Old is gold! 

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But how many of you reading this piece actually go by the statement? None! 

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With changing technologies, comes the new trends of promotion. Word-of-mouth was taken over by emails. Emails were taken over by social media platforms. And these platforms are now powered by ad campaigns for marketing. 

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While modern, money invested strategies seem more promising, has anybody wondered to give the older and inexpensive techniques a try? 

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Email marketing has been in existence since the 1970s however, by 2015 over 50 percent of the emails received were spam. Even though companies had email marketing as one of their marketing techniques, the need to justify the process was never a priority. 

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But as an MSP, it is your golden opportunity to coin because this is an unexplored option in the world of managed services. You might end up in the spam folder but, the priority should be on ways to move back in their inboxes. 

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Let’s begin from the basics

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Have your email marketing objectives clear

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Your email marketing campaigns might go wrong when the objectives are vague. You have to be clear of what you are expecting people to do after reading an email. Is it that they must call you back? Or reply to an email for more information? Or be redirected to a page where you have your company listed? Or probably, fill up a form? 

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Your email marketing efforts fuel other marketing campaigns for webinars, seminars, offers and lead generation. Until you have your objective clear, do not proceed further as a single mistake can get your domain in the spam list. 

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Research for the automation tools

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When you dive into the world of research related to marketing, you might get lost in the wide world. We understand with so many options available to perform one single task, it could be very confusing to choose one tool that might be apt for you. In cases like these,  give the older techniques a chance and consider opting for word-of-mouth feedback. 

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Try to understand which automation tool might suit the world of MSPs. Do a technological research only to a certain extent. When choosing a marketing automation tool, consider looking for integration options with your CRM or PSA application. At last, look for the price of the app which best suits you. 

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Give yourself time to get accustomed 

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You might not be an expert in using the marketing automation tool. And getting live with a campaign without a proper hold of the tool will only lead to a revenue loss. Play with the tool well, so that, you understand the minute details. Get help from their customer service in creating newsletters, campaigns, email marketing templates, etc. 

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Build your audience

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Your audience cannot be just any random person’s email ID. The audiences are your potential or hot customers. You might want to educate them about your services or intrigue them with offers that you provide, therefore, your audience list must be relevant to your business. Be at events and conferences to interact and collect business cards and details about potential customers. Send your email to this list of customers’ emails. Do not buy or run any lead generation campaigns at the beginning. 

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Just send simple emails to a list of people you come across on occasions and think could be a potential customer. 

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Know the law before you send emails

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Do not mess up with the thin line between email marketing and spamming. Not every country has similar cyber laws. For example, in the United Kingdom, you can send business-to-business emails without a company ‘opting in’ to receive them. 

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Make sure that you don’t spam your customers, ever. Send informative emails without much of images or videos. Keep it simple and reasonable. 

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Important factors to consider while creating your newsletters and campaigns

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This is a separate section of certain factors to be kept in mind while drafting an email. These are minute points and a user tends to forget to implement these. 

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Don’t disregard the subject line

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Much like the title of a book, your email open rates depend on the subject line. We’ll not go by the monotonous marketing style, but we have to accept that your subject line should be crisp while it explains the objective of the email.

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Spend some time thinking about your subject line and gather insights on which one works better with a good number of open rates. 

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Segmentation is always better 

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Neither every customer you contact will respond to your email the same way nor are their requirements the same. You know better about your customer’s needs. So, if you have two lists of customers with two different objectives, create two different email campaigns. 

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Do not send a universal campaign to multiple sets of people. You might end up losing customers. In fact, when you reach out to the customers as per their needs, they tend to open your email and read it through. Whether they convert or not, your email would intrigue them to at least open and read your offerings. 

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Personalize

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An employee receives more than 100 emails a day. In a sea of emails, how would you make your email stand out and be read? You must personalize your emails so that when the recipient reads the subject line, feels that it is directly sent by a service provider on the other side and not an automation tool. 

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You know the factors to consider while sending out emails, but what must your content look like?

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Your main motive to send out emails is to draw users to perform a certain task. But your email should not be a generic one with the same structure asking them to either sign up or take a demo or call back. 

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The content of your email must be thought out well. It must include blog excerpts, news, customer reviews, offers, free trial or events. You educate a user about the space you are serving in. Always follow the 70-30 rule. Try to give out 70 percent of the information about the space or the world of your service. And the rest of the 30 percent must include information related to your product, services, organizations, and employees. 

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Also, try to avoid using spammy words, the list of which can be checked here. Because when you use these words, your email and the domain get listed as a spam account and to fix this, is tedious! 

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Next step, you test your campaigns

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Before you send out the emails, test and retest the campaign by sending it to yourself. Check for the subject line. Try to input your main message in the first 30-40 characters or less than 10 words. Make sure the email is sent from your company mail ID as this would build trust, highlight your brand and increase the open rates. 

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Lastly, track the results 

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The effort you put in accomplishing all the steps mentioned above can only be fruitful when you track the activities of your email status. You should check for the open/click-through rates as this factor is the sign of the quality of the brand. If you have more open rates, you have framed your email really well, otherwise, it needs some change. 

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Check the analytics to identify the user journey. Try to draw a pattern out of all the activities users perform. Track the email results on your website, too. And do not leave any stone unturned while you are running an email marketing campaign. 

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Takeaways 

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Emails are probably as old as the internet. They have proved to be helpful in the earlier days of the internet when users had the patience to open an email and the service provider followed a certain set of soberness while pitching. However, with today’s trends, emails have somewhere lost its authenticity and are only used as one of the methods of marketing. 

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MSPs, getting yourself accustomed to modern marketing methods and an email marketing flow are needed. Core marketing may sound too technical and not very favorable, try approaching your customers with emails. Simplicity is the key to emails yet, it is one of the most powerful marketing methods. And it is inexpensive! 

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So, before you jump into accomplishing marketing efforts, give emails a chance. Probably, its the best thing that can click your business!