Email Marketing Interview: How To Get Started And Grow Your List
We had an amazing event focused on email marketing for small businesses. Our speaker, Tonnisha English, CEO of TJE Communications, was incredible! Here’s your chance to get all her know-how in the recording. Below are just a few notes of our hour-long chat with Tonnisha!
What is email marketing?
Basically, sending one message to a bunch of people at the same time. These people should have given you permission. If you’ve heard of the GDPR, that’s another layer of permission from Europe, although those in the US don’t have to worry about it. Basically, the rules and regulations are there so that you’re not being shady and trying to steal people’s personal information.
With email marketing, you can more closely follow what your people are up to. From whether they clicked to your site, forwarded the email, or just marked it as spam.
What’s not email marketing?
1. Blind copying a ton of people in an email. That’s just annoying and will give you no stats.
2. Emailing people who didn’t ask to be on your email list.
“Quite frankly, email marketing is really the only marketing platform that you can directly interact with potential customers or current customers, and actually see what they’re doing from your email.”
What email marketing platform should you use?
Although Tonnisha has used a multitude of platforms, she’s personally using Active Campaign. There are pros and cons to all platforms.
For example, Mailchimp is user-friendly, and perfect for anyone sending out emails. It can even integrate with others such as Eventbrite. Mailchimp has a low cost entry point but it can get pricier the more you want to grow your list.
Other platforms, like Active Campaign, have more of a CMS capacity. With this platform, there are tons of options for drip send automations. They also have a point that helps you track how often a person has interacted with your emails. Active Campaign though is pricier and not as easy to build out.
What are lead magnets and how do they help grow your email list?
Basically, this is a free item or service that the user gets when they sign up for your email list. Whether it’s 10 or 20% off our first order or a free guide, there's some sort of incentive.
Beware: Just offering a newsletter isn’t going to help grow your email list. Not a lot of people want to be getting another email that could just be spam. Give something of value.
When creating your lead magnet, keep the user in mind. Understand what would be helpful for them and tie back to your business.
How do you start planning an email calendar?
“The number one reason why people unsubscribe from mailing lists from businesses is because they either received too many emails, or they received too many emails that are relevant to what they care about.”
First, know what your goals are with email. I.E. Is it to build brand awareness that funnels into clients? Planning allows you to be strategic and helps you see that creating email isn’t a burden. Just like social media, you get to think about what your email list is all about.
When you know what your goal is, you’ll be able to create content that will support your subscribers and give them what they want.
“Content planning is truly the key. So think about those goals, and have a plan for overall themes and content. You don't have to plan out every single email word for word, but at least have an understanding of what you want your emails to consist of.”
How do you structure subject lines for your emails?
Put some thought into your email’s subject line. Avoid using too many emojis, all caps, and exclamation marks since this could get you marked as spam by email service providers like GMail.
Make sure that the subject line matches the content in the email. You wouldn’t want to send a subject line about chocolate cake when your email content talks about training your dog, right?
Don’t forget about the preheader text!
“This is your second chance to convince that person to open the email... If you don't decide what the preheader text is, the inbox will,” explains Tonnisha. Know the word count allowed and make sure that, just like the subject lines, it matches your content.
What kind of images should you use when email marketing?
The cleaner the image in your email sends, the better. “Avoid pixelated images or things that look distorted,” says Tonnisha. They need to match the content and have something that resonates. For example, if you’re writing about a recipe, you wouldn’t add an image of a dog.
Make sure your fonts are easy to read in your emails.
“Avoid eyesore fonts,” says Tonnisha. You want to make sure that the fonts you’re using in your emails are easy to read. Keep it to the typical Helvetica or Arial since those will be easier for people with glasses.
Another reason to keep it simple with fonts in your emails? Mobile. You want to avoid having a hard to read font when it’s small and on a phone.
How do you know when to schedule your email sends?
It might just be trial and error. It depends on who is on your email list because if you're during the time that your target market is the busiest, they’re more likely to miss it.
Try A/B testing your emails with send times. Other platforms tell you what they think the optimal time is.
When it comes to email marketing, what’s the difference between a hard bounce and a soft bounce?
A hard bounce is an email campaign that doesn’t deliver because the email address was wrong or fake whereas a soft bounce is when it fails to deliver because of a tech glitch such as busy servers or the size of your image slices.
“Most platforms, including MailChimp, will attempt to deliver that soft bounce email a few times before they deem it as a hard bounce,” says Tonnisha.
Tip: you can always go in and check those hard bounced emails. Sometimes, people type in a coma instead of a period and it’ll be incorrect.
Be warned though, too many hard bounces might cause the platform, such as Mailchimp, to lock you out of sending more emails until you jump through a few hoops.
What click rate should business owners expect from their email marketing efforts?
“Click rates are typically very low,” says Tonnisha. She also wants you to understand that if you have nothing for your user to click on, your rate will obviously be lower.
“...If you can have a click rate of like, you know, 2 to 5%, that's actually really good, especially for e commerce.”
Keep in mind that a bigger list will give you a lower percentage because it’s based off the overall list.
The best thing small business owners can do is look into the metrics or benchmarks for your industry. Tonnisha mentioned that many platforms make that data available. Personally, though, Tonnisha always aims for a “...20 to 30% open rate with like a 2% click rate...” as a starting point. Just make sure you’re giving the user various opportunities to click.
Final email marketing tips for entrepreneurs:
Personalize your email sends whenever possible. It instills trust and is more likely to help push the user to click.
Make sure that images link to something that connects with your email message and that you’re using alt text.
Give the user a choice of frequency and/or the type of content they’d love to get.
Purge your email lists regularly of people not interacting.
Use a welcome series.
Meet Tonnisha:
Tonnisha is a full-time entrepreneur and Founder of TJE Communications. She offers digital marketing solutions to small business owners to help them level the playing field between themselves, and large corporations. Tonnisha has worked with non-profits, e-commerce and retail brands, health brands, haircare, food and restaurant, construction, and more.
Find Tonnisha’s Biz, or on Instagram, Twitter.
