In the last month I've spoken with two leaders in the online marketing space who are both either abandoning social media or cutting back on their social media efforts to focus more on email because of the ROI.
Justin Brooke has been an Infusionsoft partner, a Hubspot partner, and a leader in ad buying for years, and was a guest on session 107 of The Sales Podcast and he has pretty much left social media altogether because he makes 73x more from email than social media.
Legendary copywriter John Carlton, whom I interviewed just yesterday for The Sales Podcast (look for his episode to come out in early February) didn't share exact numbers like Justin, but I asked him specifically how he calculates where to spend his time—email vs social media—and he admitted he would be redirecting more of his time back to email vs social media because the ROI of email is that much better.
Since December 1999 I've been using early CRMs and email broadcast tools to generate leads and sales.
Back then it was client-side, server-based tools like Goldmine that I had to manipulate into Outlook and BCC everyone.
That was followed by other clunky corporate tools like Onyx and Siebel.
In 2004 a startup I was at installed Salesforce and I learned that, as a non-admin end user, I could send 250 to 500 emails per day to my contacts...so I did.
Since 2008 I've been certified in Infusionsoft. In 2014 I got certified in Ontraport and HubSpot and have used most of the major—and many of the minor—email / CRM / marketing automation tools out there (and you'll get an up close and personal look at many of them in my new show, The CRM Sushi Podcast, which is launching at the end of this month, January 2017.)
With that background and experience here's what I've found.
Many of the most popular email clients that your prospects and clients use to read the emails you send them (Outlook, Gmail, etc.) prevent automatic loading of images.
That means you're wasting both time and sales opportunities when you spend a lot of time, money, and energy to create a beautiful email with lots of images to reinforce your message only to have them all literally thrown away when you use a "free" email tool.
On a more technical note,
If you're not sure what "modules" and "inline styling" and "floating DIVs" mean, you're not alone. But don't ask your "super cheap and easy and friendly" email provider. Their motto is
"Hey, we have a cute mascot…and our colors are blue, which means you can trust us...or our colors are green, which is the color of money...and we let you start for free...SO STOP YOUR COMPLAINING AND SEND SOME EMAILS THAT MIGHT GET DELIVERED ALREADY!!"
Apparently, since these mass production tools only COST YOU BUSINESS but not any "real money" (because they don't charge you at first) they think they can still say their tool is free.
(How's that working out for you?)
Like everything inside of HubSpot, it's fast. Working with their email builder is a joy from both a speed and a support standpoint.
While you can get into the HTML and CSS to get as crazy and creative as you want, there is no need to ever do that if you don't want to. (In 2.5 years I've never edited the HTML or CSS of my emails.)
You can create unlimited templates with the drag-and-drop builder and re-use those templates to create a consistent look across all of your campaigns and sequences.
And of course, each individual email can be customized with images, Calls-to-Action, font, headlines, and more.
Oh yeah, your HubSpot emails are responsive because that's how they roll.
Even though most email clients like Outlook will not load your email images by default, leave room for an image in your emails.
According to a study by 3M, our brains process visual content / images 60,000 times faster than text.
A picture may be worth 1,000 words, but they're still converted to words in the minds of your readers.
So learn how to write compelling emails, starting with a great headline.
Words still mean things.
Your competitors are too lazy (or dumb?) to take the time and effort to create great headlines so they rely too heavily on images.
Start with the words and use images like Tabasco®, to spice up your messages. Wield the power of the pen to really grow your sales with email.
Because many email clients do not load images by default, test your emails to confirm that they both look good and are effective with no images showing.
When you test, also test for mobile rendering
Use Alt Text to describe each image. You should also test a few Alt Text ideas such as:
Place your images in the right place so they do not disrupt the flow if only their outline is shown.
Go to Content > Design Manager then on the right select "New Template"
From there select "Template Builder" and "Email"
Give the template a name and save it to the desired folder.
Your basic email template will appear with standard modules that are completely
You can slide modules left or right to adjust the width and your changes are saved automatically.
By using the Settings Gear Icon in the top right of each module you can rename the module so its title is more descriptive, which helps with making future edits.
You can also insert "Personalization Tokens" (i.e., merge fields) as well.
Since the styling for emails will be inline, you can add inline styling from the Settings Gear and selecting "Edit CSS". There you can change common items such as
At the end of the day, you're sending emails to build connections and grow your revenue and the right tool makes all the difference.
It's better to spend more than you wanted than less than you should on any tool, service, or consultant you need to grow your sales.