Let's be directly blunt as always. I am on several newsletters from different water companies all over the world. The good thing is, at least, they try to use this tool, but most have a very bad execution.
At the same time, I would assume that more than 90 % of all water companies don't even have a tool to use email marketing properly.
Well, if you do it right, you will be with your brand and offer in your customer's inbox.
Furthermore, you're able to segment your client with strategic questions. F.e. if you offer two case studies from different applications, you can identify what your client is interested in.
The biggest failure everybody is doing and you should avoid
If you will start offering this newsletter to your client, please ask only two questions initially. The client's name and the email address. Most companies have a massive list of questions they want answered, but the chances that someone will jump off will increase with every question. All other information you can try to gather during the followed nurturing process.
Let's talk about numbers
Opening rate, click rate, and unsubscribe rate are the three most essential KPI's. So whatever you do, how perfect your newsletter will be, you will never reach a 100 % opening rate. Maybe if you have just one subscriber, but generally, the opening rate in our water space should be between 30-40 %. If yours is lower, that could have different reasons, such as a boring headline or improper setup, and your mail goes into the SPAM folder directly.
The click rates are various. If you have just one good piece of content to download as a template or a whitepaper, the click rate can go up to 50 %, but generally, if you offer more than one option, you will reach around 5 %.
The unsubscribe rate will tell you two things. First, if you just got all the emails from a random list and used them for your purpose, which is illegal, your number will be high. But if not, and your content is good, this number should be very low (<1%).
How to collect
1️⃣ Webpage Newsletter
Nothing is as simple as this. Just place a newsletter box on your webpage, best case on any single side, and done. It sounds simple, but it is not. First of all, the conversion rate is pretty lousy. That means you need a webpage with much traffic to get at least conversion. Furthermore, nothing is more frustrating for a subscriber if you sign up and nothing happens. You need to have automation in place that delivers immediate content. Otherwise, you will be forgotten.
2️⃣ Webinar's
My overall favorite. Setting up a webinar or, even better, a series of webinars to collect emails is the fastest way in our space. Whether you use a third-party tool to set up the invite procedure or just via LinkedIn matters a lot regarding the process and the conversion rate. Setting up an event (your webinar) on LinkedIn is easy, followed by two choices. Send them to a third-party tool or collect the emails directly via LinkedIn. Both ways have pros and cons. The entire process is automated with a third-party tool, and you can sit back and relax. The pro for LinkedIn is the higher conversion rate. Try always to minimize the clicks to gather the email. If you post something on LinkedIn to redirect the person to the LinkedIn Event, where he needs to click another button to get to the webinar software, and then you're asking for more than just the name and email, you will lose the conversion game. You need more knowledge to run this propper, but that's what you have marketing for, right? And even if they don't know how to do it, you know where to reach me.
3️⃣ Freebies
Another alternative would be the so-called freebie process. That means you have gated content, and if someone wants to have it, the price is the email. You can place this content on your webpage, but again, you will be facing the same issue as with the newsletter. You need to drive traffic to it. Another alternative is to place ads for this piece of content. Most freebies I've seen in our space are whitepapers, reports, and manuals for solving a technical problem. Ads work, and you can target just a specific region in which you want to grow your business and target the right positions. As you can imagine, Ads does cost money. The conversion rate depends a lot on your freebie and will probably be less than 10 % but if you have made the email list one day and place the freebie on your email list to engage with your audience, you can reach more than 50 %. That's huge. So, in general, using ads for gated content is a great tool to start with.
4️⃣ Your CRM System
Hopefully, you have a CRM system and even if it is called Excel, you have email addresses. So, in general, we should talk about GDPR and other laws now, but I will make it simple. If this email address interests your business because he has already received or purchased your offer, use the address. If the address is just from the last trade show, send him a personal email first to identify his interest. Anyway, your CRM is the biggest gold mine regarding details you can use for email marketing. Even further, with the right CRM (and this is not Excel), you can see whether this client has opened the emails and which content he consumed. That's a great way to start a conversion with your customer and should be a huge argument to get the sales department on board with that marketing approach.
Conclusion
I could talk about this for hours, but I need to ensure you read this newsletter. If you have yet to consider email marketing, try it out. The costs are cheap compared to other marketing spendings you have but the results can be massive.