Email Marketing Certification

Transcript: Sending the Right Email

Video Title: Why is it important to send the right email?

Hey there, I’m Courtney with HubSpot Academy. Sending the right email to the right person at the right time is
discussed frequently in email marketing. It’s a major theme because why wouldn’t we want to send the right
email to the right person at the right time?

When you send the right email, you have a better chance of converting your leads into customers because you
are sending the most contextual message which allows you to deliver that message to the right person at the
time that it will provide the most value to them. In turn this will help you develop your relationship with them,
build trust and continually delight them.

At its core, sending great email is about being human and helpful.

But it’s not always easy to send the right email every time you press send because not all of your leads and
customers are the same. Some leads are ready to buy, and others are still looking around. And the same goes for
your customers: You might have active customers and dormant ones, old customers and new customers.

With all of these contacts at different stages of the buyer's journey and in different conversations with you, it isn't
always easy to send the right email every single time you hit send.

To send the right email, you need to understand two things: first, why you’re sending that email, or your goal,
and second, the value you’re delivering to the person on the other end of the send.

With these two as your foundation you are setting the right expectations with those receiving your email by
setting an appropriate and contextual goal and then pairing that with information that will provide the most
value.

Take a second to think about the core values of inbound marketing. Inbound marketing is focused on attracting
customers through relevant and helpful content and adding value at every stage in your customer's buying
journey.

The buyer’s journey that maps out the three stages in which a contact goes through: awareness, consideration
and decision. Each stage helping them move towards a purchase or goal.

Now let’s focus in on: “Adding value at every stage of your customer’s buying journey.” This is the piece where
your email marketing can have the most impact and where sending the right email is so important.

Think about this morning when you opened your inbox. Consider the messages that were waiting for replies. I
will guess there were emails in there you didn’t read and sent right over to your trash. And that’s ok! But when we
think about our own emails getting sent to the trash it can be upsetting.

To grow your email marketing efforts as well as your business, you need to get into the inbox and engage with
your contacts. To avoid the trash bin, you want to send emails that provide real value to your leads and
customers.
 Email Marketing Certification
Transcript: Sending the Right Email

By doing so, you’re being helpful and human with your email sends as well as creating great conversations with
your leads and customers. This is the importance of sending the right email to the right person at the right time
every single time.

Video Title: How do you send the right email?

When you’re trying to send the right email to the right person at the right time, there can seem to be a lot of
moving pieces to consider.

So let’s break down how you can grow your business by sending the right email.

To send the right email, you need to focus on three key components: first, the right email, which is the content
you’re providing in that email, second, the right person, which comes down to how you segment your contacts,
and third, the right time and thus the timeliness in which you are reaching out to those contacts.

Each of these components works off another. Using these components, you can feel confident that your email is
going to be providing valuable content, to the right person who is using that content and delivered at the time
that it will be most impactful.

Let’s examine each of these components and how they support you and your business in sending human and
helpful emails.

First is creating the right email. This is an important piece of the framework because it comes down to the
content that you’re sending.

Inbound is all about the happy marriage between context and content. You need to treat your contacts as the
humans they are, humans with needs and desires and goals, and you do this through bringing context together
with the content you send them.

Take a moment and think about an email you received where the content didn’t align with the subject or the
context in which you thought you were receiving it? It’s a pretty jarring experience that can leave you with a lack
of trust for the person who sent it you.

On the other side think about the last time you were sent an email that served the right content that not only was
exciting but also contextual.

Take for example, when you take a specific action on a website around a certain topic and an email is triggered
to you that follows up with additional educational content around that topic. The content relates to what you are
looking for with the right context.

Sending the right email is about delivering the right contextual message to those who are reading it. This is how
you will develop trust as well as a healthy email marketing strategy.

This brings us to the second part of the framework: sending to the right person.
 Email Marketing Certification
Transcript: Sending the Right Email

The way that you can send to the right person is through segmentation. To review, segmentation is the act of
dividing your contacts into smaller groups based on similarities. Segmenting your contacts helps you tailor your
message to be more relevant and engaging to the people receiving the email.

For example, a few segments that most businesses will have are around lifecycle stages.

Specifically segments for your subscribers, leads, and customers.

These segments are going to be extremely important. They are valuable because you are not just sending emails
to your leads but to your existing customers. Content, just like in the stages of the buyer's journey, will change
based on a contact’s lifecycle stage.

Your segments are the building blocks for all of your email sends. They provide the information you need to
send relevant and timely content.

If you’re using a contact database that stores all of the information on your contacts and allows you to track their
activity, you can easily pair the right segments with the right content to send out at the right time.

Last is timing. Sending the right email at the right time.

Most of our lives, we’ve been told that “Timing is everything.” And when it comes to email, it’s true!

Timing is what will power your emails. It will power your emails because you can send the right email to the right
person but if it is not delivered at the right it will not be as impactful.

When you look at the timing of your emails, you can see the connection between content and timing. To send a
perfectly timed email, you’ll need to take into consideration where your contacts are in the buyer’s journey and
pair the right content with that stage.

Different content will appeal to different buyers at different stages of the buying process. For example, someone
in the awareness stage of the buying process will looking for more educational content versus someone in the
decision stage who is looking for more information on making a purchase or speaking with sales.

Connecting the content with the different stages of the buyer’s journey means focusing on relevancy.

You need to be able to answer the questions: when will this contact see value from this email? Will they be able
to do something with it right now? Is this information relevant to their needs or goals?

I like to think about it this way. You know your contacts are at different stages of the buyer's journey and you
need to pair relevant content based on the timing of the different stages. In addition, you will need to look at the
the right time during a day, week, or month to deliver this relevant content to your contacts.

So how do these pair together? With the information you have regarding the buyers journey stages of your
contacts you also want to consider their user activity. Their activity will help you determine when the content
 Email Marketing Certification
Transcript: Sending the Right Email

should be delivered. Through send time personalization you can deliver the relevant content also at the right
time.

Send time personalization uses the data you have on each of your contacts, such as when they open, click, and
convert, and schedules your emails to send when your contacts are mostly likely to engage with your email.

Using the buyers journey you can map out the relevant content to deliver and using send time personalization
you can send at the right time.

Relevant content plus an ideal time period equals sending at the right time.

When you bring all of this together, you’re able to send the right content in your email to the right person or
segment of contacts at the right time based on the buyer's journey and user activity.

Another important aspect of sending the right email is understanding when to not send email.

As an inbound professional, you know that email is an important piece of your inbound strategy, but a great
email marketer recognizes when to not send an email.

You don’t want to be sending customers offers that are relevant only to your leads, and you need to be able to
suppress those contacts from your email sends. At a minimum, the content won’t be relevant to them, and at
worst you might lose trust or make your company seem out of touch with their needs.

Your customers don’t have any need for emails promoting free trials or product demos, so you need to make
sure you’re not sending those emails to them. It might seem obvious that to communicate effectively with your
customers you need to mark them as customers in your system, but it really is important to sending great emails.

To send the right email to the right person at the right time you’ll need to find the right content, the right
segment of contacts, and the relevant time to send. And when you do this, you’re going to be able to send great
email that nurtures your contacts into happy customers and helps grow your business.

Video: What does sending the right email look like?

Knowing your strategy for how to send great email is a huge step to sending the right email to the right person
and at the right time. And with your strategy in place, you have to keep in mind there are some tactical aspects of
sending the right email to master as well.

Each time you press send, it’s a chance to build trust, provide value, and either guide your contacts through their
buying process or continue the conversation with your customers.

So what are the tactical pieces of sending the right email? There are a few best practices you will want to keep in
mind: the first is setting expectations, the second is the email layout, and the last is personalization.
 Email Marketing Certification
Transcript: Sending the Right Email

Before doing anything with email, you need to think about setting the right expectations with your contacts. This
means thinking critically about the people who will be receiving your emails and if they expect to hear from you.

This also means, when you send your initial emails to your contacts, that you set the right expectations on how
frequently they will hear from you.

Take for example, when someone signs up for your blog. What should you include in that initial email to not only
nurture those contacts but also let them know how often you will be communicating with them?

This can be as simple as including copy at the beginning of that email that says:

“Thanks for subscribing to my blog. I am thrilled to have you here! You will be receiving updates from me
on how to send better emails on a monthly basis, but if you’re looking to update your email preferences,
you can do so anytime here.

Invite your team members to subscribe because when we learn together we grow together.”

Clear expectations when sending email will go further than you think for your contacts. Imagine that last time you
received an email you hadn’t expected. On occasion, it's a nice surprise, maybe a discount on a product or
service, but most of the time it's annoying and ends up in your trash bin.

You can often tie expectations to permissions. If someone is not expecting to hear from you, do you really have
permission to send to them? Think about the core aspects of inbound: being human and helpful. By setting the
right expectations and then following through on them is how you will continue to send the right email and
develop trust with your audience.

The second tactical best practice is the layout of your email. This does not mean just the design you choose or
the number of images you include but the decisions you make on your subject line, email address, and preview
text.

For example, try not to use a generic email address like info@yourcompany.com. Instead, send from a more
personal email address that can be recognized in your recipients’ inboxes. Email is a communication channel,
not a one-way communication mechanism. Enabling your recipients to know who is reaching out and putting a
face to who that email is coming from makes it a conversation.

Preview text can also be incredibly powerful. Your preview text will provide additional context up front to
encourage your audience to click into your email. The power of the preview is especially true today with the
continued use of mobile devices. As we rely more and more on our phones, providing preview text that is
optimized for mobile devices will continue to be extremely important in helping your contacts understand the
value that lies in your email.

While these are some of the more tactical aspects of sending great email you will also want to look at the
structure of your emails.
 Email Marketing Certification
Transcript: Sending the Right Email

There is a model called AIDA you can use to organize the structure of your emails. The AIDA model is used in
many aspects of marketing and advertising is a way to structure and design content to help your users see the
value in what they are receiving.

AIDA stands for attention, interest, desire, and action. And it appears as an inverted pyramid.

Think about how you read emails and how your interest is drawn to the top of the email and slowly funneled
down to a call-to-action.

Let's take a brief look at the AIDA model in action.

You can see on this example email here how the inverted funnel appears and how AIDA will funnel someone's
attention down to your desired action and goal of the email send.

The first is attention. You need to show the goal of your email and grab the attention of your contacts.

This is both inside of the email and outside of the email. Attention means providing a subject line that is
contextual as well as interesting to get someone to open your email.

It also means positioning the layout of the email to grab their attention at the top and funnel them down your
email.

Next is continuing to gain their interest once they open the email. The attention spans in today's world are
continuing to decline. When someone opens your email, you need to keep them interested from the start. The
way we can do that is by building relevance.

Why are you sending them this email? What value are they going to get from it? This is why the segment we
created before our email is so important. By understanding that segment, you can continue to build their interest
with relevant content and value.

After you've shown them relevance, you can move on to building desire.

The golden rule of sending email is you want to add value, not ask for it. This is the desire piece of our AIDA
model for sending email. Show them the value of your product or service. By showing value in this piece, you're
building desire, which leads you to the last piece of your email: Action.

When doing anything in marketing, you want to ensure that the person interacting with you knows what they
should be doing with the content. Inspiring action during your email will help you lead people down the path to
your desired goal for the email.

This will be your call-to-action — use verbs and clear language so the reader knows exactly what to do.

Each stage of the AIDA model depends on having a good segment of contacts to start with to make sure you're
sending the right email to the right person at the right time.
 Email Marketing Certification
Transcript: Sending the Right Email

Using this format to organize your content will help your audience know what you are trying to communicate and
what your call-to-action is for them.

And the last tactical best practice is personalization. Email personalization should be a part of everything you do
in regards to email because who doesn’t want more personalization? Just because your email may be going to
100, 200, or even thousands of contacts, doesn’t mean your contacts should be treated like just another number.

Email personalization goes beyond adding personalization tokens but back to relevancy. Creating a
personalized email for your contacts means serving up the information they want with the context of what they’re
experiencing right now.

Think back to the buyer’s journey and the lifecycle stages and the information that will provide value to them at
this point. Will all this information at your fingertips you can be bringing together content and context each time
you press send.

By bringing all of these best practices together — setting expectations, selecting and designing an email layout,
and using personalization — you can create the foundation to send the right email.

With your email strategy in place, and as you layer on these tactical aspects, you will be able to serve up the right
information to your contacts through your emails and in turn grow your business with the right customers.