Best Practices: Using Email Marketing for Your Academic Business

Flexible office hours and working from home have become normalized. There are fewer gathering places to meet your potential clients and fewer opportunities for gathering in-person, to begin with. 

Even if you’ve determined your potential clients are ‘hanging out’ in a popular social media spot, you’ll still have to fight with the platform’s algorithm to get their attention. Email, however, is a marketing strategy that allows you to spend time with your audience wherever home may be or work takes them.

Emailing your audience is a privilege. 

When a potential client joins your email list, they’ve invited you into their lives. The time your audience spends opening, reading and clicking through is precious. Honour this by providing valuable content in every exchange.

Your audience is inviting you into their wallet, too. Statistics reinforce this sentiment: the Data & Marketing Association out of the UK reports the ROI is ￡42 for every ￡1 spent on email marketing. Litmus out of the US reports a similar $42USD return on every dollar invested. 

Follow the [email marketing] rules.

In Europe, it’s GDPR. In the US, it’s CANSPAM. In Canada, it’s CASL. Each of these acronyms represents legislation to protect email users. While the rules may seem infinite, the gist behind each is only to email those people who agree to receive electronic messages from you, to provide an obvious opportunity to opt-out from receiving emails, and not to share your audience’s information without permission.

Following the rules seems like a no-brainer, an obvious way to respect your audience. Email marketing platforms even provide an opportunity to have your audience confirm their subscription. Businesses may see a decrease in subscription rates with this extra step but a double opt-in will also protect your list, ensuring those subscribers truly want to be there. 

Share with your email audience consistently.

No one likes being stood up for a date. And like a date, your audience will expect to receive your newsletter when you say it’ll be there. Setting the expectation of regular communication and consistently meeting that standard will build brand trust. 

According to GetResponse, most marketers see the best open rates (33%) and the best click rate (4.65%) when they send one email per week. 

Use your email message to create a sense of community.

Even though you’re not meeting in person at trade shows or for drinks at a mixer, your audience still needs to feel like they’re part of something. Whatever your potential customer is striving for, help them see they are not alone. 

This could mean sharing client stories (with permission, of course). It could mean sharing case studies. It could mean segmenting your audience to send content tailored to their needs. It definitely means sharing with authenticity and vulnerability, whatever your call to action may be. 

Treat your email audience well.

Sharing a minimum of 52 emails over the next year is an intimidating thought. You must find the motivation and the momentum to reach out to your audience week in and week out. 

If you treat your audience well, consistently providing value and doing so in a respectful manner, you will build awareness, trust, and loyalty to your brand. All of which will help grow your academic business. 

Do you receive a really great email from a brand or company? Share who and why it’s so awesome in the comments below to inspire the rest of us!