Emails That Drive Growth: Harness the Power of Acquisition Email Marketing

Email marketing is widely recognized as one of the most effective strategies available for customer acquisition— but do you know how to make email marketing work for your business?

The key to a successful strategy is to build a robust list of engaged email subscribers and reach out to them with messages that they find irresistible. 

In this post, we’ll take you through all the steps and factors necessary to build a strong strategy. 

Understanding the Basics

Acquisition email marketing goes beyond lead generation. Because email allows you to interact in-depth with the same prospects repeatedly, it’s a unique platform to forge meaningful connections and strengthen your brand identity in their minds.

But just sending emails isn’t enough. 

Most people are actively looking for ways to cut down on their inbox clutter.  

Think about how you face your inbox every morning: You probably delete as many messages as possible without opening them. If you open an email that doesn’t feel useful or relevant, you might unsubscribe or even report the message as spam.

That’s why personalization, targeted campaigns, and valuable content are the keys to boosting conversions and building brand loyalty through email.

Importance of Email in the Marketing Mix

Social media, advertising, and content marketing sit at the top of the customer acquisition funnel, casting a wide net to capture as many solid leads as possible.

While businesses may hope for ads and social posts to result in sales, most customers need more time to make decisions — especially for larger purchases or ongoing relationships with a business.

That’s why many businesses use their social media, ads, and blogs to capture email addresses. Then, they can use email to deliver targeted communication over a period of time. 

This regular communication can build trust, create a strong brand identity, and convert prospects into long-term customers and brand ambassadors.

Building Your Email List

While buying a list of email addresses is possible, it’s much more effective to build your own list of people who fit your customer profile and who have invited you into their inbox. These readers will be much more receptive to your messages and infinitely more likely to convert.

Crafting an Attractive Opt-in Strategy

Start by developing a strong landing page for your email sign-ups. Tell people exactly what they should expect from your emails and why they should subscribe. Also, reassure them that they can unsubscribe at any time and that you won’t be selling or sharing your list with anyone else. 

A compelling call to action (CTA) is a critical element of an effective opt-in strategy. Your CTA should be clear, concise, and persuasive. It should entice your audience to take action.

Offering a compelling incentive can significantly enhance your opt-in strategy. Providing exclusive content, discounts, or free resources can motivate visitors to subscribe and provide contact information.

Innovative Ways To Encourage Sign-Ups

There are many ways to motivate new people to join your email list. Here are a few:

• Lead magnet: Offer high-value content, checklists, or tools in exchange for joining the list.

• Giveaway/Prize Drawing: Choose a prize that will appeal to your target market.

• Viral Quizzes: Create a fun quiz and ask for an email in return for results.

• Social media: Post intriguing content and promise more in your emails.

• Referrals: Offer your existing subscribers an incentive to refer their network.

Segmentation: Key to Targeted Outreach

As you build your list, consider what segments will be meaningful when sending targeted content. You can build segmentation into your sign-up form by asking for the information you need or by having them check boxes about their interests. Some practical segmentation approaches include:

• Demographic segmentation: This involves categorizing your subscribers based on their age, gender, location, or other demographic factors. This information can help you tailor your content to specific groups and ensure that it resonates with their interests and needs.

• Behavioral segmentation: This approach focuses on understanding how subscribers interact with your emails or website. By tracking their actions, such as opens, clicks, or purchases, you can group them based on their behavior and send them relevant content or offers accordingly.

• Interest-based segmentation: You can create segments by asking subscribers about their preferences or allowing them to indicate their areas of interest through checkboxes or dropdowns in the sign-up form. 

• Purchase history segmentation: If you have an e-commerce business, segmenting by purchase history can be highly effective. You can group customers with similar purchases and offer personalized recommendations or promotions for related products.

Remember that effective segmentation requires collecting accurate data and regularly updating it, as subscriber preferences may change over time.

Why Trust Us: Lauren Haas has been creating email campaigns that convert since the 1990s. She’s founded several successful businesses and now does creative content marketing for small business and nonprofit clients through her agency, Main Street Marketing Mix. 

Designing Impactful Email Campaigns

The design of your campaigns is crucial to achieve high engagement and conversion rates. The key lies in understanding your target audience and tailoring your emails to resonate with them.

Visual Design

The design elements of your emails should be visually appealing and aligned with your brand identity. It’s a good idea to create a “brand kit” with logos, colors, and fonts that define your brand identity.

Take branding a step further by specifying the types of images that will best broadcast what you’re all about. For example, a travel brand focusing on hiking and outdoor adventures might always use pictures of landscapes in its marketing. 

In contrast, a more culture-focused travel brand would be more inclined to use images of indigenous people, villages, and artisans at work.

Your overall layout also impacts your brand image — the amount of white space you use, the shapes of your pictures (rectangles, circles, cutouts), and your use of elements like infographics, gif images, videos, and charts all help give off your brand image at a glance.

Your target audience profile should drive all of this. Here’s an example of how three businesses in the same industry might use wildly different layouts and design elements to reach different markets.

A financial advisor trying to attract customers approaching retirement might use a traditional layout, with rectangular images of middle-aged people, serif fonts, left-aligned text, and lots of charts, graphs, and tables. Desaturated, deep colors like navy blue, forest green, and gray would help them communicate seriousness and stability.

On the other hand, an advisor specializing in cryptocurrency for younger investors might choose an airier layout with lots of white space, sans-serif fonts, and images without backgrounds to add vibrancy to the page. They might use video, animation, and mind-mapping graphics that younger audiences relate to. Bright shades of green, orange, yellow, and turquoise would help them create a fresh, youthful vibe.

Now imagine a third financial advisor promoting college savings strategies. Like our first example, they might be more traditional in their design, and would also choose images of children, families, and college scenes to appeal to their target market.

The Anatomy of a High-Converting Email Campaign

There are several vital elements that play a crucial role in your email campaign success. Let's dive into the anatomy of such a campaign and explore the essential factors that can make all the difference.

Frequency and Timing

Frequency and timing also play a crucial role in maximizing conversions. Bombarding subscribers with too many emails can lead to unsubscribes. On the other hand, sending emails too infrequently may cause your audience to forget about you.

When planning your timing, try to think from your audience’s point of view. They probably don’t want to read work-related messages on Sunday afternoon or personal content on Monday morning.

There’s no single correct frequency and timing for every business. Finding the right balance and understanding when your recipients are most likely to engage is key.

Subject Line and Preview

Your readers will decide whether to open your message based on nothing but the subject line and your reputation as a sender. A well-crafted subject line sets the stage for what's inside and entices readers to click through. You need compelling subject lines that will pique curiosity or offer value.

Some email clients also display preview text in the inbox, which gives you a little more space to persuade the reader to open the message.

Content

Of course, great subject lines must be backed up by valuable content within the email. Providing informative, entertaining, or actionable content keeps readers engaged and encourages them to take action.

If you send out emails with enticing subject lines but deliver mediocre content inside, your readers will lose trust in you and eventually opt out of your list. The best emails deliver value in the form of useful information, appealing discounts, or both.

If you’re sending a longer message that requires the reader to scroll down to see the whole message, you should lead with the strongest content at the top and include a call-to-action that will be visible immediately. 

Call to Action

And speaking of calls-to-action (CTAs), they are vital for driving conversions. Whether it's directing readers to make a purchase, sign up for an event, or download an ebook, strategically placed CTAs guide recipients toward taking desired actions.

A colorful button with text next to it that makes clear exactly why someone should click on it is an ideal CTA, but you can experiment with creative approaches.

Personalization Techniques for Better Engagement

The more clearly you understand your target audience, the more you can personalize your content. Tailoring your messages to each recipient helps establish a connection and increases engagement.

Here are some personalization techniques that will improve your conversions. All of these can be accomplished using segmentation, integration with a shopping cart, or dynamic content features in your email app.

• Use the recipient's name in the subject line and greet them by name inside.

• Recommend products based on their past purchases.

• Streamline your messaging by removing blocks of content that aren’t relevant to a segment.

• Remind recipients of items they left behind in their shopping cart.

• Call back to why they subscribed. (Did they enjoy that lead magnet/product/post?)

• Offer tips on how to get the most from a product/service they’ve purchased.

• Provide very specific content that matches their needs perfectly.

A/B Testing: Fine-Tuning Your Approach

Conducting side-by-side tests is the best way to learn what works with your audience.

For example, you could see how the same email with two different subject lines performs in terms of both open rate and conversion rate or try different call-to-actions to see which one pulls the best.

Content That Converts

Designing an impactful email campaign requires a deep understanding of your audience's needs, preferences, and pain points. By addressing these factors in your email content, you can capture their attention and drive them towards taking action.

Educational Content to Build Trust

Sharing educational content helps establish your brand’s expertise in the field so that your audience will think of you when they need something related. However, you must keep in mind that people are overwhelmed with information these days.

If you think about the messages you value versus the ones you throw away, you’ll realize that a valuable educational message is:

• Relevant

• Brief

• Fresh

• Actionable

• Entertaining

Rambling emails with information that can be found anywhere will harm your brand more than it helps you. This is an excellent reason to avoid using AI-written content unless you first edit it tightly and infuse it with your personality.

Promotional Content To Drive Action

Sharing valuable promotions is a great way to use email marketing. Consider content like:

• Discounts

• Buy one/get one deals

• Seasonal recommendations

• Gift ideas

• Combo deals (like outfit-of-the-week or a wine and cheese pairing)

• Free gifts

• Drawings/contests

If your emails regularly include valuable promotions for things that readers really want, they will look forward to opening your messages.

Storytelling in Emails

Telling a compelling story can be an excellent tool for emails if you target it carefully and make sure that it has value for your readers. Some examples include:

• Customer stories with actionable tips

• Compelling fundraising appeal stories

• Your company's origin story

Just make sure that you keep your story brief, illustrate it well, and stay focused on why this story has value to your reader. 

Technical Aspects of Acquisition Email Marketing

Now that you know how to design and create a compelling email campaign, it’s time to address some of the more technical aspects of email marketing.

Email Marketing Platforms: Choosing the Right One

The platform you choose will make a big difference in your experience as an email marketer and may impact the effectiveness of your campaigns as well.

Look for a platform with easy-to-use templates, an intuitive interface, and built-in features like A/B testing, referrals, and lead forms.

beehiiv was built to be the ideal platform for growing your list and creating compelling emails, with all of the tools and reporting you’ll ever need built into the dashboard. Check out beehiiv with a free trial and see why so many email marketers are choosing this innovative platform.

Ensuring Deliverability and Avoiding Spam Filters

Even a perfect email campaign is useless if your messages can’t be delivered or wind up in spam filters.

Some of the top factors that influence deliverability include:

• The reputation of the domain you’re sending from

• Overly salesy language and common spam trigger words

• Using too many images

You can improve deliverability by asking your readers to confirm their subscription or send a reply to your welcome email.

Compliance and Legal Considerations

To comply with anti-spam laws, you need to include a way for people to opt out of your email list in each message and clearly spell out who the sender is.

A good email platform will have compliance built into its templates. If you’re sending your emails directly, without a platform, you should research the laws to ensure that you’re in compliance.

Analyzing and Measuring Success

Tracking your campaigns' performance will help you see how your efforts are paying off. Over time, you’ll be able to see how each piece of your strategy impacts your results and make necessary adjustments along the way.

Whether it's A/B testing different elements or experimenting with new content formats, measuring success empowers marketers to improve their email marketing campaigns continuously.

Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for Email Marketing

The two most significant indicators that email marketers track are open rates and click-through rates.

Open rates measure the percentage of your audience that is opening your emails. It’s impacted heavily by the subject lines you choose but is also a good reflection of how your audience feels about your brand and the past messages you’ve sent.

Click-through rates measure the impact of your content and call to action.

You also want to keep an eye on your conversion rate, which is the bottom line of email marketing. Are your emails ultimately persuading people to buy?

Some marketers also regularly review engagement levels and overall revenue generated through email campaigns.

Interpreting Data To Improve Strategies

By analyzing these metrics, you can identify areas of improvement and make data-driven decisions to optimize your strategies. You can test different subject lines, call-to-action buttons, or audience segments to see which tactics yield the best results.

Over time, you’ll learn exactly what kind of messaging and content works best with your audience.

Leveraging Feedback for Continuous Improvement

Another way to gather information is to simply ask for it. Survey your readers and find out what kind of content they value most, what they’d like more of from you, and what they would like to change about your emails. Also, create a system to track any spontaneous feedback from your audience.

Create Your Own Acquisition Email Marketing Strategy

Acquisition email marketing is a powerful strategy that can significantly impact the growth of your business. By leveraging the inboxes of your target audience, you can effectively engage with potential customers and drive conversions. However, implementing a successful email marketing campaign requires the right tools and platform.

That's where beehiiv comes in. 

Designed specifically for growth, beehiiv provides a comprehensive solution for all of your email marketing needs. With its user-friendly interface and advanced features, you can easily create and send impactful emails that resonate with your audience. From personalized campaigns to detailed analytics, beehiiv empowers you to optimize your email marketing efforts and achieve remarkable results.

Try beehiiv now and unlock the full potential of your email marketing campaigns.