Email marketing is an incredible way to grow your business and connect with thousands of prospects and clients with a single click. Additionally, it has a great ROI, in fact, for every $1 spent on email marketing, there is typically a return of $44. When it comes to sending emails, how do you ensure that you are keeping your audience engaged and providing them with content that they want to read?
Email Best Practices
Before we jump into the types of emails that you should be sending, there are some best practices that you should be implementing to ensure you are getting the most out of your work.
1. Segment Your Lists
Personalization is a big factor when it comes to engaging your audience and segmentation allows for this. In fact, according to a survey conducted by MarketingCharts, customers rely on email campaigns to create a more personalized experience than any other option.
The below point provides more details, as segmentation helps with personalization, but with Lead Pilot, you can easily segment your lists so that your readers can start receiving the type of content that they want.
1. Click the “Share” button at the top of your “Edit Draft” side window. This will open a “Share Settings” side window:
2. Click the email toggle button so it turns green and then click “Customize” :
3. Emails will be sent to “All Contacts” by default. Click “X” to remove “All Contacts” and make changes to the recipients:
4. Click “Options” to open a dropdown of segments and lists to choose from. Select which list(s) or segment(s) you want to send your email content to:
2. Personalize Your Emails
By providing more targeted information, you are personalizing your emails and giving your readers what they want. Nobody wants to read an automated email that lacks personalization and that was clearly meant for a different audience. Including just a few personal details can make subscribers feel more connected to your firm.
A few ways to easily personalize your emails are by:
- Receiver’s name
- Geographic region
- Age
- Profession
- Niche
If you provide financial advice to pre-retirees and retirees, then you are obviously going to want to include different information and content than a millennial. Provide your readers with value and make them feel like this email was just for them and this can really go a long way.
3. Provide Your Readers With Value
Your newsletter content should be 90% educational and 10% promotional, and while it is a part of your sales funnel, the main purpose of it isn’t to just promote yourself. When you send your bi-weekly or monthly emails, you should be providing your readers with content. If they are only seeing sales pitches or urging you to buy something, this is going to cause them to unsubscribe, after all, they probably signed up to learn more.
Show your readers why you are an industry thought-leader, and make sure you maintaining a balance by sharing educational, informative and timely content.
4. Use Images/Media
Did you know that visuals increase someone’s desire to read your content by 80%? Incorporating visuals into your email is a great way to boost engagement. This includes incorporating videos into your emails, as well. When you use video content, your audience retains 95% of the information and that number drops to 10% if they’re simply reading text. So, consider providing a short video (with captions) to get your point across. Infographics and images are also a good idea, as these can capture the eye and make your readers keep reading.
5. Keep Your Emails Consistent
This goes with when you send them and how they look. You want to choose the same branding and colors throughout, so much sure you solidify your logo and brand colors so your communications always look the same. Additionally, send your emails at the same time and test time and days to see what works best for your firm.
According to HubSpot, the highest click-to-open rates are 10 AM at 21%, 1 PM at 22%, and with a spike around 6 PM. The graph below from CoSchedule provides an even deeper dive so that you can see what times and days generally work best.
6. Use a Strong Subject Line
Did you know that 35% of email recipients open an email based on the subject line alone? Two of the main factors as to whether an email will be opened or not are the subject line and the sender name. You do not have a lot of time to grab the attention of your readers so using a strong subject line that does this immediately is a great way to do this. A good line is personal and focuses on the individual, and the reader doesn’t want an advertisement that hundreds of other people are getting, they want to receive information that is specific to them.
Some ways to grab your readers’ attention are:
- Use Questions in your Subject
- Include Numbers
- Incite Curiosity
- Use Emojis (tastefully)
- Make it Exclusive
- Make it Personal
The below image shows over 100 words that you can use to increase open rate when trying to create a stronger subject line for your emails.
7. Include a Call-to-Action
If your email doesn’t have a call to action, then you are missing that crucial next step to move your audience down the sales funnel. A solid CTA can boost your click-through rate and encourage your reader to take action. If you want them to register for an upcoming webinar or download an eBook or whitepaper, including a CTA is the way to do this. When writing your CTAs, make sure that they stand out and are in a strategic location, while including actions word that convey a sense of urgency. These can include:
- Save your Seat
- Sign up Today
- Download your Free eBook
6 Types of Emails to Grow Your Business
Providing content that resonates is so important, and to grow your lists and gain more subscribers, it’s important that you are providing them with the type of content that not only entertains them but helps them in their financial journey. Whether it be a new product update or blogs that they may find useful, it’s crucial that what you are sending provides them with some type of value.
1. Welcome Emails
Welcome emails are one of the most frequently opened and read emails that you will probably send, and that’s because it’s a newly engaged subscriber that wants to hear from you.
So, what should you include in a strong welcome email? It should
- Familiarize the reader with your brand
- Set expectations
- Get them excited to receive your content
Welcome emails can generate up to 320% more revenue compared to other promotional email types, so you can certainly take advantage of the high open rate from your first email to make a targeted sale.
The details of your welcome email and whether it’s part of a larger email marketing campaign series depend on your brand messaging, your target audience, your specific product or service offerings and your content marketing strategy and goals.
2. Newsletters
Newsletters are a great way to keep your readers informed and share information with them about your firm, about a new product or simply to provide them with videos and blog content that they might find relevant and useful. At Twenty Over Ten, we send email newsletters at the start of each month to our current clients and warm leads, while also providing them with a “Bi-Weekly Blog Blast” in the middle of the month with 3-5 articles and videos that we have recently created.
If you want to start a newsletter or want to tweak yours, here are some examples of content you can include
- Blog Posts or Roundups
- Videos
- New Services or Products
- Upcoming Webinars/Webinar Replays
- Case Studies or Testimonials
- Industry News
- Sharing and answering Frequently Asked Questions
It’s a great way to keep both clients and prospects “In the Know,” and since they have provided you with their name and email address, it is now up to you, to provide them with the type of content that they want to see.
3. Surveys
As an advisor, you are always looking for ways to improve your business and provide your clients and prospects with the best service possible. And one way to find out what you are doing right and what needs some tweaking is by sending out surveys.
Make sure that you are thanking your customers for taking the time to fill out the survey and that their feedback will help them to better serve you in the end. Provide an estimate of how long it should take them so that they know what to expect, and offering a small incentive isn’t a bad idea, especially since this is helping you to better your business.
4. Exclusive Content
Exclusive content emails are a great way to build stronger relationships and give your subscribers insider tips and resources that they will find helpful. Providing them with relevant content shows that you care about them and want to provide them with the best information that will help them make stronger financial decisions or that they can apply to their own company.
5. Webinar Replays
After hosting or participating in a webinar, include a webinar replay in your weekly newsletter. You can post the whole thing to YouTube and simply embed it into your email, or you could create “highlights” to share. It’s especially important to share a webinar replay after the fact with those who actually attended the webinar concerned. This is a great way to follow up and encourage further engagement.
Twenty Over Ten client, The Finity Group has included their webinar replays on their website for easy access for readers and providing this information in a quick email is a great way to connect with your audience, both those who could attend and those who registered but were unable to attend.
6. Stock Market Summaries
Many financial advisors, as part of or separate from their newsletter, share a regular stock market summary. Using this option is a great idea for any advisory firm, especially if you already send stock market updates but don’t have the free time to produce video content
There are different ways that you can go about doing this If you send an extensive, quarterly stock market summary, think about supplementing it with a brief video breaking down the main points. If you send a short, weekly summary, you can instead explain it in video form in order to curate more video content.
You can simply provide your readers with a graph and information in regards to the stock market or you can include it in a video, such as the one above from Keith Nichol on the video from AIME group.
Key Takeaways
Email marketing isn’t like social media where algorithms can change the eyes that see your content. You are sending content to your readers that have signed up to receive it, which means that they have provided you with an email to be able to communicate with them, so it’s important that you are providing them with content to make it worth their time. We hope that these best practices and email types have provided you with the knowledge so that you can continue to provide them with the type of emails that will help them on their financial journey.
Related: Which Social Media Platform Should Advisors Prioritize?