The Brafton Approach to Email Marketing

Email marketing may be your most important channel for your marketing efforts. It has the power to distribute valuable information far and wide with just a click, and to create meaningful connections between your audience and your brand.

At Brafton, we take email marketing seriously because it really works for our clients. We take a data-driven approach to all forms of digital marketing, and the same goes for email strategy. That means every aspect of your email marketing campaigns will be based on information about your actual audience and its preferences, needs and goals.

When you partner with Brafton, you’ll work with a dedicated content marketing strategist, who will be the point person for all your projects. Your CMS works side-by-side with industry-specific content writers, designers and project managers to craft targeted email campaigns designed to engage and convert recipients. They will then evaluate your campaigns to determine which tactics resonate with your audience and which marketing methods need to be fine-tuned.

Through the use of leading industry technology and established email marketing best practices, you can spread your message to huge numbers of potential customers while continually refining your strategy based on detailed data analysis.

What Are Email Marketing Services?

Email marketing is a complex channel, which means there are many aspects to any given campaign. Brafton’s email marketing services cater to businesses at any stage of their email marketing strategy.

As a full-service digital marketing agency, we offer email marketing services for businesses of all sizes. Here are the typical services that can support an email marketing program that drives engagement, leads and revenue:

Lead Generation

Lead Generation

Before you can launch an email marketing program, you need people to email. Lead generation campaigns are designed to build your database of contacts using valuable content; If that content is compelling enough, your audience will be willing to provide their email address in exchange for access to it.

Lead generation campaigns are centered around a lead magnet: That attractive piece of content that people will fill out a form to download. We’ve found that white papers and eBooks are excellent lead magnets, though webinars, infographics, templates, guides and other forms of collateral can do the trick as well.

Our editorial and graphic design teams will create your lead generation asset, and our technical services team will build a landing page for it, complete with a lead capture form. As your list grows, your email marketing program will become stronger and more effective.

Email List Segmentation

Email List Segmentation

Having an email database is one thing. Understanding how to truly leverage it is another thing entirely.

By undertaking email list segmentation, you can use your email marketing to nurture prospects and guide them down the sales funnel from the awareness stage to a final sale. Everything from a recipient’s business, job title and previous content interaction can be taken into account, allowing you to leverage unique, valuable content for different audience segments.

Segmenting lists allows you to create personalized emails, speaking directly to the pain points or interests of that particular audience segment. Creating targeted emails for your segments is a sure way to encourage engagement and interaction, ultimately leading toward more meaningful conversions.

Email Copywriting

Email Copywriting

No matter how solid your email strategy, it will fall flat if your email copywriting doesn’t resonate with your audience. That’s not an issue for Brafton partners, though. Our in-house editorial department is adept at creating email copy that works.

Whether you need short, to-the-point transactional emails or long-form, informational email newsletters, our team of expert copywriters can craft it. Your writer will study your brand guidelines and write with the tone most appropriate for your readers. The result will be well-written emails that your contacts are likely to open, read and reply to.

Email Template Coding

Email Template Coding

There’s a time and place for plain-text emails — but in many cases, you’ll want well-designed, eye-catching emails that reflect your brand’s look and feel.

HTML email templates give you the ability to reuse the design over and over again, creating a cohesive, recognizable look throughout your overall email program or for a specific email campaign.

Our technical services team will expertly build a custom HTML email template for your brand. When it looks perfect, our consulting team will ensure it’s available in your email marketing automation platform.

Campaign Strategy Ideation

Campaign Strategy Ideation

Our consultants are experts at creating campaigns that drive results. We know how to target the various personas in your sales funnel through excellent email strategy. Whether you need to launch a drip campaign, create an awareness campaign, build a consistent newsletter program, send one-off emails as part of your strategy, or something else entirely, our email marketing experts are here to ideate with your team.

The process begins with evaluating your buyer personas and marketing goals. Using what we know about your target audience, we’ll establish campaigns that have the right frequency, tone and content to establish your brand as a helpful and informative presence in their inbox.

Campaign Implementation and Automation

Campaign Implementation and Automation

Once your email campaign strategy has been established, it’s time to put it into action. This is easier said than done. Email marketing
automation is a complicated process, but our email experts are well versed in the leading platforms, including HubSpot, Pardot, Marketo, ActiveCampaign, Aweber and more.

Your email consultant will build your campaign within your chosen email platform, taking critical actions like:

  • Segmenting your list and making sure the right people will receive the correct message.
  • Ensuring your template looks as it should.
  • Setting your emails to deploy at the appropriate times.
  • Automating emails and other actions (including internal actions such as lead scoring) to launch based on specific triggers, like form submission or email open.

The result is a well-oiled machine that delivers prospective customers to your business.

Campaign Analysis and Reporting

Campaign Analysis and Reporting

Analyzing the results of a campaign and using that information to make necessary changes is the most effective way to approach marketing in all forms. In email marketing, it’s essential that you’re tracking campaign performance to ensure you’re communicating appropriately with your audience.

Our email consultants know how to measure engagement and translate that into sensible next steps for your email marketing program. Your consultant will track metrics such as open rates, click-through rates, deliverability, bounce rates and more. When you partner with Brafton, you’ll receive monthly reports on how all of your campaigns and marketing activities are performing. With this insight, you can make smart changes to your program for continued success.

What Types of Marketing Emails to Create?

One aspect that makes email marketing so powerful is the vast range of business activities you can accomplish through this one channel. An email can be anything: a short note, an in-depth insight, a reminder of something important, a visual experience and more.

So, what types of emails should your business send? There’s no single right answer — or even a single answer — to that question, because all businesses have room for multiple types of emails in their marketing arsenal.
Here are the most common types of marketing emails that we create for our clients:

Newsletters

Newsletters

Newsletters are among the most popular forms of email content marketing. They provide you with a regular opportunity to engage prospective customers and increase subscribers, remaining top of mind for your target audience while also providing valuable content designed to build brand authority and encourage commercial action.

Using industry knowledge, internal subject matter expertise and proven best practices, your Brafton content writer will craft email content that resonates with your target audience, providing relevant, valuable and actionable information in the form of news articles, evergreen guides, interviews and more. Email newsletter creation begins with the construction of subject lines that encourage email opens. Great subjects use direct language that provides both a sense of intrigue and urgency. Through the use of automation software, subject lines can also be customized to include recipient names, or industry- and location-based language geared toward personalization. Brafton content writers are also trained to avoid language that will either turn off potential readers or be viewed as spam by email service providers.

The body of emails will contain targeted, high-quality content that is arranged to promote readability; everything — from size and type of fonts used, to the incorporation of bullet points, and evenhow graphs are separated influence — influences readability. Unique CTAs can be inserted along with appropriate photographs, illustrations and videos, providing eye-catching options to break up text and keep recipients from clicking away.

Your Brafton graphic designer can also include elements such as branded header graphics and custom imagery to both engage recipients and keep branding consistent.

Writers and designers undertake email newsletter creation with target audiences in mind, including how they will consume the content, either on desktop computers or on mobile devices.

Transactional Emails

Transactional Emails

Transactional emails are sent to specific people based on actions they’ve taken, typically on your website. These might include sales or download confirmation emails, appointment reminder emails or password reset emails. These messages are primarily meant to convey a specific piece of information.

We can spruce up your transactional emails with attractive graphic design, well-written copy and skillful automation.

Promotional Emails

Promotional Emails

Sales and promotional emails are meant to convince a person to make a purchase. The truth is, that’s not always easy to do. Your subject line, opening sentence, sender information, graphic design, email signature (and more!) all have to be tailored to your recipient and must appear trustworthy. You can lose a contact in seconds if a single typo puts them off.

Our email content experts can avoid that fate with compelling copywriting and well-designed CTAs that encourage sales, not unsubscribes.

Drip Campaign Emails

Drip Campaign Emails

Drip campaigns are set up to deploy a series of automated emails based on the user’s interaction. These are excellent for guiding prospects in your email database easily through your sales funnel, all the way from awareness, through interest, consideration and conversion.

One key factor to consider when creating a nurturing campaign is the role of each email. At the beginning of your drip campaign, you’ll likely need to focus on high-level information to build awareness of your brand, thought-leadership or expertise. As the campaign progresses, emails will focus on more critical information, developing your readers’ interest in your solutions.

By the end of the drip campaign, you’ll have shed the recipients who are unengaged and under-engaged, but you’ll have narrowed down your list to a handful of leads who aren’t just curious about your brand, but ready to sit down with a representative to talk about solutions.

Abandoned Cart Emails

Abandoned Cart Emails

Approximately 7 in 10 digital shopping carts are abandoned. When a prospective buyer leaves items in their shopping cart, what’s a business to do?

Remind them, of course!

Abandoned cart emails remind customers of the items they had considered and give them an opportunity to move forward with the purchase. They may also include relevant information about the product and its benefits, or about your company and values.

Email Marketing Strategy

Email marketing is an incredibly versatile channel, which means there are a plethora of strategies to use when approaching this medium. These strategies can work in tandem with one another, as well as with other content marketing efforts such as blog content creation, social media and more.

Some popular approaches to email marketing strategy include:

Targeted Asset Launch Campaigns

Targeted Asset Launch Campaigns

Lead-generation assets such as eBooks and white papers require proper promotion to maximize results, and email marketing remains a cornerstone of these efforts alongside social media and dedicated landing page creation. If you’re looking to demonstrate your authority and establish thought leadership in your industry, asset creation is only the first step.

Brafton will create email content to be sent to a specified database of recipients, ensuring each email features links to dedicated landing pages customized with conversion in mind. By incorporating editorial and user experience design best practices, including engaging subject lines, rich media inclusion in the body of the email and expert call-to-action design and placement, you can increase your open, click-through and download rates.

Automated Email Messaging and Synchronized Sends

Automated Email Messaging and Synchronized Sends

In addition to coordinating overarching asset launch campaigns, your Brafton team is able to sync your email list with your customer relationship management software to accurately record converted prospects. Automatic email replies can then be used to ensure tailored thank you messages are sent to interested recipients, keeping them engaged and providing a personalized user experience.

Relevant Drip Email Campaigns

Relevant Drip Email Campaigns

Initial email outreach can be enhanced through the use of email drip campaigns. Beyond downloadable assets, drip campaigns can be used for everything from new email subscriber onboarding to general brand awareness efforts, creating a series of digital touch points that will automatically be sent out to specified prospects on a routine basis. Using email automation software, Brafton is capable of crafting custom email drip campaigns that deliver relevant, targeted content marketing to keep prospective customers interested in your brand offerings, all designed to avoid overwhelming recipients with haphazardly planned, irrelevant follow-up emails.

Land In Your Audience’s Inbox

Email is too important to lean on guesswork. Brafton is here to bring data-led strategy to your email marketing program.

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