Learning Email Marketing

Getting Started Learning Email Marketing

Learning email marketing can be easy if you set realistic goals, employ a strategy, and set-up simple automation with content designed to engage, entertain, educate, and call to action.

Understand that the strategic benefits of email marketing are still huge

Begin with understanding the strategic and practical communications benefits of learning email marketing today are more important than ever. It is still and will be for the foreseeable future, your most cost-effective and efficient form of digital marketing. 

Plus, when you own your list, it’s yours. No one can take it from you by being sold, changing an algorithm, or getting hacked.

I know many doctors are reluctant to email marketing because they think it appears too “salesy.” I’ve learned what they’re really thinking is, “I don’t have the know-how, and don’t want to do it.”

And territory sales reps often think that learning email marketing is best left to Marketing. Really? You don’t want to build a regular communication cadence with your customers so that when they need something, you’re the first face that pops into their mind?

It’s all about “the List”

Your goal should always be to grow and update your email list whenever possible. Accurate and quality data is essential for delivering targeted messages that perform well. Even after you are a long way into learning email marketing, review regularly your process for acquisition and lead generation.

Design and test template while Learning Email Marketing

We live in a mobile world. So whatever you do, make sure that all templates, creative, and messaging are tested for common user system configurations such as screen resolutions. Also, ensure emails will still be effective if images are blocked. 

Many email automation systems, like Pardot, for instance, will allow you to create a text-only version of your email to address this potential issue. Look for simple benefits in the software you choose when you are learning email marketing.

Set goals for learning email marketing with major campaigns

The great thing about learning email marketing is how setting up campaigns can be simple and fun. “Huh?” You think, “Simple and fun.” Yes!

Campaigns with email are great because you get immediate feedback on what is working and what is not. It’s not like a diet where you struggle for months to see results, you know within a day-or-two how your campaign performed. 

How fun is that? And if it did well, do it some more. If it did crappy, iterate it, or scrap it altogether. Easy Peasy. And fun!

Tackle the practical challenges of learning email marketing

Factors such as data quality and deliverability can limit the success of email campaigns. Unfortunately, what I see with most doctors and their staff, is that they just don’t have systems created for email communication. And this is a serious missed opportunity.

Identify the main constraints on learning email marketing and assess what can be done to improve these issues. Regular communication with patients, customers, and prospects can have a quick and dramatic impact on your business.

Define a mobile marketing strategy

Study the importance of mobile marketing for your business and ensure any strategy takes into account the mobile email marketing experience. This loops back to the earlier point about design and templates and the importance of this can’t be overstated.

Complete a content audit

A good content strategy and learning email marketing require an audit of existing communications, collateral, and prioritization of the best types of content to deliver. An email content audit will review the types of communications and different types of content used, for example, in a newsletter.

An audit is also a terrific opportunity to repurpose and update materials used in your business and begin mapping the customer journey. More on this to come!

Clearly define a powerful newsletter proposition

As you are learning email marketing, research, define and communicate what value will be delivered with your email newsletters. Contrary to popular belief, newsletters still work.

What they don’t do, however, is get people to subscribe to your list. You need to offer prospective and current clients a meaningful lead magnet to opt-in, and then use your newsletter as a way to begin nurturing a relationship with them.

Develop an email sales sequence

Developing an email sales sequence might be one of the most powerful tactics within your email strategy that you’ve never done. It's not complex, and something you might consider while you are learning email marketing.

I am a StoryBrand Certified Guide, so I like the StoryBrand sequence that goes like this:

1. After someone opts-in to your list, send an email with the asset and thank them for becoming part of your group.
2. A few days later, send a problem and solution email that identifies a problem your customer is facing and preventing them from getting what they want.
3. A few days later, send a testimonial email about a customer who is using your product or service successfully. Remember, this customer is the hero of your story, not your product. Your product is the solution that helps them get what they want.
4. Then, a few days after that, send an email that answers an objection about your product or service. This helps you build trust.
5. Next, send an email about a paradigm shift your product or service might help them make to solve their problem.
6. Finally, send a sales letter that closes the deal. I'll write more about how to do all of this when I publish the section on Copywriting. It is all laid out in the Marketing Made Simple Book here (Affiliate Link).

When you're learning email marketing, review options for event-triggered emails

Consider how to deliver emails at the right time, with the right content according to both customer behavior and their progress in your customer funnel. What, you don’t have a funnel other than the one you use to put oil in your car? Much more on that later.

Follow up on an individual’s interaction with an email

Think about how to deliver relevant emails according to an individual’s interaction with your content. This might be your website, an email sequence, or a broadcast email. The main point here is to follow-up on everything. I know, it’s not always easy and you’re busy. 

This is the area where I see the most money and effort wasted on email marketing. It always makes me sad, and it is an area of learning email marketing that can be controlled.

Have a ‘test, review and iterate’ approach

Dedicate time and resources to planning, managing, and reviewing while you are learning email marketing and always test. Marketers should test both campaigns and repeated elements of campaigns such as template layouts, the timing of emails, subject lines, and event-triggered emails.

If you take only one thing away from this section of makemarketingeasy.com, please let it be this: Email marketing is still alive and well, and know that the ROI data industry-wide shows that for every $1 you put into email marketing, you get $37 back. Nice.