Email marketing trends in 2022 show that emails are still one of the most cost-effective channels to onboard early-stage customers and expand brand communications. If you’re setting up your business email strategy, keep these five things in mind:
1. Focus on Deliverability
Your priority should be ensuring your emails land in the recipient’s inbox. Email servers tend to reject new IP addresses because they lack a demonstrated history of email outreach. Your first job should be to warm your IP and domain to build authenticity and trust. The cheapest way to do this is by building a pattern of email volume and gradually increasing the volume over a month to show you’re not trying to overwhelm inboxes with mass emails.
2. Authenticate Your Emails
Email authentication is crucial in an age where spoofing and malware attacks are more sophisticated than ever. You can use Sender Policy Framework (SPF) to verify the servers that are allowed to send emails on your behalf, DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail) to verify the ownership of the emails by checking the digital signature or DMARC (Domain-based Message Authentication) to combine both the methods for optimal security.
3. Don’t Buy Email Lists
Early-stage startups often buy pre-made email lists because they don’t have a sizable subscriber base of their own. This is an email marketing mistake that will drive down your email deliverability, increase spam alerts, and, most importantly, land you in a legal tussle with GDPR and CAN-SPAM laws. Email lists are built by scraping email addresses from the web. You neither have their explicit consent nor are they aware of your business to interact with emails. Instead of taking the shortcut which will eventually backfire, start by organically building a highly engaging email list by using gated content and social media Ads.
4. Don’t Send Emails from A Personal Gmail
It might sound like a good idea to use a personal Gmail account to communicate with prospects in the early days, but you’ll fail to build a brand reputation by doing so. Google Workspace has affordable plans for small teams that should give you more flexibility in email set-ups. You should also have shared inboxes for general accounts such as payment@, admin@, customersupport@, etc. Google Groups allows you to collaborate with teams, or you can use software like Keeping to improve customer experience with a Gmail shared mailbox.
5. Avoid Spam Traps
Startups often struggle to avoid spam traps that severely restrict their email campaigns. Avoid using exaggerated subject lines, poorly crafted body copy, link shorteners, and too many visuals and CTAs in your email. Having a double opt-in strategy should help you build a more invested audience, and a clear unsubscribe button will help people move away from your email lists instead of marking them as spam.
Email marketing is a scalable way to communicate with prospects, customers, and shareholders for startups that don’t have a strong bottom line. By putting the steps mentioned above into practice, you can build a strong brand just with emails.
