Gaining traction is a challenge every startup must overcome. Every situation is unique and what may work for one company may not work for another. Of all the possible marketing channels there are available to pursue, there is one that has universal application. We're talking old-school email.
So how important is email? Every successful startup has an email list of their customers, and most likely their prospects as well.
But there are a few things you should know to get the most out of this marketing channel.
Use The Inverted Pyramid Model
With attention spans now being measured in mere seconds, you have little time to generate awareness, engage your reader and get them to take action. The inverted pyramid model solves this issue with a structure that presents ethe most important information up front, followed by supporting details and finally the call to action.
Whether you have a newsletter with multiple messages and calls-to-action or a simple email with just one message and call-to-action, this model works in either situation.
- Your value proposition needs to be clear and concise, offer a compelling benefit and be unique.
- Where appropriate, use images to support your key message. The human brain processes visual imagery far faster than text, so use this to your advantage.
- Be succinct. Edit with extreme prejudice to remove unnecessary words. Make your copy easy to read and focus on benefits, not features.
- Include a call-to-action that makes the next step obvious to the reader.
Get A 42% Higher Click Rate With Transactional Emails
100 million emails can’t be wrong can they? That’s the number of emails the folks at Vero analyzed to figure out that transactional emails get 42% more clicks than newsletter emails.
Why does this work?
A transactional email is triggered based on the (in)activity of your customer. So in a way they expect to get an email because of their actions.
It all comes down to timing. When customers understand why they are getting your emails, they’re more likely to click to open.
Your sales funnel is a great place to start looking for opportunities to send transactional emails. Onboarding is just one example. At the same time start thinking about what type of content you can include to further move your subscriber towards your goal.
Some examples of types of emails you can use include; the welcome, getting started, referral offers, reminders and renewals.
This Landing Page Hack Boosts Conversions Up To 300%
Guest posting on authority sites can generate substantial amounts of traffic to your site if you’re consistent in posting. Providing a good call-to-action is the first step in getting visitors to click through to your site.
But then what?
Where do you send them to on your site?
Neil Patel often creates a landing page to welcome visitors, when he guest posts on other blogs.
It creates a better user experience due to a greater degree of continuity between the content read on the blog, the link that was clicked on, and the page at which the visitor arrived.
If your site's theme lacks landing page functionality, there’s always the choice of using one of many landing page builders.
Collect Emails On Twitter For A 60% Conversions Rate
OK. You’ve worked real hard to get all those email signup forms working on your blog.
You’ve got popups, slide-ins, exits and content upgrade forms. But don’t stop there!
Start collecting emails off-page as well. Twitter is ideal for this method.
Set up a Lead Generation Card in Twitter, that you can embed in any of your Tweets. Then anyone on Twitter that sees the tweet can subscribe to your email list in a single click.
No moving off the page to another site.
No double-opt-in extra steps required.
Zero friction.
It doesn’t get any better than that. In one case, Ryan Hoover hit a 60–80% conversion rate after only a couple of weeks.
By the way, most people just attach the card to a Tweet and send it out. You’ll get more mileage if you also use it when engaging people in your replies.
There are three points in time when you can capture a visitors email address; upon arrival at your site, while they are engaging with your content, and upon exit. Up to a point, the more opportunity a visitor has to provide their email address, the more likely they will do so. But only if you offer something of value in exchange.
Many sites use pop-ups to get email signups. Yes, they’re annoying, but they work. Variations such as the “top bar”, “scroll box” and “slide-in” have been created to overcome the annoyance factor and reduce “pop-up fatigue”.
Pop-ups and their variations tend to have low conversion rates, but you can improve this substantially through use of a lead magnet tied to content on the page. For example, you could provide a PDF checklist of the material covered in your post or a video walkthrough. In each case, the offer is tied to a piece of relevant content. This connection is what makes it so useful.
Instructional videos are known to work incredibly well as lead magnets. Wistia, in particular, works well for this; making visitors enter their email before they can watch, and adding them to your email list automatically.
As a last resort, you can always try capturing email addresses when a visitor is about to leave your site. These plugins and scripts trigger a popup when they detect a visitor is moving quickly toward the “X” on top to close the tab.
Here are some more good ideas including sending personalized HTML emails for new signups.
Email is not sexy, but it works. It's definitely a marketing channel that is worth testing.
