9 actionable email marketing quotes to inspire your strategy

Email marketing continues to act as one of the most ideal and effective ways of marketing your business. It’s as alive and well as ever and it continues to evolve at an ever-changing pace.

Sometimes you need some inspiration to keep moving forward and this is when email marketing quotes are exactly what you need to get motivated. Here are 9 actionable email marketing quotes to inspire your strategy.

“Email has an ability many channels don’t: creating valuable, personal touches—at scale.” – David Newman

A personal touch can ignite conversations, having a profound effect on your bottom line and the success of your business. While nearly 94 percent of businesses recognize that personalization is key, only around 5 percent of businesses are using it in their marketing strategy.

If you want to get more personal in your email marketing strategy, consider using videos. Videos are a great marketing tool that can increase retention rates, quickly build trust and really speak to your customer. Little can make as large of an impact on the customers’ mind, decisions and emotions as a simple yet personal touch.

“A small list that wants exactly what you’re offering is better than a bigger list that isn’t committed.” – Ramsay Leimenstoll

Your number one priority should be building a strong email list, not necessarily a big one. After all, a long list of people who won’t open your emails, let alone buy any of your products, does you no good.

On the flip side, a small, quality list allows you to communicate with the customers who want to hear from you. Quality subscribers are people who will engage with you, are easy to convert and find value in what you provide. Unengaged subscribers (called “graymail”) can actually hurt the deliverability of your email.

If email clients see low engagement rates, the emails from graymail senders may go straight to the email recipients’ junk folders and possibly not seen at all. Bottom line: more subscribers does not equal more sales, so focus on having a list of quality email subscribers.

“That which is measured improves.” – Karl Pearson

Email marketing is the most trusted form of communication: 77 percent of consumers choose to use email over other online channels and there’s no close second place. Measuring what works is the way to improve the efficacy of any marketing method.

Email analytics can help determine email metrics every marketer needs to know. In order to better your email marketing tactics, you need to know the clickthrough rate, conversion rate, bounce rate, list growth rate, email sharing/forwarding rate and overall ROI.

It’s also wise to consider your business goals and align them with key metrics. For example, if your focus is on growing the top of your sales funnel—attracting more visitors to your website and signing up more blog subscribers—your emails will need to contain strong calls-to-action. Think along the lines of using a call-to-action as straight-forward as “Subscribe to Our Blog.” Simple and direct, this call-to-action works.

“Make the customer the hero of your story.” – Ann Handley

An all too common mistake businesses make in their marketing efforts is positioning their product or business as the hero of the story. While you may want to sport the cape, consider the interest of the customers. The customers care about how your offerings will meet their needs. If you want them to purchase your products, your marketing has to revolve around the customers and their challenges.

When you give your customer the leading role in your marketing efforts, they’ll feel appreciated and that boosts the chance of them following you on social media, downloading your content and even making a purchase. Research shows that customer-centric businesses are 60 percent more profitable than ones that fail to focus on the customer.

Remember that shifting your mindset to one that’s customer-centric takes some time, so focus on learning what it means to be a customer-centric business so you can keep your customers around. A good example of a customer-centric company is Amazon. The company continues to please their customer base by making decisions based on their needs and wants. While many businesses do this now, Amazon was actually the first to display customer reviews on their site.

“Focus on growing your list all of the time as newer subscribers are more engaged, adding to healthier open rates and ROI.” – Karl Murray

An engaged email list is a more profitable list. As subscribers open your emails, they become more aware of your products and are more likely to make a purchase.

Never stop growing your email list. Engaged customers are important to your bottom line and help you maintain a solid reputation. Building an engaged list in an ongoing process, but one that’s worth it. The ongoing efforts will ensure subscribers interact with your messages and boost email engagement, which prevents your emails from winding up in the spam folder.

“Personalization—it is not about first/last name. It’s about relevant content.” – Dan Jak

Personalization and segmentation are no longer an option, they’re a must. In 2018, marketing has to meet these expectations and there are no exceptions. Marketers must create personalized email marketing campaigns that the subscribers want to read.

The power behind personalization is undeniable; the way to build stronger relationships is through dynamic content. Dynamic content allows marketers to write a single email then customize parts of it for specific subscribers. For instance, if you have brick and mortar stores in two cities, you can localize the content and images specific to the subscribers in each city.

Dynamic content allows marketers to build a stronger relationship with each customer and make the customer feel as though you’re speaking directly to them and not your entire subscriber list.

“Quality over quantity—Emails may be cost efficient but it’s no excuse to not produce quality content to give to a targeted audience.” – Benjamin Murray

You added nearly 100 new names to your email marketing list and you’re stoked! You intend to turn all of those new contacts into buying customers. However, this influx of new contacts isn’t always guaranteed to be as fruitful as you anticipate.

It’s better to add five engaged subscribers than 95 unengaged ones. More and more marketers are recognizing the value of a quality list; according to Accenture, engaged subscribers will spend 66 percent more than the average customer. Engaged subscribers are also more likely to refer you to friends and family.

If you’re eager to build a strong list of engaged contacts, make sure you personalize every message. You have to work for the attention of your subscribers. Use metrics to determine when they’re the most engaged and send emails during that window of time. Always deliver relevant, useful, high-quality content if you want your subscribers to stay engaged. Content that fails to provide the readers with what they want is useless and will do nothing but hurt your business.

“I want to do a business with a company that treats emailing me as a privilege, not a transaction.” – Andrea Mignolo

It sounds pretty simple, right? Treat your customers as people and don’t be blinded by the potential dollar signs. Say please and thank you; the magic words never get old. Never stop making things simple for the customer. Respect their time and make it easy for them to return items and redeem coupons. Think about the people you love – wouldn’t you want working with your business to be easy for them?

Think about what it feels like to be in the customer’s shoes as you create your email marketing messages. Always remember that it’s not what you say to the customer, but how you say it. If you want to have meaningful customer interactions, maintain an emphasis on the tone of the email. Customers want a consistent voice across multiple channels, so your email marketing persona needs to match the persona of your brand as a whole.

Today is the era of transparency and word of mouth via social media travels lightning fast, so make good choices so you maintain the integrity of your business.

“When you have written your headline, you have spent eighty cents out of your dollar.” – David Ogilvy

Your headline matters—without a great headline, no one will ever read your great content. If you don’t bother to come up with a great headline, you should go ahead and throw out all the effort you spend writing the content because next to no one will continue to read.

Always spend time to come up with a compelling headline—you need one that is creative and clickable.

As you strive to get your content the traffic you believe it deserves, focus on using simple but powerful words. Bold statements, especially ones that introduce some shock factor, nearly always result in high click-through rates. Numbers also work well in headlines—people like predictability and shy away from uncertainty.

Questions, especially unusual ones, are another effective way to grasp your readers' attention and leave them wanting more, which creates a curiosity gap. People have the instinct to need to know the answer and if they can only find it by clicking on your headline, they will.

Wrap up

As a business owner, you never want to stop growing your business. It’s good to recognize that a strong email marketing strategy is one of the most affordable and effective ways to generate new customers and target new markets. As you search for inspiration, know that email marketing will be a cornerstone of your marketing plan from here on out. The art of email marketing is continually evolving, so embrace a fresh approach and use these quotes, tips and ideas to take your email marketing to the next level.