How a Robust Email Marketing Strategy will help you to create more Successful Meta Ads Campaigns

 

An images featuring Mel Johnson and Claire Shelley about our linked in live

Introduction

On Friday, 6th June, I was joined by Claire Shelley, a Meta Ads Strategist, for a live discussion on how a Robust Email Strategy will help you create more successful Meta Ads Campaigns.

To learn more about the powerful combination of Meta Ads and Email Marketing, you can watch the replay by clicking the link below. Or read the blog, which includes the highlights from our conversation.

Why is it important to integrate Meta Ad and email campaigns?

Email marketing and meta ads are a cost-effective way to help you attract regular clients without being a slave to the algorithm. You’ll no longer be completely reliant on organic social media, which only shows a small percentage of your content to people. 

Combining the two means that once you have used your ads to get people through the door and into your database.  You can nurture them, those people are interested in your product or service, but might not be ready to buy (yet!) It’s quite difficult to get cold or warm leads to buy from your meta ads, and often people make the mistake of going straight into the sale.

This is particularly true if you’ve a long sales cycle or a high price point. We see people returning 5 years after their initial point of contact. During that time, they’ve been nurtured via email.

Start with a softer offer.

Start with a low-cost offer that builds brand awareness and helps them to understand what you do before you start making any sales signals. A free resource would be a great place to start, as it entices the person to take action on your ads, and learn that what you’re offering is something they need and solves a problem they have. 

It could be a free workshop or a downloadable freebie, such as a PDF or a white paper. It needs to be something people need or want to engage with. People won’t make a purchase unless they have a relationship with you, and it won’t happen after a single advertising campaign. 

Getting them through the door gives you a great opportunity to follow up via email. This is where the nurture process begins, and that sign-up is fed into your wider marketing strategy.

Email Marketing can be a significant time-saver.

A good example of this is one of Melanie Johnson’s clients who regularly run free or low-cost training. They promote these through organic social media, partnerships, advertising, and emails. 

Historically, they have manually collected people and had to cross-reference the lists from different systems. We have connected all the systems. When people sign up and pay for the training, this information is automatically added to their email marketing system.

An automated tag is also added, so we know when and how they joined, and we have created a series of emails to remind them about the training, provide registration details, follow up with them, and collect data. This is all automated and can be replicated. 

It’s a huge time-saver, but also increases attendance, engagement, and sales from the training. They’re not just sending out the occasional newsletter to people; over time, it will help them understand the sales cycle a bit better.

You need to keep in regular contact with people.

If you are paying to signpost people to download your free resource or join a training that you’ve worked hard to put together, you’ll want to ensure people hear from you when they are excited, straight away. If they don’t hear from you for 3 months, they’ll wonder who you are and won’t engage! People may not download the resource straight away, so they will need reminding. Email is a fantastic way to do this, as it goes directly to people’s inboxes. If you don’t nurture them, you will lose them. 

How do we integrate a Meta Ad for a workshop with Email Marketing?

Without getting too technical, you can attach your sign-up form to the ad link and integrate it with email. Once the person signs up, they are automatically added to your email list with that particular tag, so you know what piqued their interest. 

Now that you know where they came from on your list, you can send them automated emails to build excitement around the freebie or workshop, answer questions, and keep them engaged.  

As your list grows, you can see where people come from and what they are engaged in, helping you to build relationships with them. You’ll also have amazing data that tells you who they are, how often they open the emails and what they clicked on.  A good opportunity for sales outreach and creating warm leads. 

This data can also be fed back into ads and organic social media content, so over time, you know what works and have more targeted and cost-effective campaigns.  It’s essential to have email tags and automations set up from the outset so you can maintain regular contact. 

Free or low-cost events often have a high dropout rate as people are busy. If they signed up 4 weeks prior to the event, you’ll need to maintain those connections, reminding them why they signed up and what the outcome will be. 

How do I get started with building an engaging campaign?

Firstly, you need to develop something that people want. This could be free, or it might be at a very low price point. You can then create a targeted ad campaign that is only shown to certain people who are likely to be interested in that product or service. 

Webinars work really well, as you are giving your time, which makes it easy for people to get to know you and see how you work. 

Ads can make a massive difference in signing up for these events. Claire recently had a coach who was organically getting 60 signups to a webinar. Ads bought them up to 300, which makes a huge difference to the conversion rate. Because the campaigns are more targeted and help you find a different and very relevant audience.  These do need to be specific and highly targeted, though.

Once you have the sign-ups in place, you can use a series of automated and targeted emails to build excitement, as well as to follow up after the event has taken place, ask for feedback, and drive sales in the aftermath of the event.

You’ll also be able to create campaigns and sequences to target those who didn’t buy the first time around.  Alongside this you can also run retargeting ads for those who attended or visited the sales pages. 

The old rule of 7 

In sales and marketing, the Rule of 7 has long been employed. This is the myth that people need 7 points of contact before they will buy from you. This is taken from some research that was carried out in California in the 1930s, on how many times people needed to see a movie theatre poster in order to buy tickets to go to the cinema. 

Well, that was nearly a hundred years ago, and things have moved on from then. It is now estimated that people need between five and fifty-two touchpoints before somebody will consider buying from you. There is no conclusive evidence on this, but it’s a large number of contacts.

Drip feeding those emails, once you’ve got people through the door, is a really effective way of reminding people that you’re there. You need to structure that information so it’s useful and relatable. 

Everyone today is so busy, and what’s front of mind will change, so it’s important to be consistent across your marketing channels and regularly remind people you are there.  Even if they don’t open that email straight away, you’ll still be appearing regularly in their inbox – great for brand awareness.

Email Marketing will help you to build a true picture of what your customers look like

The data you collect from your email list will help you build a picture of your customers: You’ll know where they came from, what they were interested in and whether they bought. Understanding what they interact with is vital for building a bigger picture. 

It’ll help you understand what your customer journeys look like. And if you’re an established business with multiple products or services. There will be different people who have different needs, and you’ll be able to map out who they are, what they need to hear from you and identify opportunities for cross-selling. This can help close the gap between sales and marketing as you have warm leads to talk to!

You can also create campaigns that feel quite personal based on people’s interests and needs. 

Abandon Cart Emails for Service-Based Businesses

Abandon cart emails (sorry to go all American) are emails that you receive to entice you back to a checkout page. The perception here is that these are for product-based businesses, but actually, they do work well for services. 

Those who land on the checkout page may not be the decision-maker, and you can set your abandoned cart to receive more than one email, effectively creating a whole other nurture sequence, targeting people at a different stage of the sales process. 

Summary

It’s really important to be strategic about both emails and advertising and make sure the two work together. 

You’ll need to:

Of course, it’s a case of testing and measuring, but once you have the foundations in place, you can always tweak, test and replicate. 

This blog was adapted from a conversation between Melanie Johnson and Claire Shelley on LinkedIn. If you would like to view the original content, you can do so by clicking here.

To find out more about how I can help you clear up your messaging or get started with your marketing, get in touch via email at melanie@thesussexsocial.co.uk.