The Found Gen

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How to Grow Your Email Marketing List Organically

Emails, e-blasts, newsletters, oh my!

The options of communication seem to be plentiful these days. While the different forms of email marketing have been placed to the side by some, it cannot be overlooked that email is and forever will be a very smart marketing strategy. It may not be the easiest thing you do in your life, but it is worth it. We all know that a grand multitude of clients don’t just magically wander into our office every day, so that means you still have to put in the work to reach across the digital space until they become a physical reality. 

Are there other options that you can try to help you grow your email list (i.e., borrowing lists)? Sure, some other things out there are touted as being easier and faster. But they are not best for pure organic growth.

Here are few tips we’ve picked up along the way that have proven to do the trick.

1) Offer Incentives to Anyone Willing to Subscribe

Who doesn’t like incentives? No, really, that was a real question.

Getting something of value for the simple act of subscribing to emails seems like a win-win for most people, and it’s a great way to seize the moment with potential subscribers.

Here are some incentive ideas to get you started:

  • An eBook
  • A PDF journal/workbook/report
  • A discount on products or services

2) Don’t Forget the Sign-Up Button

Here’s something that you might not have realized- everyone who sees your website might not know that you have amazing emails. So, why not tell them. Grab potential subscribers’ attention and lead them to sign up to your email for more great information. How can you do this? Strategically place a sign-up button on your website in multiple places.

You don’t want to miss out on the opportunity to grab more subscribers. Be strategic.

3) Engage people with personalized offers

Let’s say that you have an amazing idea, and you know it will hook potential clients. You’ve done the work to figure out who your intended audience is and that the idea would be enticing to them. What should you do next? Turn this idea into a personalized offer. 

Do personalized offers work? Well, according to a 2018 survey, nearly 95% of people polled revealed that they would be more likely to purchase something (or in your case, subscribe to your email) if they felt they would get something beneficial for their lives.

4) Social Media + Promotions

People often don’t think of their social media accounts as something that can drive traffic and help their email marketing.

However, a promotion or contest is a quick way to get people to engage and sign up for your email. All you have to do is advertise the contest through your social channels and put the link in your bio. It goes back to the idea that people really do like things in exchange for their actions. So, highlight something free, and watch people sign up.

5) Ask those on your list to help you spread the word

This last tip might seem obvious, but many people miss it. Ask those that are on your list to help spread the word

If you send out great content, slowly but surely, your followers will begin to get the word out, and your list will begin to grow.

Give us a ring for more tips on how to grow your emails and how you can see growth in your business.

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But No One Reads Email Anymore Anyway…

…And other myths about email marketing

This is the year email dies…Again?

So, you’ve heard email marketing is dead…

Yeah, so have we. Actually we’ve been hearing that every year for the past decade. Here’s the thing with this one. These so-called industry experts haven’t been right any of the past years and they’re not going to be right this year. Email is still very much alive.

Ready for the numbers?

Email marketing has an average return of $54 for every $1 you spend.

For B2B companies, 77% use a newsletter as part of their content marketing strategy and 59% say email is the most successful channel for generating revenue.

For B2C businesses, 59% of consumers surveyed say that emails influence their purchasing decisions. And if you’re an eCommerce business, 42.3% of Americans say they subscribe to emails to get deals and about 1 in 3 of those people will purchase.

Email marketing is also one of the best marketing tools for engagement. On Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, the engagement rate averages at less than 0.6%. The average open rate of emails is 22.86% with a click-through rate of 3.71%. In fact, email subscribers are 3.9x more likely to share content on social media.

Read ‘em and weep, naysayers. Email marketing isn’t going anywhere. In fact…

COVID made email marketing more important than ever

What do businesses do when a worldwide pandemic threatens to shut them down? They go to email! 2020 made email marketing rise to the top of content marketing campaigns for companies across nearly every industry. 2021 is looking to continue the email marketing trend, so you better get on the train.

People read emails, they just get A LOT of emails

Over 205 billion emails are sent each day and this number is expected to only increase. While COVID brought something of a revival to email marketing, it has now become an increasingly competitive market. Your emails need to be savvier than ever. You can keep ahead of the crowd with personalization, the assistance of AI technologies, automation, killer (and optimized) design and clear calls to action. Of course, you can’t forget the most important part: Content!

One of the greatest things about email marketing is that the fundamentals still hold true. It’s still all about getting the right message to the right person at the right time.

With this principle as your guiding light you are on the right path. Add some brilliant AI technologies that feature behavior-based personalization and automation, create relevant, dynamic content and continue to foster a relationship with your customers and you can’t go wrong.

Viva email!

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Social, Blogging, Email – Oh My

You have about 1,001 things to do for your business. We get it. You’ve got orders to fill, clients’ demands to meet, emails to respond to and make sure you don’t forget to eat all day.

Multitasking is just the beginning of your business juggling act.

And then you’ve got the content to create, post and coordinate in a seamless content marketing plan. How can you possibly make it all work?

Well, no one ever said running a business was easy, but we have some tips that will make your content campaign run a little smoother and more effective. And, most importantly, lighten your workload.

How’s your content marketing plan, really?

What’s your content achieving without an overarching strategy to create and disseminate your message? It’s time to take a good, hard look at your content marketing plan. Answer some of these questions about your mission and goals: Who is your target audience? What content and what platforms will you use to reach them? What problems are you solving for your target audience?

Then you need a way to measure your success. Set your key performance indicators (KPIs) to gain evaluative measurements on how your strategy is performing.

Lastly, you need to know where to place that great content to get the best results. Find out where your customers are. Think strategically and identify the channels and resources available to you to best amplify your content.

Outsource

The most important thing you can do to take some of the weight off of your shoulders is to outsource. There are literally thousands of companies and individuals that specialize in content generation and meeting your marketing needs. Of course, finding the right content marketing strategist can be easier said than done.

You need to find someone who can speak in your brand’s voice, understand your industry and write content that provides provide value. When content provides value, it doesn’t feel like a marketing ploy. It’s communicating authentically, building trust along the way. And people do business with people they trust.

Unless you have the time available to create all your business’s content (which is full-time job and then some), you should absolutely, unequivocally outsource your content creation.

Schedule it out

Got a content calendar? You better. Without a detailed and fully fleshed out content calendar, you’re essentially tossing your content into the void and hoping for the best. You’re running the risk of wasting all your content with haphazard scheduling. Plus, you’re making the management of your entire strategy more difficult than it needs be.

A content calendar creates organization, consistency and quality, plus it gives you a way to further improve your strategy through metrics. You can better predict the seasonality and trends of your industry and set your business up for long-term success.

Synchronize

A content calendar will help a ton with coordinating your various content marketing campaigns by fostering an underlying strategy of synchronizing your content. Blogs can build off of each other and create a system for internal links that are great for SEO and keep the customers spending time on your site. Your social campaign can be fueled by your blogs and vice versa. Newsletters and blogs can boost and add to each other’s content. All those blogs you’re writing could build up to an eBook, case studies or white papers.

Creating all this content in a vacuum is not effective. Let your content come together to create an overarching strategy. This saves time and makes for a more effective campaign.

Sometimes managing your content can feel overwhelming. Take it off your plate. You have more important things to do. You should be focusing on the things that you do best, the things that bring you joy.

Let us help you create a content marketing strategy and manage all your content. You’ll breathe easier knowing that your content is in caring and professional hands. And you’ll free up time to focus on building up other aspects of your business.

Let us show you how we can help.

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How to Write an Email for Maximum Impact

Your inbox is waiting for you the minute you wake up in the morning and it doesn’t stop until you turn it off at night (and not even then, really). If it feels like you’re submerged in a deluge of email messages, you’re not alone. We too know what it feels like to be inundated with irrelevant messages and sub-par subject lines.

But as you swipe through your inbox, every now and then you may notice something that gives you pause, begs you to ponder, and maybe, just maybe, click open. Yes, those are the emails we’re going to talk about. Those are the emails that make an impact, and shouldn’t every message you send to your clients or potential clients make an impact?

Here’s a simple formula for giving your emails the edge they need to get opened, get read, and get them across the finish line:

Get your email newsletters opened

Your emails can’t make an impact if they are not even opened. So, step one is to craft a compelling enough subject line that intrigues your readers to take the next step and open your message. But it’s not just the subject line that matters, it’s also the combination of having a trustworthy and familiar “from” name and email address combined with that captivating subject line.

Get your emails read

Start your email with maximum value – get to the point right away and give them a reason to continue reading your message. When you offer a relevant message and write it in a way that connects with your readers, you are much more likely to get them to take action.

Get them take an action

At the end of each email, it’s your turn to ask something of your reader. A smart and simple call-to-action is just what it takes to nudge them along. Maybe it’s something like, “Let’s Do It!” or “Sign Me Up.” Your call-to-action should be clear and impactful. Buttons work well, bold or different colored fonts do too – anything to stand out from the rest of your message and force your reader to take notice.

Writing an impactful email doesn’t have to be hard, but you do have to be smart about it. With short attention spans and stiff competition in your readers’ inboxes, taking the time to write a careful email can be the difference between your message ending up in the trash bin (or worse – spam!) and securing a new lead.

For help with email and all of your content marketing needs, we’ve got you covered. Contact us today at The Found Gen or hit us up on Instagram @thefoundgen.

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Is Email Marketing Really as Good as We Keep Preaching?

Yes!

Social media seems to rule everything around us. Online channels appear to be taking over the minds and hearts of consumers (and politicians) across the globe. With the landscape of marketing changing so much, and our attention spans getting shorter and shorter, is email dead?

Not even close.

Email marketing is still alive and kicking and it remains an indispensable tool for drawing in new customers, retaining old ones and building brand awareness. Email marketing is one of the simplest, most direct and most effective forms of marketing. Sorry TikTok, but you’re not monopolizing the marketing world just yet.

Let’s take a look at some of the top reasons why email marketing trumps so many other marketing strategies. We’ll start with the staggering number of email users across the globe. In 2019, there were 3.9 billion email users and by 2024 that number is expected to rise to 4.48 billion users. That’s more than half the people on the planet!

Top reasons to use email marketing

In email marketing the big idea is that you are speaking to a base of subscribers that has already invested in your brand. Rather than speaking to a bunch of strangers in a crowd, you’re talking directly to people who are already sold on your product or service, or are in the process of converting.

For all these reasons and more email marketing is effective because it’s: targeted, measurable, cost-effective and invites engagement.

  • It’s targeted to reach exactly who you want to reach. If your email list is robust enough, you can target by lead status, demographics, location, etc.
  • It’s measurable because you can gage the success of your campaign with key metrics like open rate, bounce rate, click-through rate, etc. With these kind of analytics at your fingertips you can measure and modify your campaigns to make them the most effective.
  • It’s cost-effective as heck! Want the most bang for your marketing buck? Email marketing has an average return of $54 for every $1 you spend. That’s a 5300% increase. That kind of ROI is almost unheard of in marketing.
  • Finally, email marketing is great for engagement. On Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, the engagement rate averages at less than 0.6%. The average open rate of emails is 22.86% with a click-through rate of 3.71%. Yeah, social media can’t touch this…

While nothing in marketing is foolproof or guaranteed, email marketing ranks high among the most effective forms of communication and sales. That’s why we preach it. That’s why we will keep singing its praises.

Long live email marketing!

And, hey, if you need help with your email campaigns or newsletters we’ve got you covered from seriously great design to automation, personalization and deliverability – oh and not to mention, dynamic content that’s sure to tickle the fancies of your audience. We put the “Eeee!” in email.

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Email Newsletter vs. Email Blasts

“Newsletters are boring. My mom is the only one who reads them.”

Well, you have a point. Kind of. See, old-school newsletters with line after line of squeezed-together text telling you everything and anything that seems important but truly isn’t, in the same exact font and with the same exact artwork as last month’s…well, you have a point. Kind of.

Here at The Found Gen, we’re not interested in making your mom’s newsletter. (Unless she’s super current and wants to be inspired at a rapid-fire clip. That’s our kind of mom.)

Here’s what an email newsletter should do:

  • Our newsletters grab you by your shoulders and shake you a little bit and persuade you to try a new thing we’ve just made – just a taste, you’re going to love it!
  • Our ultimate goal is to have people see our clients’ newsletters in their inbox and clap their hands. Too much? Okay, then. A smile and an immediate open will do.
  • Send your reader somewhere else. No, literally send them somewhere else. A link to an article you’re sure your audience will find useful, an exciting event you’re hosting, an update on your latest (and greatest) project to date, or straight to your booking site.
  • Prompt your customers to action. We want them to think, “I’ve got to do this,” and “I want in on this,” and “Sign me up.”

“But what about an email blast?” you may be thinking. “Should I send one of those instead? They sound quite exciting”

If an email newsletter is a four-course meal that’s satisfying in every flavor, an email blast is simply an amuse bouche. By definition, this petite delicacy is served to both prepare the guest for the meal and to offer a glimpse into the chef’s approach. It’s a mouth amuser. And so, an email blast is exactly that: an amuser, a morsel, and just enough to give your customers a taste of what’s possible.

Here’s the trick: An email blast’s job is the same as a newsletter’s intent. It should inspire, entertain, send your reader somewhere else, and prompt your customers to action. Just a little faster and a lot shorter in format. Hence, the blast part of its name.

At The Found Gen, we know when to send a newsletter and when to send a blast. More importantly, we know what to include in both to elicit the response you want: business, business, and more business.

Call us to schedule a consultation. You can bring your mom, if you’d like. She’d love us.