Top 5 Email Marketing Sequences You Need In 2023 to Succeed!
Email marketing is still one of the most effective forms of marketing available, with an average return on investment (ROI) of 4200%. Yet, not all businesses are doing it at all. Why? Perhaps it's the initial overwhelm of not knowing how or where to begin. Hence the need for this post.
In this article, I will go over the following topics:
So, if you are new to email marketing or these topics resonate with you, then stick around and let's get started.
Email marketing is still king in my book, always has been and probably always will be . With the right email marketing sequences in place, you can build brand awareness, generate leads, build relationships, and ultimately drive sales.
Let's start at the basics for beginners who might be reading this and are just getting familiar with email marketing.
Email Marketing 101 Basics
Has email marketing got you feeling like this? Like you need to push the "red Staples Easy button"? Overwhelmed at all that needs to be done to actually get started with email marketing? Well, help is on the way. There is a process. It can be easy. You just need to take a step back and take it one baby step at a time.
At the core, Email marketing involves sending email messages to a targeted list of subscribers who have given you their consent to do so, whether they be of a promotional nature or not. The goal is to build brand awareness, nurture relationships, generate leads, and ultimately, drive sales.
Below are the "Email Marketing 101 Basics":
Build a targeted email list: Your email list is the foundation of your email marketing campaign. Focus on building a list of people who have opted-in and expressed interest in your business.
Segment your list: Segmenting your list allows you to personalize your messages and deliver more relevant content to your subscribers.
Choose the right email service provider: Your email service provider (ESP) is the platform that you'll use to send and manage your email campaigns. Choose a provider that's easy to use, reliable, and offers the features you need.
Craft compelling subject lines: Your subject line is the first thing that your subscribers will see, so it's essential to make it compelling and attention-grabbing.
Use a clear call-to-action: Every email you send should have a clear call-to-action (CTA) that tells your subscribers what you want them to do next.
Create mobile-friendly emails: More and more people are accessing email on their mobile devices, so it's essential to create emails that are optimized for mobile viewing.
Test and measure your campaigns: Testing different elements of your email campaigns, such as subject lines, CTAs, and content, can help you identify what works best for your audience.
Monitor your email deliverability: Make sure your emails are getting delivered to your subscribers' inboxes by monitoring your email deliverability.
Focus on providing value: Your subscribers have given you permission to email them, so make sure you're providing them with valuable content that helps them solve their problems or achieve their goals.
Stay compliant with email regulations: Make sure you're following all email regulations, such as the CAN-SPAM Act in the US, to avoid potential legal issues.
Is Email Marketing Effective or is it Dead?
Despite rumors that email marketing is dead, it remains one of the most effective forms of marketing available. Research shows that the average open rate for email campaigns is 22.86%, while the click-through rate is 3.71%. This means that, on average, for every 1,000 subscribers, 228.6 people will open your email, and 37.1 people will click on your link.
While some may argue that social media and other forms of digital marketing have surpassed email marketing, the numbers simply don't support this claim. In fact, email marketing has consistently proven to be one of the most effective forms of digital marketing.
According to recent data from HubSpot, email marketing generates an average return on investment (ROI) of $42 for every $1 spent. That's an impressive ROI that speaks to the power of email marketing in driving revenue and growth for businesses.
Data from Campaign Monitor shows that the average click-through rate (CTR) for email campaigns is around 3.71%, compared to just 0.5% for social media. This means that email marketing is more effective in getting people to take action, whether that's making a purchase or signing up for a newsletter.
Email marketing allows businesses to build and nurture relationships with their customers over time. By sending relevant and valuable content to their subscribers, businesses can stay top of mind and build trust with their audience. This leads to increased customer loyalty and ultimately, more sales.
So, email marketing is far from dead. It's still the most effective form of digital marketing, generating a high ROI and outperforming social media in terms of conversion rates. As businesses continue to adapt to the changing digital landscape, email marketing will remain a vital tool in their marketing arsenal. If you're taking advantage of email marketing's reach for your business, congrats, you're ahead of the curve. If you're still not capturing, nurturing and converting your prospects into customers using the power of email, you're seriously missing out.
Email Marketing vs. Social Media Marketing
As a business owner myself and a digital marketer for over 20+ years, I firmly believe that email marketing is not only better and more valuable than social media marketing, but it's also higher converting and easier to execute.
While social media marketing may seem like the shiny new toy in the digital marketing world, email marketing consistently outperforms it in terms of ROI and customer engagement.
According to recent data from Econsultancy, email marketing has an average ROI of 4400%, which is significantly higher than social media marketing. Furthermore, email marketing has an average conversion rate of 2.3%, compared to just 1% for social media. This means that businesses are more likely to generate revenue from email marketing than they are from social media.
In addition to being more effective in generating revenue, email marketing is also easier to execute. With social media, businesses need to create and manage multiple accounts across different platforms, constantly monitor engagement metrics, and adapt to changing algorithms. Email marketing, on the other hand, is a more straightforward and controlled process. Businesses can create and send emails on their own terms, without having to worry about algorithms or external factors impacting their reach.
Email marketing allows businesses to build stronger relationships with their customers over time. By providing relevant and valuable content to their subscribers, businesses can establish trust and credibility with their audience. This leads to increased customer loyalty and ultimately, more sales.
While social media marketing may have its benefits, email marketing is still the more effective, valuable, and easier option for businesses. With a higher ROI, better conversion rates, and the ability to build strong customer relationships, email marketing is the clear winner in the battle between email marketing vs. social media marketing.
So, take advantage of both digital marketing practices discussed above to gain the most visibility online and convert more prospects into customers.
Top 5 Email Marketing Sequences You Need to Set Up for Your Business
Now that you are beginning to understand the value of email marketing for your business, let's get to the heart of the matter and the focus of this post- the top 5 email marketing sequences you need to set up for your business in 2023:
Welcome Series - The welcome series is the first sequence you should set up. It welcomes new subscribers to your list and introduces them to your brand and offerings. It's a great opportunity to make a good first impression and start building a relationship with your subscribers. The welcome series can be anywhere from 3 to 7 emails. This email is usually automated in a sequence that begins the minute someone gives you their email through subscribing to your community from a freebie funnel, simple capture form or the purchase of a product or service.
Abandoned Cart Sequence - The abandoned cart sequence follows up with subscribers who abandon their shopping carts and encourages them to complete their purchase. This sequence can be very effective at recovering lost sales and increasing revenue. It's usually one simple email but you can customize it to fit your brand design and tone & personality. This is automated to trigger when someone goes through the purchase process up to pulling the trigger and then abandons the cart.
Lead Nurture Sequence - The lead nurture sequence is designed to build a relationship with subscribers who have shown interest in your product or service but haven't yet made a purchase. This sequence provides value and helps to move the subscriber closer to making a purchase. This sequence can have an unlimited amount of emails. I have seen these as long as 52 even 100 emails. If you are emailing them 2X a week. This sequence acts as a sales representative for your business. Its job is to convert the subscriber at some point by nurturing their pain points and showing them how your solutions could be of value to them.
Re-engagement Sequence - The re-engagement sequence targets subscribers who haven't engaged with your emails in a while and encourages them to become active again. This sequence can be effective at re-engaging subscribers who may have lost interest in your brand. This is always a great sequence to clean out your lists. If you send this out and they still don't re-engage, it's best to cut ties and remove them from your list.
Upsell/Downsell Sequence - The upsell/downsell sequence promotes complementary products or services to subscribers who have already made a purchase. This sequence can increase the lifetime value of your customers and generate additional revenue.
To get the most out of your email marketing sequences, there are some best practices to keep in mind:
Personalization - Make sure your emails are tailored to each subscriber's interests, behavior, or demographics. Segmenting your email list can help with this.
Clear Call-to-Action (CTA) - You also want to make sure that your emails have a clear call-to-action (CTA) that prompts your subscriber to take action.
Value - Provide value in every email. Whether it's informative content, a discount, or a special offer, make sure your subscribers are getting something of value in each email.
Mobile-Friendly - With the majority of people accessing their email on mobile devices, it's essential that your emails are mobile-friendly.
My Top Email Marketing Platform, Its Features, And What to Look for When Researching Which One to Use
When choosing an email marketing platform, it's important to consider features such as automation, personalization, analytics, integrations, and ease of use. But it's also crucial to have an email platform that does much more than just email.
For all of the above and so much more, is why I chose to go with Mailerlite.
Mailerlite is not just an email platform but more so a digital marketing "all-in-one" tool that helps you gain control of your digital marketing efforts and keeps everything organized under one roof. Here are some of the features I love the most and how they help my business thrive.
SENDING EMAILS
Email Marketing: Helps you grow your audience and build stronger relationships.
Automated: Helps you send perfectly timed and targeted emails automatically.
Newsletter Editor: Design beautiful emails yourself with easy-to-use drag & drop editors or pick from the many templates they have.
Transactional Emails: Personalize these emails to build stronger customer loyalty.
BUILDING WEBSITES
Website Builder: Build stunning websites on your own with an easy-to-use platform.
Create A Blog: You know how easy it can be to monetize a blog in 2023. Drive traffic and engage visitors with an easy-to-build blog in the niche of your choice and start the monetization process. Have as many as you want.
COLLECTING LEADS
Landing Pages: Create as many landing pages as you need to deliver your products and services to your targeted audience. Monetize these by adding Stripe to them and collecting payments. Landing pages are a crucial element of driving sales for your business or increasing leads.
Sign-up Forms: Invite people from across the web to become subscribers. Embed these forms anywhere to collect leads. Easy to design and even easier to distribute.
Email Verifier: Clean and optimize your email lists to improve deliverability.
MONETIZE - MONETIZE - MONETIZE
Digital Products: Sell e-books, downloads and so much more to develop multiple streams of income.
E-commerce: Integrate your e-store with email marketing to boost sales.
Paid Newsletter Subscriptions: Easily set up recurring payments to offer paid subscriptions.
I've tried MailChimp, Benchmark, Convert Kit, and so many other platforms and Mailerlite, for me, has been the clear winner in terms of ease-of-use, costs and integration. It may or may not be the right solution for you or your business. I'm just saying that it hit all the right spots for me. If you want to learn more about Mailerlite, simply click here.
Email Marketing KPI's - Which Ones Matter
Tracking key performance indicators (KPIs) is essential for measuring the success of your email marketing sequences. Some of the most important KPIs to track include:
Open Rate - This measures how many people opened your email.
Click-Through Rate - This measures how many people clicked on a link in your email.
Conversion Rate - This measures how many people took the desired action, such as making a purchase or filling out a form.
Revenue Generated - This measures how much revenue was generated from your email campaigns.
By tracking these KPIs, you can measure the effectiveness of your email marketing sequences and make adjustments as needed.
Below are some general email marketing averages across all industries. These are a good guide to see how you compare against all these.
Average open rate: 37.65%
% of the total recipients that opened the email.
Average click rate: 3.36%
% that clicked in the email out of the total recipients who were delivered it.
Average click-through rate (CTR): 8.93%
% that clicked in the email out of the total recipients who were delivered and opened it.
Average unsubscribe rate: 0.24%
% of the total recipients who clicked the unsubscribe link.
Average bounce rate: 0.30%
% of email addresses that could not be delivered to successfully.
Email marketing remains one of the most effective forms of marketing available. By setting up the top 5 email marketing sequences discussed, following best practices, and using one of the top email marketing platforms available, you can take your email marketing to the next level. Don't forget to track your KPIs to measure your success and make adjustments as needed.
If you are still hesitating getting started because you feel there are just too many moving parts, I have created a very special tool to help you. It's an Email Marketing Hub - Ultimate Edition. This is a Trello board that has everything you'll ever need to develop, design and distribute any and all of your email marketing as well as every video tutorial you would ever need to setup and efficiently use Mailerlite in your business. Everything under one roof for easy access and efficient usage of your time and efforts.
(If you are reading this before March 11th 2023, you can get the Trello template below for 50% off. $18.50 CAD). If not, it will cost you $37 CAD)
Whatever you do, don't let fear of failure keep you from moving forward in your email marketing journey. Your business needs it to grow and thrive. if you aren't doing it, you're leaving money on the table and a pool of potential raving fans behind. Get started, and get started now. The sooner you do, the sooner you can start generating new leads and new revenue for your business.
If you need help getting started, join my community and gain access to all of my tools, weekly coaching and monthly expert training.
Some of the links in this article may be affiliate links, which can provide compensation to me at no cost to you if you decide to purchase a paid plan. These are products I’ve personally used and stand behind. You can read my affiliate disclosure in my privacy policy.
