Email Marketing

You need three things to run an email campaign:

1. Email marketing software
2. Someone to create your emails
3. Subscribers to open to your emails

Email marketing software is normally priced on a per-email basis. That means you’ll either pay ad hoc for the number of emails you send or you’ll subscribe to a plan with a monthly email limit. Most providers charge around AU$30 for 5,000 emails per month.

You’ll then need to either create your emails yourself or hire someone to do it for you. How much that costs depends on the type of email marketing you want. A newsletter incurs a cost for every issue. Recurring sequences, like post-sales drips, have a one-time build cost, but then need to be reviewed and tweaked on a regular basis.

The easiest way to find out how much your email marketing will cost is to get quotes from at least 3 different marketing agencies. (Make sure you clarify what each quote includes.)

Finally, you’ll also need to build a list of subscribers. Depending on your email strategy, that could be as simple as emailing past customers who’ve opted in, or as intensive as creating a dedicated campaign to grow your list.

At its most basic, email marketing works by delivering a message to someone who has given express consent to be emailed by you (a subscriber). That message will normally involve one or more of the following:

1. Telling a buyer about a problem they don’t know they have
2. Helping them understand a problem they know they have
3. Helping them explore different solutions to a problem
4. Helping them choose between different solution providers

By guiding your subscribers down the buyer’s journey funnel, you’re increasing the likelihood that they’ll become a qualified lead – and, eventually, a paying customer.

Each email your subscribers receive also increases brand awareness and affinity. The more conscious someone is of your brand (and the more positively they feel towards you), the more likely it is that they’ll choose you over a competitor.

Emails can be sent in 3 basic formats:

• A blast, where a single email (often with an offer of some kind) is sent out to subscribers
• A newsletter, where themed emails are sent out to subscribers on a recurring basis
• A sequence, where a series of emails is automatically sent to subscribers who meet certain criteria

Each format has different use cases. (There are also many sub-categories, like abandoned cart emails, linear ‘drip’ sequences, and conditional-logic ‘nurture’ sequences.)

To simplify management and meet modern anti-spam requirements, most brands use platforms like Mailchimp for email marketing.

Let’s start with ways you shouldn’t collect email addresses: buying lists, using email finder software, or gating important information. The first and second are illegal in Australia under the Spam Act 2003 (Cth). The third will build you a list that doesn’t open your emails and unsubscribes at the slightest provocation.

A better way: make people want to get your emails. If you find a way to add value through email, your ideal customers will happily hand over their addresses. That could mean creating a newsletter that educates, entertains or inspires – or having exclusive, email-only offers.

Then, when you’re ready to pitch them a product or service via email, they’ll be willing to listen. You’ve built a relationship with them. They know you, they know your perspectives, and they know that you can deliver what they need. Keep those commercial emails gentle and infrequent, and you’ll have a free-to-use channel that gets you directly in front of willing buyers.

It depends. Mailchimp, one of the world’s largest email marketing platforms, gives an average open rate of 31.35% for business and finance brands, 32.74% for professional services emails, and 28.12% for SaaS brands.

Keep a few things in mind. Those numbers are averages for all campaign types. They’re also biased towards brands that do well with email as a channel – the better results a brand sees, the more emails it sends, and the more it contributes to the averages.

In our experience, an open rate of 25% or more is ideal for well-maintained email lists. Your newsletter, if you have one, should have an average of above 30%. One-off email blasts with a good offer should be higher still (35%+). Longer drip and nurture sequences normally have 20%+ open rates for the first email and then gradually lose traction as recipients become fatigued.

Take those numbers with a grain of salt, though. Every brand and every email list is different. The best way to find out what works for you is through ongoing experimentation – and an agency partner that has the experience to do email marketing right.

No. If you Google ‘email marketing strategies’, you’ll find big brands recommending cold email as a tactic. The problem: those brands aren’t Australian.

The Spam Act 2003 (Cth) prohibits any brand that targets Australian consumers from sending emails without consent. You can’t use software like Cognism or Appollo to scrape email addresses and add them to your marketing list – and, if you do, you could find yourself in ACMA’s crosshairs.

If you’re sending emails in a jurisdiction where cold email is legal, though, we’ll collaborate with you to deliver compelling copy that gets clicks. We can also help you trial cold messages on platforms like LinkedIn – they’re not right for every brand, but they could deliver results for you.