How can email marketing fuel your overall inbound strategy

Most marketers agree that inbound marketing is one of the most effective ways of promoting their brands and increasing sales.

Statistics show that generating leads through inbound marketing costs 60% less than other outbound strategies. 

Unlike the other marketing strategies, inbound marketing focuses on targeting, attracting, engaging, and providing excellent user experiences throughout the buyer’s journey.

An effective inbound marketing strategy involves using emails to create brand awareness, attract customers, and make sales.

Leveraging the right tools and technology to deliver a consistent message is essential to any organizational communication strategy. 

Email marketing is a simple but effective way to get the most out of your overall inbound strategy.

Statistics show that email marketing is a very successful marketing strategy and generates about $42 for every $1 spent.

Below are some ways how email marketing can fuel your overall inbound strategy. 

1. Reach your targeted audience

An important aspect of inbound marketing involves identifying your target audience. Unlike outbound marketing, which targets a wide range of consumers, the inbound strategy focuses on a specific demographic that is interested in your brand.

So how do you identify the particular audience you should target in your email marketing? Those who opened your email but refused to take further action. 

Many prospects and customers will open your emails but refuse to take further action.

It will be a huge mistake to let your email marketing end at that point. Expert marketers do not give up easily. They try to find a way to persuade prospects to change their minds.

The email you will send to a prospect who opened your email but did not take any action should contain the following:  

• Personalize the email  
• Include the reason for the follow-up email  
• Clarify the purpose of the first email  
• Make an offer to the prospect
• State what the prospect will gain from taking an action  
• Call to action

2. Value your loyal customers  

You should pay particular attention to customers who have been consistent in their purchases and subscriptions.

Targeting these customers through emails will increase your customer retention rate and sales.  

You can use email marketing to make loyal customers feel valued, and in turn, they will continue to patronize and even refer others to your business.  

3. Rekindle with inactive subscribers  

Don’t be surprised that we advocate you target subscribers who have taken no positive action on their buyer’s journey.

Many inactive subscribers are just waiting for someone to nudge them towards making a buying commitment.

Email marketing is a brilliant strategy to re-engage inactive subscribers in making new commitments.

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4. Turn abandoned carts into sales

According to reports, about 70 percent of online customers abandon their carts for several reasons. Customers who have abandoned their cart at the last minute might need clarifications to conclude the transaction.

Multiple businesses have used email marketing strategies to get some customers who abandoned their carts to reconsider their decision.

5. Generate high-quality leads

Lead generation is another vital component of the inbound strategy. Without lead nurturing, it is hard to turn anyone into an actual customer.

Lead nurturing can increase your sales-ready leads by 50% and reduce your overall cost by 33%.

Studies have shown that email marketing has remained the most popular means for businesses to generate leads.

In email marketing, leads are prospects who have shared some of their personal information, like names, email addresses, occupation, age, and location with you.  

Generating leads in email marketing involves collecting personal information of your prospects and customers through opt-in forms.

A few email lead generation techniques include:

• Lead scoring
• Grab attention with headlines
• Run referral campaigns
• Optimize your email content
• Automate your email marketing

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From generating leads, businesses can begin nurturing those leads through positive engagements until they become real customers.  

Lead generation starts with identifying your target customers. These are those who have shown some interest in your business.

You will want to know some information about the people in your target audience, like their profession, where they live, and how they got to know your business.  

Running a successful lead generation campaign will ensure the survival of your business. Without a steady stream of customers, your cash flow will dry up, and it will be impossible to sustain your business.  

Another way to generate leads is through cold email outreach. Some reports show that the conversion rate of cold emails can be as high as 15.11 percent.   

Unfortunately, many inbound marketers shy away from sending cold emails to prospects because they are unsolicited and can come across as spam.   

But when used correctly, cold emailing can help you build connections with prospects who have no prior relationship with your business.  

The following are a few ways to use cold emails to generate leads:  

• Use cold email tools  
• Send your emails at the right time  
• Elicit curiosity or intrigue in the prospect  
• Offer something valuable  
• Don’t forget to follow up  

6. Increase website traffic 

Inbound marketing seeks to put your brand where it can be seen by those who are interested in the products and services you offer. 

With emails, businesses can send targeted messages to their audience to let them know of offers that will be beneficial to them.

Keeping your audience informed of relevant content with emails will increase the frequency of their visit to your site.   

Here are some tips for your email marketing strategy that you can use to generate traffic.

• Grow your email list  
• Segment your list  
• Personalize your emails  
• Use incentives  
• Send mobile-friendly emails  
• Include quality content  
• Leverage social media   

Email-generated traffic is the number of people attracted to your website through a link contained in an email you sent.

Many search engine optimization experts consider traffic generated through email marketing as very valuable because it comes from your current leads and customers.

Increasing traffic to your website through emails indicates that your messages are having the required effect on your audience. 

7. High Return on Investment (ROI)

Before inbound marketing, businesses used many outbound strategies like cold calling, trade shows, seminars, billboards, cold emailing, and radio/ TV/ print advertising to push out messages about their products and services to the outside world.   

Outbound marketing methods cost a lot of money and can affect the profitability and ROI of a business organization.   

Inbound marketing, on the other hand, is very cost-effective. Many reports suggest that traditional marketing strategies cost 61 percent more than inbound marketing.   

Email is a vital component of inbound marketing and helps to increase ROI by focusing on a target audience, thereby reducing the cost of lead generation.

The higher a business’s return on investment, the more likely it would continue to thrive and invest in new ventures.   

Email marketing guarantees a high return on investment because of the following reasons:  

• Cost-effective – When compared to other marketing strategies; the cost involved in the email marketing is less but generates more revenue from the invested resources.  
• Affordable – Every business can start an email marketing campaign no matter their budget and resources.
• Easy to maintain – Also, you do not need a ton of cash to maintain or sustain an email marketing campaign.
• It increases conversions – Email marketing allows businesses to increase conversions by promoting their products and services directly to their audience. With email marketing, your customers will have a better opportunity to acquaint themselves with your products and services.  

8. Improve customer engagement 

Customer engagement is another area where inbound marketing differs from other traditional ways of marketing.

Developing a close relationship with your prospects and customers is the primary goal of inbound marketing.

Succeeding as a business depends on one’s ability to form a close relationship with prospects and customers.

Many businesses have developed solid relationships with their customers through emails.  

Research shows that many customers consider email as their best communication platform. Some of the reasons businesses should use emails to engage their customers are:  

• People can receive emails everywhere  
• It only targets interested parties  
• Emails are convenient  
• Emails are device friendly  
• It is easy to personalize  
• It is trackable  

Emails offer an excellent opportunity for businesses to develop healthy relationships with their customers. Those who are not using it are missing out.

The emails that have the highest engagement rates…  

• Have a proper salutation
• Are concise
• Are well written
• Have a call-to-action (CTA)

Conclusion

Despite the enormous success of inbound marketing, some of the marketers still do not know how to use it to take their businesses to the next level.

We just learned how email marketing can fuel your overall inbound strategy. The tips examined in this article, if well implemented, will surely help you run an effective inbound marketing campaign.