizing your messages based on customer preferences and behaviors, you deliver targeted and relevant content to each subscriber, increasing engagement and brand loyalty.
  For instance, let’s revisit the online fitness program example. You can segment your email list into categories such as beginner, intermediate, and advanced levels and send workout recommendations and tips tailored to each subscriber’s fitness level.
• Easy opt-in and opt-out process: Making it easy for your customers to opt-in or opt-out of your email communications is crucial for building relationships and maintaining trust.
  By giving clear instructions and ensuring a user-friendly process, you demonstrate transparency and respect for your subscribers’ preferences.
• Consistent voice and tone: Using a consistent voice and tone in your emails that reflect your brand personality helps customers recognize and connect with your business. It builds familiarity and trust, contributing to enhanced brand awareness.
  For example, if you’re a marketer for a quirky and playful fashion brand, opt for a lively and light-hearted tone. Fill your copy with humor, creative language, and witty subject lines that resonate with your target audience.

OnDigitalMarketing has a comprehensive, evidence-based collection of worksheets and a textbook that is built around design thinking fundamentals to equip you with the only digital marketing education you will ever need to succeed.

This guide will help you gain industry insights across various marketing channels and topics, including:

• Email
• Search engine optimization
• Social media
• Digital strategy
• Analytics and data visualization

The table below displays key performance indicators (KPIs) for email marketing campaigns, including open rates, click-through rates, conversion rates, and unsubscribe rates. 

These are crucial metrics for monitoring and optimizing the effectiveness of your email nurturing efforts and enhancing customer engagement.

By monitoring and optimizing these metrics on an ongoing basis, you can improve the effectiveness of your email nurturing efforts, enhance your brand awareness, and increase customer engagement and loyalty.

Become Your Customers’ Digital Best Friend

Well, that’s a wrap on how to nurture your email list to build stronger relationships with your customers.

Remember, email nurturing is a powerful strategy for lead capture and relationship building in digital marketing. It allows your brands to engage with customers on a personal level, leading to enhanced customer experience and brand awareness. 

Implementing design thinking principles to personalize email copy, subject lines, and user experience brings you one step closer to cultivating stronger customer relationships.

OnDigitalMarketing is a digital marketing education company whose teachings have been curated by digital marketing and eCommerce experts and used by 1,324 students in 212 countries.

Guarantee: Everything we teach undergoes in-depth and intense peer review from third-party industry experts to ensure that our services are top-tier.

To receive access to exclusive content, deals with partner websites, upcoming courses, and insider tips, be sure to sign up for our email newsletter so that we can help you launch a successful career in marketing.

Imagine you own a well-known and respected restaurant in a bustling city.

Over the years, you’ve built a stellar reputation for serving delicious food, providing excellent service, and creating memorable dining experiences. 

As a result, your restaurant enjoys a steady stream of loyal customers, positive word-of-mouth referrals, and glowing reviews.

In the digital marketing realm, having a positive sender reputation is like being that reputable restaurant. 

Just as diners are loyal and look forward to frequenting your establishment, recipients trust and eagerly anticipate receiving emails from a company with a positive sender reputation.

Today, we’re going to discuss how you can mitigate hard bounce emails and ensure you maintain a high sender reputation for improved email deliverability. We’ll also discuss:

• How email service providers determine your sender reputation
• The benefits of implementing email authentication protocols
• Anti-spam guidelines and regulations that you should abide by to ensure you never end up in the dreaded spam folder

Without further ado, let’s delve straight into the ultimate guide to mitigating hard bounce emails and recovering your sender reputation.

1 – How to Mitigate Hard Bounce Emails

“By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.”

— Benjamin Franklin

Although a hard bounce is defined as a phenomenon that occurs when an email is permanently rejected and cannot be delivered to the recipient, it’s not an occurrence that can’t be negated once it occurs.

There are several best practices that you can implement into your email marketing strategy to reduce hard bounces and improve email deliverability rates, including:

Maintain a Clean and Updated Email List

By ensuring that your list remains squeaky clean (updating and removing invalid or inactive addresses), you can improve email deliverability, reduce email bounce rates, and maintain a high-quality subscriber base.

Most email service providers make this extremely easy by providing bounce reports that categorize emails as either hard bounces or soft bounces.

Regularly review these bounce reports to identify email addresses that consistently result in hard bounces. 

It’s important to distinguish soft bounces, which can occur due to temporary issues, from persistent hard bounces.

For instance, if you notice that a specific email address consistently generates three consecutive hard bounces over multiple campaigns, it’s a strong indicator that the email address is invalid or inactive. 

Promptly remove such addresses from your mailing list to maintain its cleanliness.

To ensure that the email addresses provided by your customers are valid from the get-go, implement a double opt-in authentication. 

Double opt-in is a two-step authentication process where subscribers need to confirm their email address by clicking on a verification link sent to their inbox.

When someone signs up for your newsletter or service, they are sent an automated email with a verification link. 

Only when they click on the link and confirm their subscription should their email address be added to your mailing list. This helps ensure that only engaged and valid email addresses are included.

Key Takeaway: Maintaining a clean and updated email list is crucial for better email deliverability. Regularly remove invalid or inactive addresses identified through bounce reports, and implement double opt-in authentication to ensure engaged and valid subscribers.

Implement Email Authentication Protocols

Email authentication protocols, such as Sender Policy Framework (SPF), DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKM), and Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance (DMARC), are designed to enhance email security by verifying the authenticity and integrity of email messages.

These protocols are checked by email service providers (ESPs) to verify the authenticity of your sender domain. This prevents unauthorized, malicious parties from sending emails that appear to be from your domain.

To further your understanding of email authentication protocols, the following table compares SPF, DKIM, and DMARC, highlighting their primary functions and how they can help reduce hard bounce rates in your email marketing efforts.

To illustrate, let’s say you run email marketing campaigns for an online banking service. By implementing email authentication protocols, you ensure that only legitimate emails sent from your official domain are recognized as authentic. 

This prevents cybercriminals from sending fraudulent emails to your customers while pretending to be your bank, and attempting to steal sensitive information.

Implementing email authentication protocols demonstrates your commitment to email security and will protect your customers from email-based threats. This, in turn, fosters trust and confidence in your brand.

Comply With Anti-Spam Guidelines and Regulations

While most ESPs have their own specific anti-spam guidelines and regulations, there are a few overarching industry standards that all identify with. Some of these include:

• Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography And Marketing Act (CAN-SPAM USA)
• Canada Anti-Spam Legislation (CASL)
• General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR European Union)

Familiarize yourself with these guidelines according to the country you’re from as they’re usually the primary base used by ESPs to develop their individual policies. 

They may provide guidance on how to comply with said policies and offer features or tools that may help you escape common anti-spam pitfalls.

For example, the CAN-SPAM Act is a United States federal law that sets the rules for commercial email communication. 

It requires you to include specific information in your commercial emails, such as a valid physical postal address and a clear opt-out mechanism.

By complying with the CAN-SPAM Act, you ensure that your email communications are transparent and that recipients have the ability to opt out of receiving future emails.

ESPs often provide guidance on how to comply with the CAN-SPAM Act, including features or tools to help you include the required information and manage opt-out requests effectively. 

For instance, Gmail put together an actionable and comprehensive guide based on CAN-SPAM Act guidelines that can help you prevent your emails from being blocked and sent to spam.

Top Tip: Familiarizing yourself with anti-spam guidelines, such as CAN-SPAM, CASL, and GDPR, is important—they serve as the foundation for ESPs’ individual policies and provide guidance to prevent common anti-spam issues.

2 – How to Recover Your Sender Reputation

Picture the following scenario: You’re a delivery driver working for a reputable fresh goods company. 

Due to some careless mistakes and poor driving habits, you’ve received numerous customer complaints about late deliveries, damaged packages, and rude behavior. 

As a result, your reputation as a delivery driver becomes tarnished. In this scenario, your sender reputation is similar to your reputation as a delivery driver. 

Just as customers rely on you to deliver packages promptly and with care, email recipients expect legitimate, relevant, and valuable emails in their inboxes. 

If you consistently send emails that are irrelevant, misleading, or show up as bounce messages, it’s like delivering packages late, damaged, or to the wrong address. 

Over time, this negative experience leads to recipients flagging your emails as spam, unsubscribing, or complaining to email providers, negatively affecting your sender reputation.

As a consequence, your future emails are more likely to be treated as suspicious or filtered out altogether by ESPs.

All hope is not lost. 

Just as a delivery driver with a poor reputation must take steps to improve their behavior and regain customer trust, a sender with a poor reputation needs to address the issues causing complaints and take proactive measures to restore their reputation.

First things first, you have to understand how your sender reputation is decided by mailbox providers and check your sender reputation score on a trusted website in order to understand how deep the damage runs.

Let’s break the whole process down into three actionable and digestible steps that you can apply to help you with email bounce handling:

Step 1 – Understand the Importance of Checking Sender Reputation

Checking your sender reputation helps you assess the health of your email deliverability and identify potential issues that may be affecting your email campaigns.

ESPs check your domain or IP address every time you try to send their recipients an email to see how subscribers are interacting with your messages. This will determine your sender reputation.

Then, they use a unique algorithm to give you a reputation score. Usually, they group you in one of three categories including:

• Poor (0–70): This is the worst possible score your domain can have, and you will need to take immediate action to repair your sender reputation.
  Falling into this category can reduce your email deliverability, decrease your engagement rates, and increase your likelihood of being placed on email blacklists.
• Fair (70–80): Your sender reputation is average, but there’s room for improvement. ESPs will be watching you like a hawk and may even flag legitimate emails, harming your deliverability.
• Good (80–100): This is every email marketer’s dream. ESPs trust and recognize your domain as a trusted, reputable source and don’t scrutinize your emails as much. You experience high email deliverability and enhanced brand reputation and credibility.

The table below provides a concise comparison of how different email service providers (ESPs) use unique reputation systems and the potential impact these systems have on email deliverability.

Step 2 – Utilize Sender Reputation Monitoring Tools

There are various reputable sender reputation monitoring tools, such as Sender Score, that you can utilize to gain valuable insights into your sender reputation.

These platforms have established their credibility in the industry and offer reliable assessment mechanisms for evaluating your email practices.

To illustrate, let’s imagine you’ve been running an email campaign that experiences a sudden surge in complaint rates, a drop in email deliverability, and a decline in engagement metrics.

You suspect that your domain has either been blacklisted or that most of your emails are landing in the spam folder. However, to determine the real cause of the problem, you use Sender Score to check where the problem arises.

Sender Score then runs a series of tests on your domain to assess various factors that contribute to your sender reputation, including email volume, complaint rates, blacklisting status, and spam trap hits.

This generates a report that confirms your domain is listed on a popular blacklist and detects a spike in complaint rates that is causing your emails to land in spam.

Armed with this information, you promptly investigate the reason for the blacklisting, resolve any underlying issues, and take the necessary steps to get delisted.

Additionally, you refine your email content, implement your email segmentation strategies, or improve list hygiene to increase engagement and enhance your sender reputation.

“A small list that wants exactly what you’re offering is better than a bigger list that isn’t committed.”

— Ramsay Leimenstoll

Step 3 – Make a Habit of Regularly Checking Your Sender Reputation

“Marketers need to build digital relationships and reputation before closing a sale.”

— Chris Brogan

Establish a routine where you clean and update your email list while also checking your sender reputation every month. This allows you to regularly monitor your sender reputation and track changes and trends in your reputation metrics.

It further enables you to identify any gradual declines or sudden spikes in reputation that may require attention. Early detection of such problems allows you to address them promptly, preventing further damage to your sender reputation.

Addressing any issues identified through reputation monitoring helps you resolve them before they escalate and impact your email deliverability.

For example, if you notice a sudden increase in spam complaints, you can investigate the cause and take corrective measures, such as refining your email content or reconfirming subscriber consent.

Fun Fact: Did you know that the term “spam” for unsolicited email originated from a Monty Python sketch about canned meat in 1970?

Make Your Sender Reputation Bulletproof From Hard Bounce

While hard bounce emails are a marketer’s worst nightmare, they’re not the be-all and end-all.

You can mitigate the effects of hard bounces by maintaining a clean email list, verifying email addresses, and using authentication protocols like SPF, DKIM, and DMARC. 

Moreover, by understanding how email service providers designate sender reputation, you’ll be  able to identify the root of the problem and effectively work towards solving it.

At OnDigitalMarketing, we provide tactical and real-world education that drove $350 million for clients in revenue last year alone. 

Our methods have been tried and tested across 212 countries after undergoing intense peer review from third-party industry experts.

Join our newsletter today to receive exclusive insider tips. Plus, be the first to know about collaborations with partner websites, and fresh tips and “how-to’s” on all things digital marketing.

What does it feel like to be appreciated by your favorite brand?

Perhaps they write you a heartfelt email, thanking you for supporting their business and consistently choosing them over their competitors. 

The cherry on top is they offer you a whopping 50 percent discount on your next order.

However, becoming a loyal customer of their brand and spreading the word to your friends and family about the amazing emails they send you—that seamlessly solve your problems and entertain you—wasn’t all that difficult.

In essence, they’re rewarding you for ordering something you love, as well as for interacting and engaging with the content you love to consume.

The primary goal of an email funnel is to attract customers who share this mindset.

“Email has an ability many channels don’t: creating many valuable personal touches—at scale”

—David Newman

Today, we’re going to look into how you can build an email funnel campaign that converts leads into loyal customers. We’ll also cover:

• How to prepare for an email funnel campaign launch to maximize results
• The three stages of an email funnel and how they’re all connected
• Actionable advice on how to optimize and personalize content for a smooth customer journey

Let OnDigitalMarketing show you how to harness the power of an email funnel to convert subscribers into loyal customers.

1 – Understanding the Email Funnel and Its Benefits

An email funnel, also known as an email marketing funnel or sales funnel, is a strategic process used by businesses to convert prospects into customers through a series of automated email messages. 

It’s designed to guide subscribers or leads through various stages of the buying journey and nurture them until they’re ready to make a purchase.

Think of it this way: When a prospect comes across your brand, they have a problem that needs solving, and their research has led them to you—the company with the solution.

However, they may be a bit skeptical about purchasing from you immediately, either because they’ve been burned by a company in the past or because they don’t know enough about your product to determine if it’ll provide the perfect solution. 

Customers who don’t know your brand or have only a surface-level understanding of your value proposition fall in the awareness stage of the email funnel. 

They’re fresh leads whose attention you have to capture and retain in order to help them progress further along your sales funnel.

For instance, imagine you work for a health and wellness brand that targets health-conscious individuals in busy professions who struggle to find time to plan and prepare healthy meals. Still, they’re motivated to make positive changes.

After drawing them to your page with an enticing article that promises to teach them how to meal prep in less than five minutes, you offer them a lead magnet in the form of an ebook titled “The Ultimate Guide to Healthy Meal Planning: Transform Your Diet and Boost Your Energy.”

To access the ebook, they must provide their email contact information. 

Not only is this an efficient way to capture high-quality leads, it’s also an opportunity to guide your subscribers through the remaining stages of your email funnel. 

Through a series of automated emails curated for each stage of the email funnel, you can educate, engage, and persuade prospects to take your desired action, whether it’s making a purchase, signing up for a service, or attending an event.

Lastly, it’s important to highlight that one of the greatest advantages of having an email funnel is its potential for high personalization and targeting of specific audience segments, making it a cost-effective marketing strategy.

Compared to other marketing channels, such as paid advertising, email funnels often have a lower cost per lead or conversion. 

Pro Tip: Once the initial setup is complete, you can automate your email funnels, saving copious amounts of time and effort while still delivering personalized messages to a large number of subscribers.

2 – Build an Email Funnel Framework

Just like a well-executed orchestra, an email funnel contains multiple elements that work together harmoniously to create a powerful and engaging experience for the audience.

Therefore, similar to how a conductor sets the overall direction, tempo, and dynamics of a performance, you must develop a framework that guides the sequence and flow of emails to achieve specific goals, ensuring a cohesive and effective customer journey.

Here are some actionable steps you can implement to construct an email funnel framework that converts subscribers into loyal customers:

Step 1 – Define Your Subscriber Segments

“Market segmentation is a natural result of the vast differences among people.”

—David Norman

First of all, segment your subscribers according to their needs and specific interests in order to deliver personalized and targeted content. 

For example, if you work for a clothing retailer, segment your subscribers based on gender, age, and shopping preferences. 

By sending tailored and relevant emails to each segment, such as showcasing women’s dresses to female subscribers and men’s shirts to male subscribers, you’ll increase engagement and conversion rates.

Step 2 – Choose the Right Email Marketing Platform 

Next, you’ll want automation software that is suitable for your personalization needs and offers in-depth analytics tools to track your customers’ progress in the email funnel.

Conduct thorough research and look into the unique features offered by each platform to find one that suits your needs. For instance, if you run an eCommerce business, consider using Klaviyo.

It’s a renowned platform that offers a variety of impressive features, allowing you to send personalized product recommendations and dynamic content to your subscriber list based on past interactions with your brand.

Step 3 – Create a Content Strategy

As discussed, in order to get your customer to trust you as an industry leader who can solve their problems or help them to achieve their goals, you must curate a personalized and relevant content strategy.

A well-defined content strategy ensures that your email content is valuable, engaging, and relevant to your subscribers. 

For example, a software company offering project management tools could create a content strategy that includes educational blog posts, case studies, and video tutorials. 

By providing valuable content that helps subscribers solve their problems or achieve their goals, you build trust and establish your brand as an industry authority, increasing the likelihood of conversions.

You can learn more about content strategy development in the video below:

Step 4 – Design Compelling Landing Pages

When subscribers click on a call-to-action in your email, they should be directed to a landing page that seamlessly continues the user journey and entices them to take a desired action. 

For instance, if you send your prospects a link to an upcoming webinar, the landing page they arrive at should highlight the benefits of attending the webinar and provide a simple registration form. 

An attractive and persuasive landing page with clear instructions and a strong value proposition can significantly improve conversion rates.

Step 5 – Incorporate Retargeting

Retargeting allows you to re-engage with subscribers who haven’t converted or interacted with your emails or website just yet. 

For example, if a subscriber added items to their cart but abandoned the purchase, retarget them with a follow-up email that offers a limited-time discount or free shipping. This will incentivize them to complete the purchase. By reminding them of their initial interest and providing an additional incentive, retargeting helps you stay top-of-mind, increase brand recall, and ultimately drive conversions.

Bonus Idea: Consider testing different lead magnets and landing pages to optimize your email funnel and increase conversions. This allows you to experiment with various strategies and elements to find the most effective combination for your target audience.

3 – Stages of the Email Funnel

Did you know that the term “funnel” is used to describe the process because initially a large number of customers are introduced to your brand, but only a few of these prospects actually end up taking a desired action?

The funnel analogy represents the process of guiding potential customers through several stages, starting with a larger pool of people at the top and gradually narrowing down to a smaller group of highly engaged and converted individuals at the bottom.

Let’s take a closer look at each of these stages:

Awareness

Think of the awareness stage as a welcome mat that captures the attention of your target audience and introduces them to your brand or offerings.

The main goal at this stage is to generate awareness and establish a connection with subscribers, ultimately creating interest and engagement to make them more receptive to further communication.

So, how do you accomplish this?

Say you’re a marketer for a project management tool, and you’ve recently created a blog post titled, “The Ultimate Guide to Boosting Productivity: Unleash Your Superpowers.”

You’ve incorporated SEO elements and optimized it with LSI keywords, resulting in its ranking on the first page of search engine results. 

The appealing nature of your headline and meta description attract readers who then click on your article and find it enjoyable to read for several reasons:

• You’ve organized the content in a clear and easy-to-read format, utilizing headings, bullet lists, and bolded important information to break up the text
• The article provides actionable advice, step-by-step instructions, and real-life examples, enabling readers to implement the provided productivity techniques
• Within the content, you’ve included a call-to-action inviting readers to sign up for your email newsletter, promising more valuable content and updates

Additionally, as readers reach the end of the blog post, you prompt them to enter their email information to receive a time management template related to the content they just read, which allows them to start being productive immediately.

Because you’ve just established yourself as an industry expert by optimizing the user’s experience from the get-go, you’ve piqued the curiosity of your audience. They’re now eager to learn more about your brand and see what else you have to offer.

Congratulations, you have successfully created awareness in your audience.

The table below provides a variety of lead magnet offerings that businesses can use to entice subscribers.

Each lead magnet type is accompanied by a brief description and highlights the potential benefits it offers to subscribers. 

These lead magnets can help businesses attract and engage their audience while providing valuable resources and fostering a positive relationship with subscribers.

Conversion

The conversion stage of an email funnel is a critical phase where the focus is on motivating subscribers to take a specific action that aligns with your business objectives. 

The end goal of the conversion stage is to drive a desired action from your subscribers, whether it’s making a purchase, signing up for a service, or completing a form.

During this stage of the funnel, the desired outcome is to successfully lead subscribers to complete the intended action, thereby converting them into loyal customers or achieving the desired goal.

Conversion is crucial for generating revenue, expanding your customer base, and measuring the effectiveness of your email marketing efforts.

Let’s imagine that you work for an e-commerce company that specializes in outdoor gear. To get your leads to convert, you leverage personalization based on subscriber behavior. 

You achieve this through user data analysis, by identifying a segment of subscribers who have shown a particular interest in hiking gear and accessories. 

Armed with this insight, you create targeted email campaigns that cater specifically to this segment by highlighting new hiking products, showcasing customer reviews of popular hiking gear, and offering exclusive discounts on hiking equipment. 

When your customers click on the links provided in the email, they’re directed to a landing page dedicated to each specific order. 

For example, if they clicked on a link for a new line of camping tents, the landing page would showcase compelling images of the tents, highlight key features and benefits of each one, and provide a clear call to action for making a purchase.

It’s crucial to ensure that the landing page is free from distractions, such as excessive navigation links or unrelated content.

Moreover, minimizing the number of form fields required to complete the purchase makes the process quick and easy for visitors to convert. 

Lastly, sprinkle some testimonials on the landing page to showcase customer satisfaction and boost trust.

By implementing these strategies in the conversion stage of the email funnel, your business can improve conversion rates, increase revenue, and grow its customer base.

Expert Tip: Use web analytics tools, such as Google Analytics, to track user behavior, conversion rates, and user engagement metrics. This data can help you fine-tune your email funnel and improve your digital marketing strategy.

Retention

This is the final and, quite frankly, most important stage of the email funnel.

The focus here is on maintaining and strengthening your relationship with your existing customers with the ultimate goal of keeping them engaged, satisfied, and loyal to your brand. 

The objectives of the retention stage include:

• Maximizing customer lifetime value
• Encouraging repeat purchases
• Cultivating brand advocacy
• Retaining loyal customers who constantly choose your brand over competitors

One of the best ways to retain repeat customers and show them gratitude for constantly choosing you over your competitors is to create a loyalty program or membership club that offers exclusive perks and benefits. 

This content can be presented through a dedicated webpage or a series of personalized emails and should emphasize the exclusive perks that members receive as part of the club, such as:

• Exclusive offers: To promote customer retention and loyalty, provide exclusive offers to your loyalty program members as a way to show appreciation and reward their loyalty.
  In the instance of a clothing retailer, create a loyalty program where members receive early access to sales, special discounts, or exclusive promotions.
  You simply send personalized emails to members with unique discount codes or limited-time offers, making them feel valued and incentivizing them to continue shopping with your brand.
• Sneak peeks and previews: Offering members behind-the-scenes access to new product launches, upcoming features, or exclusive content can generate excitement and promote a sense of exclusivity.
  For instance, as a marketer for a technology company, send loyal customers sneak peek emails that provide exclusive previews of upcoming product releases or software updates.
  This exclusive access makes customers feel like valued insiders and encourages them to stay engaged and loyal to the brand.
• Referral rewards: Do you recall the last time a friend recommended you buy something? You probably ended up getting what they suggested because you trust their opinion.
  Referral rewards are a powerful strategy to encourage customer retention and loyalty by leveraging the power of word-of-mouth marketing.
  By incentivizing club members with rewards, such as a free product or an enticing discount, for referring their friends or family to buy your product, you expand your reach and acquire new customers.

In the table below, various landing pages are listed with corresponding performance metrics. 

The metrics include the number of visitors, bounce rate (percentage of visitors who leave without taking any action), average time spent on the page, conversion rate (percentage of visitors who complete a desired action), and exit rate (percentage of visitors who exit the website after visiting the landing page). 

By tracking these metrics, businesses can assess the effectiveness of their landing pages, identify areas for improvement, and optimize their strategies to increase conversion rates and customer retention.

Convert Your Leads Into Loyal Customers by Leveraging an Email Funnel

An email funnel is a versatile and effective means of optimizing your email marketing strategy and capturing the attention of your ideal customers.

First, guide them through the awareness stage of your funnel using lead magnets to initiate them into your subscriber list. 

Secondly, track their customer journey using web analytics to gather valuable information to segment and personalize your email list for targeted marketing.

Lastly, encourage your most loyal customers to join your referral program, where they can be rewarded for sharing your content with their friends and family.

At OnDigitalMarketing, we take pride in providing practical and tactical education on all aspects of digital marketing. 

Our methods have been taught in 212 countries, 54 companies, and 4 undergraduate universities and have undergone rigorous peer reviews by industry experts.

Join our newsletter today to gain access to exclusive paid content, stay informed about deals with partner websites, and receive fresh tips and “how-to’s.”

One of the biggest questions of email marketing for real estate is, what’s the best way to gain subscribers and boost property sales?

Insider tips, how-to guides, curated top stories, paid content, and partner website deals are certainly industry best practices, but which one ranks the highest?

We gave it away with the title. You’re here to discover how to boost property sales with email marketing.

So will 77.1% of our typical readers who responded to our recent survey, expressing their preference for how-to guides in exchange for signups.

Insights like this get us excited at OnDigitalMarketing about internet marketing. They inspire our cause to educate aspiring digital marketers and entrepreneurs on harnessing its potential.

As such, we’ve gathered six approaches to boosting property sales with email marketing. As we delve into these ideas, you’ll learn:

• How to build and target a high-quality email list in real estate
• Key considerations for crafting real estate emails
• Creative ideas for real estate email newsletters
• Key considerations for analyzing email marketing success
• The benefits of email templates and automation

But first, what is email marketing for real estate anyway?

1 – Understanding Email Marketing for Real Estate

Real estate email marketing is all about communicating with prospects, leads, and clients.

The main objective is to boost property sales, retain customers, and drive traffic to real estate websites, which requires a relationship with your audience.

This relationship is built on trust and provides an opportunity to communicate relevant information, such as:

• New property listings
• Price changes
• Market trends
• Local news

Picture this scenario, a real estate agent develops a monthly “Housing Market Digest” email featuring a summary of the latest happenings in the local real estate market.

It includes data on the average home prices, property sales, average days on market, and any notable news or changes that impact buyers and sellers.

The email also includes a brief commentary on what these statistics mean for the recipients, actionable advice, plus links to websites for those interested in learning more.

Naturally, the agent spotlights a few properties he’s recently listed or sold along with these links to informative websites.

How do prospects receive this email?

The abundance of information in this “Housing Market Digest” email demonstrates overwhelming expertise in the eyes of any prospective property buyer. Consequently, they become curious about the agent and keep him top-of-mind when making estate decisions.

This is the main idea behind real estate email marketing, but there are some key features to consider:

1. The email campaign should have a clear and specific goal, such as promoting a new property or generating leads.
2. The content of the email should be relevant to the target audience and provide value that is useful to the reader as there are various types of property buyers.
3. The email should have a clear and compelling call-to-action that prompts the reader to take action, such as visiting a website or contacting the real estate agent.

With these considerations, your email marketing strategy is bound to be successful at generating real estate leads. However, it’s also essential to develop a high-quality list of subscribers who’ll be inclined to engage with your content and generate conversions.

2 – Building a High-Quality Email List in Digital Marketing for Real Estate

A high-quality email list comprises people who’ve opted-in to receive emails from the real estate agent or company.

These individuals signal genuine interest in the agent and his offerings. Consequently, they’ll be more likely to open and read through his emails, increasing the chances of conversions.

So, how do you get opt-ins? By optimizing your content.

There are several effective strategies to do this, one of them is through lead magnets, including free e-books, webinars, and guides.

It’s no surprise that people love free stuff. But when you combine free and value, it creates a strong incentive for high-quality subscribers who are genuinely interested in your content and likely to generate conversions.

This was Backlinko’s insight when they decided to upgrade their email content and signup requests with free e-books and reports.

The strategy, which was new at the time, was resoundingly successful in growing signup conversions and helped set the standard for email best practices today.

Segmenting based on different buyer profiles and interests is another way to ensure your email content is relevant to attract high-quality readers.

These segments include first-time property buyers, upgraders, investors, relocators, and downsizers. So use customer relationship management (CRM) tools, such as feedback, to help you understand your typical website visitors and target them.

Finally, clean your email list. Remove inactive subscribers and review your email list regularly, and ensure that you comply with email regulations like CAN-SPAM Act. This will require email marketing analytics to track open rates, read-throughs, and conversions.

Bonus Idea: Use social media advertisements to drive traffic to your landing page and attract new subscribers to your email list.

3 – Crafting Effective Real Estate Emails

Crafting an effective email marketing strategy for real estate involves more than just sending out mass emails to a list of contacts. It requires careful thought and planning to ensure that your emails have a high open rate and drive real estate sales.

There are several key components to consider when crafting your real estate emails, including:

• The Anatomy of Your Emails: Your emails need high-quality visuals and engaging content to catch the attention of potential buyers. These include images and videos showcasing various properties and personalized content based on your lead’s interests.
• The Allure of Your Subject Lines: Subject lines must be attention-grabbing and relevant to entice potential clients into opening your emails. This typically involves teasing intriguing content, asking thought-provoking questions, and offering urgent insider information.
• The Structure of Your Email Body: The email body should be concise, yet informative, to hold attention. It must also include a clear call-to-action with links to your website or landing page to simplify taking action for your prospects.
• Your Delivery Rate and Targeting: Sending too many emails to the wrong audience results in spamming, which damages your reputation and the effectiveness of your campaign.
  Use email campaign automation tools to ensure perfect timing for your posts, for instance, welcome emails immediately after signing up and follow-up emails after property tours

One of the most effective strategies for observing the above email considerations is segmentation. This helps you narrow down to your type of buyer and tailor the subject lines, email body, and email anatomy to maximize engagement.

Meanwhile, conducting analytics, such as A/B testing, helps you track the performance of your email campaign, from overall design to delivery. This reveals any areas of improvement and enables you to build data-driven real estate email templates for future effectiveness.

The table below provides a comprehensive list of different categories that can be utilized to segment email lists, enabling businesses to effectively target their desired audience based on factors such as demographics, interests, location, and behavior.

These categories can help marketers and businesses effectively target their email campaigns and tailor their messages to specific audience segments, leading to higher engagement and conversion rates.

4 – Creative Real Estate Email Campaign Ideas

As a real estate agent, you need to constantly generate real estate leads to boost property sales.

While using digital marketing for real estate is an effective way to generate leads, having a solid email marketing strategy is crucial. It’s how you stand out from competitors and attract potential buyers or sellers.

So, here are some creative email campaign ideas to inspire your own:

Personalized Email Campaigns: Personalization is essential to make your emails stand out, and CRM for real estate is an excellent approach to use. CRM tools help you track client behavior, demographics, location, and interests for more personalized email content and layout.

Check out this brilliant example of personalization from My Tampa Agent’s email. It features elements that appeal to a family demographic, interested in socializing within the Bay area. As such, it’s titled “The Tampa Bay Weekend Bucket List.”

Follow-Up Emails: Continuing the conversation with potential clients after an initial interaction is a powerful strategy to guide them along the customer journey. It nurtures a relationship and sustains engagement, which encourages them to complete the purchase.

Take the instance of a subscriber who clicks on a property listing on your website and reads through all the information you provided. A follow-up email is a fantastic way of continuing the conversation about that listing and furthering interest. This improves your chances of converting.

Market Update Email Newsletters: Monthly or weekly email newsletters featuring insightful market information are excellent ways of establishing trust and authority with your leads.

This status keeps you at the forefront of their minds when making purchase decisions, improving your chances of conversions.

A classic example of this strategy is Nethunt’s newsletter idea, which starts with a punchy “Let’s Talk Numbers” before delving into market trends and implications for real estate investors.

Expert Tip: Use email marketing analytics, such as A/B tests, to track the effectiveness of different campaign ideas in engaging your target audience.

5 – Measuring and Analyzing Email Marketing Success

Digital analytics for real estate is essential to the growth and success of the business. Fortunately, tools such as CRM for real estate and email campaign automation, offer a wealth of data to evaluate.

But what metrics should you track?

One of the metrics you need to monitor is the performance of your subject lines, and open rates serve as a clear indication of effectiveness.

Low open rates signal you need to enhance your subject lines and make them compelling with features such as personalization, curiosity-evoking language, and relevance.

Another crucial performance measure is your read-throughs and subscriber growth rates. These signify how compelling your content is and serves as an A/B test indicator of various content elements, including videos, images, layouts, and writing styles.

Your conversion rates and the return on investment (ROI) are also crucial for determining the effectiveness of your call-to-actions in encouraging user action. This includes making purchases, filling out forms, and responding to your posts.

Low scores in this instance suggest a need for CTA improvements on aspects such as your placement, value proposition, and wording.

Ultimately, all the insights generated from analyzing your subject lines, read-throughs, and conversions help you build solid real estate email templates for future campaigns.

The table below presents an overview of various email marketing campaigns, showcasing the number of leads generated, revenue generated, and the corresponding return on investment (ROI) percentages for each campaign. 

This analysis enables businesses to assess the success and profitability of their email marketing strategies, aiding in strategic decision-making for future campaigns.

6 – Real Estate Email Templates and Automation

When it comes to creating effective real estate emails, having a strong email marketing strategy is essential. And one part of that strategy is utilizing real estate email templates and automation.

Real estate email templates are pre-designed email patterns that can be customized to fit your specific needs, like showcasing your latest property listings, sending out a monthly newsletter, or even following up with potential leads.

These templates save time and effort, allowing you to focus on other parts of your business for efficiency. 

But what’s even more beneficial to your real estate email marketing campaign is automation. Email campaign automation software allows you to set up trigger-based emails that are sent out automatically based on predefined actions or behaviors.

For example, when a lead signs up for your email list or interacts with an email by clicking a link, the automation software can send them a targeted follow-up email. This not only saves you time but also ensures that your leads get the right message at the right time.

This also creates a personalized experience for each of your leads that makes your email more compelling and likely to generate conversions.

Learn more about email templates and find examples for the real estate industry in the video below:

Learn More About Email Optimization From OnDigitalMarketing

So there are six tips to help you boost property sales with email marketing for real estate, but there’s more to explore about email optimization.

For instance, how effective are curated top stories at enticing visitors to subscribe to your mailing list? 35.4%, according to our latest survey at OnDigitalMarketing.

Is this better than access to paid content? Sign up for our email newsletter and discover the answer and more insider tips from our upcoming courses.