What Is An ESP? Everything You Need to Know About Email Service Providers Research has shown that it takes around eight touchpoints to make a sale. This can be daunting for any salesperson as follow-ups take time and effort. This is one of the many reasons that email marketing is such an efficient strategy. Having the ability to contact your prospects or your current customers in a relatively unintrusive way (especially compared to phone calls), is essential to increasing your sales, customer engagement, and retention. These emails keep you top of mind with customers and improve brand awareness. While it may seem simple enough to use your regular email system in the beginning when business is small and clients and prospects are few and far between, the thought of sending individual emails to people when you have a large contact list is time-consuming and unnecessary. In order to handle the volume of emails you’ll be sending out, you need to enlist the help of an email service provider (ESP). Email Service Providers An email service provider is software that allows you to send email campaigns to a list of subscribers. It is a set of tools for email marketing that stores email addresses and sends emails. However, depending on your needs, ESP companies offer a variety of different functionalities to help you achieve your goals. Some of these can include: Email and marketing automation Lead capture forms A/B testing for email subject lines and email...

2022 Email Marketing Benchmarks Email marketing is an important strategy for marketers looking to reach new leads, stay top-of-mind with existing customers, and keep them aware of new products and services — but the practice isn't always straightforward. Technology and consumers change, and keeping up can be challenging. However, the challenge is worth it. 47.5% of marketers said their email marketing strategy was very effective toward reaching their business goals, while 47.2% said it was only somewhat effective. Only 2.7% said it was somewhat ineffective, and less than 1% said it was very ineffective. Now that you know a sound email marketing strategy can help you reach your broader marketing goals, how exactly can you strengthen your marketing tactics to see the best results? To improve your email marketing metrics, here are some useful email marketing benchmarks we gathered from a survey we conducted among hundreds of marketers. Most Important Metrics for Effective Email Marketing When we asked marketers which metrics were the most important in measuring the effectiveness of an email campaign, the majority included click-through rate, open rate, and conversion rate in their answers. Click-Through Rate In email marketing, click-through rate (CTR) is calculated by the number of subscribers that have clicked on at least one link in the email campaign. And 35.9% of the marketers we surveyed said improving it is one of the biggest challenges they face with their email marketing efforts. If you're struggling to boost your CTR, the following email marketing...

How to Bypass the Toughest Email Spam Filters Email is undoubtedly one of the most powerful opportunities for engaging with your leads and customers, and increasing sales.  In fact, email generates $42 for every $1 spent, which is an astounding 4,200% ROI — making it an incredibly effective tool for generating revenue.  But nowadays, our consumers are overloaded with emails and often suffer from email fatigue, leading them to delete or ignore most emails they receive. Worse still, that's if they even receive your email in the first place. Fortunately, the folks at TinyMCE, a rich-text editor often used to craft emails, put together this handy checklist with HubSpot to help you get past the toughest spam filters ... and then engage your audiences once you're through. Take a look, or click here to see TinyMCE's full, immersive page focused on bypassing email spam...

7 Email Cadence Best Practices for Better Email Marketing Campaigns There's much more to email campaigns than drafting up some copy and hitting send. One of the most crucial components is email cadence: the pulse, pace, and playbook of a successful email campaign. In other words, if you can get the right emails to the right customers at the right time, you can get a lot of mileage out of your email marketing efforts. Let's take a deeper dive into what an email cadence is and establish the fundamental principles of structuring a successful one. The success of an email campaign can hinge upon the effectiveness of its cadence. If your cadence is too intrusive, obnoxious, or directionless, you can lose out on opportunities to guide leads through their buyers' journeys. If potential customers feel pestered or confused by constant, irrelevant newsletters and promotions, they probably won’t stick around to hear what you have to say. Email Marketing Frequency In a recent HubSpot Blogs survey of 300 marketers, a whopping 95% reported their email marketing strategy was effective in 2021. Let's take a look at where (and when) they're finding success. When it comes to frequency, here are a few stats to know: Emails sent on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday get the most engagement. Marketing emails sent from 9 a.m. to 12 p.m. on Tuesday garner the most engagement, followed by Monday and Wednesday at the same time. The weekend is a dead...

How To Improve Your Emails With a Handwritten Signature Email is the darling of the marketing world, and for a good reason. With 99% of email users checking their inbox every day, it’s an excellent way to connect with customers.  However, the popularity of email marketing means you have to work harder to stand out among competitors. It’s not enough to just write great content. You have to make your emails feel personalized and look professional too.  We’ll show you how you can create a handwritten signature for your emails to give them an extra human touch. Why You Need a Signature Of the billions of emails sent and received every day, more than half of them are spam. As a professional, you want your emails to look trustworthy and credible so customers don’t discard them.  Creating a high-quality, handwritten email signature helps you build trust with customers. You can also use the signature to reinforce your brand identity, evoke professionalism, and add a personal touch. You can create a handwritten signature in five straightforward steps. Let’s dive in.  1. Go to a signature maker website. To create a handwritten signature, you need to use an online tool. The good news is that several websites like Signature Maker and Create My Signature digitize your cursive signature for free. If you want your signature to match your brand colors and style, look for a tool where you can customize...

Send Your Clients A Birthday Email That's Sure to Get Engagement Birthdays can be fun to celebrate. They’re like our own personal holidays where people wish us a happy birthday, wait staff sings and brings us free desserts, and our social media feeds are filled with best wishes and adorable memes. It’s also fun to watch the birthday offers roll in Free dinner at our favorite restaurant? Yes, please. Free ice cream at the best ice cream shop in the city? Don’t mind if I do. 25% discount on our preferred brand of makeup or beer? Where do I pay? Thankfully, receiving a birthday wishes email from your favorite businesses isn’t just good for the consumer. It’s also great for the business. Happy Birthday Emails A happy birthday email is an automated marketing email that is sent out on or near a customer’s birthday. While these emails celebrate the “personal holiday” and give the customer a special offer to help sweeten their day, they are actually designed to increase customer sales and retention. Benefits of Sending a Birthday Wishes Email As we mentioned earlier, birthday emails benefit the business as well as the customer. There are a variety of reasons to send a birthday email including: Staying top of mind with your customers Reminding potential customers that you exist and likely have the solution they need Showing loyalty to existing customers and subscribers Garnering goodwill that will likely lead to word-of-mouth marketing and referrals...

How Apple iOS 15 is Impacting Email Marketers Back in September 2021, the announcement of Apple’s iOS 15 data privacy changes triggered a mass hysteria among email marketers, with some even proclaiming that email marketing as we know it could come to an end.  Considering that Apple Mail and Apple mobile devices make up over 35% of the global email provider market share, those fears didn’t seem too far-fetched. But the question remains – were these fears well-founded or were they false alarms?  Now that enough time has passed to see the impact of data privacy changes, I surveyed 300 email marketers to understand how iOS 15 and GDPR changes have affected their marketing strategies and the steps they took to adapt. The Impact of Data Privacy Changes Change can be scary for all of us, but when that change includes reduced visibility into email analytics, it's no surprise that email marketers were shaking in their boots when iOS15 was announced. Surprisingly, my survey shows that the changes, while definitely impactful, were not all bad. While two-thirds of email marketers surveyed report a moderate-to-significant impact on their email marketing strategy, whether the impact was positive, neutral, or negative, is not as clear-cut as you might assume. For starters, 47% of email marketers say the impact of data privacy changes was neutral on their email marketing strategy. Admittedly, 29% said the changes had a negative impact, but 24% said the contrary, claiming data privacy changes had a positive...

17 Email Marketing Best Practices That Actually Drive Results While email marketing may not get the attention some newer marketing channels get, it's still a terrific way for you to generate leads and convert more prospects for your business. With that in mind, I want to share some email marketing best practices you can use to generate more leads for your business.   1. Don't purchase contact lists. This first tip should come as no surprise, but given the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), it bears repeating. Email campaigns depend on a healthy open rate, and if you're contacting people whose information you bought – rather than earned from a previous interaction – you'll quickly see your emails' performance drop. The GDPR also requires each European recipient's consent before you reach out to them, and purchased email lists usually do not come with that consent. For help reaching your target audience, consider Versium Reach – a platform made for B2B marketers that allows you to own data on your target audience across multiple marketing channels. 2. Avoid using 'No-Reply' in the sender's email address. Have you heard of CAN-SPAM? This longstanding piece of legislation is a popular and important guideline for all email marketers in the U.S. One major rule in CAN-SPAM is to never use the words "no reply," or a similar phrase, as your email sender's name (for example, "noreply@yourcompany.com"). "No reply" in an email message prevents recipients from...

8 Tips for Writing An Effective and Compelling Email Have you ever had to hype yourself up to send an email? Because, same. There’s something that feels monumental about sending an email that you don’t always get with other forms of communication. And if you’re a non-native English speaker, that task can seem even more daunting. This article will provide some helpful tips to help you improve the overall quality of your emails, no matter your perspective. Once you’ve applied these simple strategies to your writing, you should be able to confidently send emails to anyone and get rid of that post-send anxiety. Let's get started. How To Write An Effective Email Have a compelling subject line. Start with an appropriate greeting. Have a strong attention grabber. Keep your message short and concise. Be consistent with your font. Write a simple closing. Schedule your emails. Do a final spelling and grammar check. Email Writing Tips for International Teams 1. Have a compelling subject line. Subject lines can make or break your email’s success. It’s often the deciding factor on whether someone will open your email. Unfortunately, a lot of people struggle with this part. Take a look at this example: This particular subject line (real-life example by the way)...

How HubSpot's Email Team is Responding to iOS 15 As email marketers, one of the key metrics we use to determine if our audience is actually reading our content is the open rate. Tracking email opens allows us to determine whether our subject lines are resonating with our audience. If we can't get them to open an email, we can't get them to click and move further along the buyer's journey. With the rollout of Apple iOS 15's new privacy protection features, our open rates are in jeopardy. But is that a bad thing? Let's start with some information about how this new feature will work. How Apple's Email Privacy Protection Feature Works After updating an iOS device to iOS 15, upon opening the Apple Mail app you will see a popup asking whether you'd like to "Protect Mail activity." If you select the “Protect Mail activity" option, Apple will first route your emails through a proxy server to pre-load message content, including tracking pixels, before it makes it to your inbox. What does that mean for you? According to Apple, “Mail Privacy Protection hides your IP address, so senders can’t link it to your other online activity or determine your location. And it prevents senders from seeing if and when you’ve opened their email.” What does this mean for email marketers? Mail privacy protection affects any email opened from the Apple Mail app on any device, no matter which email service is used such as Gmail or a...