Is your inbound email marketing strategy working? Or are you sending out messages to everyone you can and crossing your fingers for a decent open rate?
It’s fair to say that that’s not the way forward, not if you want an inbound email marketing strategy that actually converts. And who doesn’t want that, right?
This guide will take you through everything you need to know about inbound email marketing, as well as what to do to create a strategy that increases sales.
Ready? Let’s start with an easy question.
What is inbound email marketing?
Inbound email marketing is a way of reaching out to your existing subscribers. It’s sending well-thought-out, personalised content to those leads who have already expressed an interest in your business and signed up to your mailing list. By showing them you have something valuable to say and offer, you can build trust and nurture them down the sales funnel towards a sale.
In contrast, outbound email marketing strategies target anyone and everyone, regardless of how cold a lead they are. You know the kind of email. Your inbox is probably full of them.
Trust us, inbound is the way to go. Here are seven steps to build a strong inbound email marketing strategy.
1. Know your audience in detail
If you want your email marketing to have an impact, you have to know your audience. And we’re not just talking about their name – you’ll need to get deeper under the skin than that.
Demographic information such as age, location, gender, and job seniority forms a strong basis. From there, you can dig into your audience’s interests, beliefs, and preferences, as well as their previous interactions with your website or emails. A lead generation quiz will give you that information, and ScoreApp will feed it directly into your CRM for easy access.
2. Set clear inbound email marketing goals
Without goals, it’s impossible to define and measure success. How will you know how well your inbound email marketing strategy is doing if there are no objectives or milestones to work towards?
Email marketing has the power to help businesses reach a number of goals, but it only works when you know what you’re aiming for.
Think about:
- Increasing email sign-ups – Technically, this step comes before your inbound email marketing strategy kicks in. You need a good-sized email list to market to, and that’s where a good lead magnet comes in handy. A ScoreApp quiz is the more engaging way to get leads to share their details and join your mailing list. Ask the right questions, and you’ll also get in-depth information about their needs that’s perfect for personalised content. Share your lead magnet far and wide to increase sign-ups.
- Getting more sales calls – Once you’ve got a healthy inbound email list to work through, you can start using it to bring in sales calls, demos, and appointments. Use targeted and personalised content to hit the sweet spot of recognising a lead’s concerns and presenting yourself as the solution. Top it off with a strong call to action (CTA) that encourages booking a sales call, demo, or appointment to seal the deal.
- Increasing conversions – A good email sequence guides leads through the sales funnel towards a sale. Sequences will look different depending on how warm the lead is, but engaging them at the right time will never be a challenge if you automate emails based on lead behaviour. Sending special, time-sensitive offers is a great way to incentivise anyone still on the fence about making a purchase. If you’ve already built a waitlist, then you can use that to hit the most likely customers in one go.
- Improving customer retention – Relevant, personalised email sequences keep leads engaged and customers coming back for more. Follow up on quizzes, purchases, and webinars with product recommendations, offers, or surveys to strengthen the bond and encourage repeat business. For the best results, make sure your emails are part of a great customer experience that builds brand loyalty.
3. Build a high-quality and pre-qualified email list
There’s very little point in emailing a ton of people and seeing what sticks. That’s why we’re building an email marketing strategy based on inbound leads and not outbound ideas.
ScoreApp gives you the tools to build an email list full of high-quality, pre-qualified leads.
By integrating ScoreApp with your CRM and email marketing platform, you can instantly segment leads based on how they answer pre-qualifying questions in quizzes. That way, the sales team know who to prioritise and how best to engage them. You’ll also increase efficiency by leaving any leads who don’t qualify by the wayside.
4. Create valuable and personalised email content
Thanks to your quizzes and other lead magnets, not to mention integration with ScoreApp, your CRM will be stuffed with lead data. That, in turn, will let you develop personalised email content that’s not just of value to the lead, but can improve your conversion and sales numbers.
When you know a lead’s preferences, priorities, and pain points, you can create email sequences that speak directly to them – sequences that give them access to extra resources, or promote the solutions you are best placed to offer. Inbound email marketing might stem from a strong email list, but it’s the ability to speak to your leads individually that makes it such a powerful tool.
5. Introduce email marketing automation
If you were to task your sales team with manually building and actioning your entire inbound email marketing strategy, they wouldn’t get much else done. Not only would they spend huge chunks of each day writing personalised content and following up on every lead’s actions, but leads would likely lose interest due to the delay in engagement.
Linking ScoreApp to your email marketing platform allows for effortless automation. Generate relevant content ideas with AI, and set email sequences to send automatically when a lead matches your criteria. Webinar follow-ups, abandoned cart notices, and special offer emails can all be automated to help move leads down the sales funnel more efficiently.
6. Continually test and optimise your inbound email marketing funnel
Building an inbound email marketing strategy is a process. It’s extremely unlikely you’ll hit on the perfect subject, content, CTA, or frequency on the first attempt. It’s all about refining what you’ve got so far, continually testing, changing, and then testing some more. That ongoing A/B testing is the only surefire way to see what brings the best results.
ScoreApp integration makes A/B testing instant. So, even if an alteration doesn’t have the desired result, it won’t take long to find what does optimise your funnel. Keep testing to keep things fresh, while raising your engagement and your conversion rates at the same time.
7. Nurture and convert leads
One of the key benefits of an inbound email marketing strategy is that it gives you the chance to nurture leads. Key touchpoints and personalised emails will allow you to engage with leads at impactful times.
Including content which adds extra value after a webinar is a perfect example of keeping a lead’s attention with follow-up emails. Inviting them to take part in a survey, meanwhile, will give you even more data to improve the personalisation and efficacy of your targeted content.
Now’s the time to create an inbound email marketing strategy with ScoreApp
We’d go so far as to say that an inbound email marketing strategy is essential for any business looking to nurture leads and increase conversions.
It’s a process that requires careful groundwork and embracing new ways of work such as automation, attention to detail, and rigorous testing and refining. By putting in the effort, and letting ScoreApp take some of the strain, you can create email sequences that keep leads engaged. Not to mention a strategy which moves leads down the sales funnel long after they’ve first given you their email address.
You can try ScoreApp for free, so start building your inbound marketing strategy (and increasing your conversions) today.
