Email marketing tips to boost your business bottom line [Practical Snacks mini-series]
Episode 3
According to Hubspot in 2023 - The return on investment (ROI) for email marketing stands at an impressive $36 for every $1 spent, so many businesses are leaving money on the table.
This episode of 'Practical Snacks' looks at email marketing that you can easily set up and start using email and/or newsletters for your business marketing.
About the show
Practical Snacks is a special weekly summer mini-series of short, snappy tactical marketing episodes that are under 10 mins on a particular marketing topic or theme. Make sure you follow the show wherever you listen, so you don’t miss out. And do share with others who you think will find this actionable style content valuable.
Resources and links
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Transcript
Ayo Abbas 00:05
Emails are a massive opportunity for businesses, and today, I will be giving you lots and lots of tips about how you can use email as part of your marketing mix. Welcome to the practical snacks mini series, which is part of The Built Environment Marketing Show. Each week over August, I am releasing 10 minutes short episodes packed with practical tips which will help you to supercharge your marketing for the coming months. I am your host, Ayo Abbas, and I am a marketing consultant, and I run my own company called Abbas marketing, head to www.abbasmarketing.com to find out more about what I do anyway, today's episode is all about email. I am a huge fan of email. It's something that I've started doing in the past 18 months to two years, and to be honest, it is really good fun to do, but also it makes a huge impact, and I get some lovely feedback from it. So that's why I wanted to focus on it more, because I don't think it's an area that built environment firms necessarily do, or even if they are doing it, they don't do it very well. So why should you be interested in email marketing? First up, let's start with some stats. So according to HubSpot, in 2023 for every $1 that firm spends on email marketing, their return on investment is $36 that is a huge amount of return for what is relatively a low cost piece of work, piece of marketing, actually, and for me, there is a huge opportunity for built environment firms, because email marketing helps you to maintain client relationships and, most importantly, stay front of mind, which means that when they are looking to procure someone or work with someone that you're there your name is on the tip of their tongue. It also helps you to showcase your expertise and talk about your work, your product, project, your process, your beliefs, all of those things, you can get all of that out. And most importantly, you get it out directly to somebody. There are no algorithms involved, no worrying about the Instagram algorithm or what's going on. It's so much about write directly to somebody in their inbox and it lands. How nice and refreshing is that? And it's also a great way for you to promote what you do. So for me, it is a no brainer, and more built environment firms should be using it. So in terms of newsletters and emails, I think they are kind of interchangeable, and there are and I kind of see it as two things. So newsletters, I see as more of that kind of news led, lots and lots of stories, more highly designed, more of a template, more colours, more images, all of that kind of stuff. So a bit more of a production. But emails can be a lot simpler, which I kind of like. So they could just be a straightforward story, a straightforward news update. You know, it could be, you know, quite simple and text based, rather than lots and lots of images. So there's lots of kind of different ways you can tackle an email, newsletter, email or newsletter, or both. So in terms of putting them together, here's what I think you need to know and some tips on what you should be doing. So first up, let's start with your audience, who they are, what they do, why they should be reading what you're writing. Really delve into that so you can make a more, I guess, engaging piece and something that matters to them. And also, I mean, I think one of the things about emails that you can personalise your email so you can write, dear Ayo, this is why you need to know this. Or you know, you can use my name in places throughout the email. You not too much, obviously, but you can use that. You can do personalisation, and that's all about how you set up your email list in the first place. But also, you can segment your market. So you know, people who are interested in residential projects only get the residential aspects of your email, or they will only get those emails, or people who are only interested in commercial projects and things like that, or large firms versus small firms. So you can start to segment your mark your email list, understand more about them. So you can, certainly you can deliver the content that they're actually interested in, which is so, so powerful. And I think the other thing that you need to consider when you're developing your email is the subject line. Your email subject line will make or break your email. They are the first thing that someone sees, and it's when they decide, do I want to click on this or not? So think about spend time, spend lots of time on your subject line. How do you make it more personal? How do you make it more clear? How do you make it engaging? How can you spark curiosity and ultimately get them to open that email? That is what you're trying to do. I like to use a tool called Headlines by Co-schedule, and I can test out different email subject lines, and it gives me suggestions on what how I could improve it and the likelihood of it to be opened, which I find really, really useful. So I think I used to kind of try and target about above 80% in terms of open and that would be what I would do. I'd use that tool and keep finessing that subject line until I found a way to make it more engaging and appealing. And I think when it comes to writing your actual email. Make sure that you lead with value. When I write a piece of content, particularly for my clients, I have a little thing at the start where I write my aims and my goals, what do I want people to take away from this piece? And then throughout anything I write, I ask myself the question, Is this useful? Is it practical? You know, I try and make sure that what I write covers that and does that, but don't take that to mean that you can't sell. You can still have areas in there where you talk about your products, your services and what you do, because ultimately, you are a business. So it does not mean that you cannot be promotional. And I think the thing for me, I love about emails is that it's a great way to connect, and it's a great way to tell stories and remember that stories are really, really important. It's about how we connect and how we remember things. It's how our brains work. It's how I guess, we've always had stories from when we were children. And I think it's really important that we kind of find a way to bring that kind of narrative and that kind of storytelling into what we write. It's how we will connect. It's how we can be remembered. I actually did a whole session on this for Architizer last year with Nikita Morell, so I'll put a link into that so you can watch the replay in the shownotes. That's really, really useful if you're looking to get more inspired about how you can tell the stories for your practice and your work. And I think the other thing you kind of need to think about is the benefits and the outcomes that you know your reader will get. So from what you're sharing, use the word 'you' how do you connect with them? You know? Make sure that you use that and you talk about the outcomes and the benefits of whatever you're talking about in that email. And next up is your call to action. What do you want people to do? What do you want the reader to do next? What sort of response do you want them to click here? Do you want them to write back to you? Do you want them to click a link and end up on your website? Do you want them to buy something? Think about what that call to action is. What is that next step? It's so, so important that you signpost the reader as to what you want them to do if you don't ask, you don't get so I think that's something we often overlook. But actually it's about engagement. It's not a one way broadcast. It's about two way connection. So think about what you really want them to do next. Where are you taking this conversation and once your email has been sent? The other thing you need to think about is measurement. Make sure that you keep a record of your you know your open rates, how many people click through, what's really popular when you write your newsletters. All of that data and all of that information will be available in your email platform, and it's a great way to review it every quarter, just to understand, you know, actually, what's working and what's not, what's actually engaging my audience, what do they want to hear more of? And you can do things like look at your click through rates for certain articles. When you talk about your services, you can actually go back and look who's clicked to find out more. Could they put potential leads for you? Could they be people you follow up with? You know? And I think there's those opportunities as well to build out more of a relationship and a sales opportunity from where people click and what they're interested in what they're looking at. So you can definitely use the data to inform what you do next as well and your marketing operations. I think that's very, very important anyway. I hope you found today's episode useful. I'd love to hear more about how you are using email in your marketing. And if this has inspired you to do something to take this forward and try something out new, I do offer a one to one service, a coaching Power Hour on email newsletters. So if you want to delve into this more, you can definitely pop me a line at ayo@abbasmarketing.com and we can set something up. Thanks so much for listening, and I look forward to speaking to you next week.
