Have you heard about email marketing strategies with influencers? These kinds of actions are an excellent way to boost your business metrics for your email marketing efforts.
Today, influencers are very valuable allies for any kind of business. The truth is that they have a huge organic reach, and their recommendations can give any business a large-scale boost.
If you want to know how to implement this kind of strategy in your business, I invite you to read this post with all the tips on the subject.
· Influencers and email marketing
You are probably familiar with the terms âinfluencersâ and âemail marketingâ. These days, they are essential resources in any kind of marketing strategy. However, they tend to be used incorrectly, producing results that are the opposite of what was expected.
To run successful actions with these elements, you need to understand exactly what they are about.
So, when we talk about influencers, we mean people who have one or more highly visible social media accounts.
They have built this visibility over time by creating content on a specific topic.
In this way, they build a large community of followers who feel an affinity with them and value their opinions and recommendations.
This last point is where we should focus when we want to carry out any collaboration.
An influencer’s value lies in the authenticity of their content
(Source: MateusCampus: sztWS6R3UlA / Unsplash.com)
An influencer’s real value lies in their credibility, a quality that is quite fragile and hard to earn.
That is why, before collaborating with anyone in this field, it is very important to know their track record. How much trust and credibility do they have among their subscribers?
On the other hand, when we talk about email marketing or mailing campaigns, we mean a way of communicating with our customers/users.
With this strategy, personalized content is spread by email.
The information sent can cover offers, content of interest and more, and the goal is to achieve higher conversion.
Combining both resources for successful conversion campaigns is becoming more and more common, so let’s keep exploring the process and benefits of this kind of action.
· Benefits of working with influencers through email marketing strategies
You may still have some doubts about the real benefits your brand would get from running email marketing strategies with influencers. That’s why we’ll show you some of them:
Interest and visibility
Using well-known faces close to your company’s industry in your email marketing strategy could spark more interest among the users you contact and, as a result, increase brand visibility.
Higher conversion
If you make sure to choose an influencer who shows and shares the same values as your company and is also credible in the industry, you can secure a return on investment for your strategy.
It has now been proven that a recommendation from someone credible has far more influence on the decision to buy than ordinary advertising.
Better brand reputation
Having a brand ambassador, in this case an influencer, will help build more customer trust in your brand.
Greater reach to your target audience
If your email marketing strategy with the influencer is well structured, you will gain greater reach and connection with your target audience.
To achieve this, the email’s subject line needs to present a value proposition that captures the user’s interest, so that they take the action you are asking for.
Types of influencers
Not all influencers are the same. Beyond the topic they focus on, the most important difference when working with them is the number of followers they have.
That’s why we’ll tell you about the different types of influencers:
· Nano influencers:
These influencers have fewer than 10,000 followers on their social media.
This may be because they are just starting their career, or because they attract people with what they do but have no intention of monetizing their work.
They are known for staying in close contact with their followers and giving very real, natural opinions about products or services.
· Micro influencers:
This category ranges from 10,000 to 250,000 followers.
They are usually people who have built quite a lot of engagement with their audience. They tend to have a well-defined niche, and their opinions are highly valued.
· Macro influencers:
These people have between 250,000 and 1 million followers.
They usually have a long track record. However, at this point their engagement with the audience may be lower, since it is harder to keep close, personal contact with their followers.
· Celebrities:
People with more than 1 million followers on social media are called mega influencers or celebrities.
They tend to attract large audiences with very different and varied interests. The budget for working with them can be very high.
Elements to highlight in your email marketing campaign with influencers
Now that you know everything you need about influencers, it’s important to know which elements to consider when structuring this kind of campaign.
The subject line is the core element of the strategy
Having the support of a super influencer who also shares your brand’s values and helps give you visibility won’t be enough if users never see your campaign.
To get your email opened, the subject line copy must be the center of attention.
You need an eye-catching subject line that mentions your collaborator’s participation so that your users open the email.
Developing the message
Write clearly what you are offering your users, and include the benefit of the influencer’s starring role in that campaign.
Make sure your message ends with a clear call to action. This CTA will be the step toward conversion in your strategy.
Images and design
Design a very attractive email with images that feature your collaborator. This will help users grasp the context faster and focus their attention on the content.
Email marketing strategies with influencers
We’ve reached the most interesting part of this post: we’ll talk about the best email marketing strategies to carry out in collaboration with influencers.
At this point, I’d like to clarify that there are different ways to do it, so below we share some ideas that can bring good results.
That said, being open to working with plenty of creativity will let you fine-tune the content and refine these techniques to suit your company’s needs.
Nano and micro influencers to connect with your target audience
As we mentioned earlier in the article, nano and micro influencers are the category with the fewest followers in this niche of collaborators.
You may be asking yourself: why collaborate with them if they have less visibility because of their number of subscribers?
The truth is that, even though they have fewer followers than macro influencers or celebrities, their engagement with their audience is higher.
In this case, their credibility could help you turn your target audience into customers.
In addition, working with this type of influencer can be more affordable and better suited to SME budgets.
Betting on them at the start of their careers could bring even greater advantages in the medium term, since they will grow in followers and visibility.
One example is the Spanish e-commerce store Materialesdefabrica.com, which began this kind of collaboration with a nano influencer who, at the start, just over a year ago, had only 6,000 followers on social media.
Today, this influencer’s career has taken off, with more than 100,000 followers, and the campaign with this Spanish SME is still going.
As a result, it attracts more potential customers thanks to the collaborator’s increased visibility.
In the same case, looking for an influencer with a large subscriber community from the start would have raised the campaign costs considerably, which can be hard to afford for small businesses.
Aim for genuine opinions
Related to this, a 2017 study by Stackla on influence in the digital age shows that around 60% of people, especially millennials and Gen Z, think that content created by real users is more authentic than any other type of content.
Likewise, the same study reveals that 86% of consumers say authenticity is a deciding factor in becoming loyal to a brand.
That’s why collaborating with up-and-coming influencers and letting them create organic content that highlights their opinion of your product or brand can bring you many benefits.
With all this in mind, make sure the information you share in your email marketing campaigns reflects the opinion of the nano influencer you chose.
Rely on promotion through your collaborator’s social media to get more subscribers for your database.
Together with the influencer you are collaborating with, you can create a discount promo code for product purchases, which people can get by subscribing to your newsletter.
Besides helping you grow your database, the promo code will give you a metric of how many people the influencer brings to your brand.
Use product reviews from both influencers and your real customers
As we mentioned before, for millennials and Gen Z, connecting with authenticity is becoming more and more important.
When you decide to send products to your users in your email marketing campaign, highlight the opinions and reviews you have received with images and comments, both from the influencers you work with and from your own customers.
Giving your users a voice in your brand is the best way to build authenticity and trust, which in turn is appealing to other consumers.
Exclusive content with influencers
Creating a series of exclusive content with an influencer is a great way to attract more subscribers to your database and future customers.
Let the influencer create their own story and share whatever content they see fit with your products to draw their followers to your business.
Here, as with the rest of the email marketing strategies, it helps a lot if the influencer shares the content and encourages their audience to subscribe by promoting it on their social media.
· Conclusion
Creating an email marketing campaign in collaboration with influencers can be one of the best investments you make in your digital marketing strategy.
It is a very advantageous action, especially in terms of conversion, visibility and brand trustworthiness.
However, to carry it out, I recommend planning your tactics very carefully.
Not every influencer will fit your brand, so this point must be carefully studied before taking the first step: research the person you want to collaborate with and whether their audience matches your target audience.
With this as your starting point, you will ensure the success of your strategy.
These kinds of actions are part of what we know as influencer marketing, a booming discipline within digital marketing strategies.
