Email Marketing FAQ

Email marketing is one of the most effective channels you can use to engage your audience. We’ve reviewed the questions we receive during our Engage your Audience with Email Campaigns webinar and boiled them down into five frequently asked questions. 

We then asked our CRM team here at Squarespace to share some of their expertise, and here’s what they had to say:  

1. What are some things I can do to build my mailing lists? 

A mailing list is a collection of email addresses that you send your email campaigns to. Let's take a moment to talk about some strategies you can use to build your mailing list subscribers. 

Make it easy for visitors to subscribe to your mailing list.

When building your site, keep the visitors’ journey in mind and make sure that it’s easy for them to sign themselves up for your mailing list. Newsletter blocks can be placed throughout your site so that visitors can sign themselves up by typing their email address into the form. These blocks are often included in the site’s footer (that way they’re visible on every page), but you can place them anywhere. Depending on your site, you may want to place them in the middle of your homepage, on blog articles, or even create a dedicated newsletter sign up page. 

Use an automated email to offer an incentive. 

Have you ever visited a site and been offered a discount upon signing up for a mailing list? This is a common practice, and it can be quite effective at getting folks to sign up. You can create a subscriber-activity automation email to send visitors a special discount code upon signing up for your mailing list. You can then use a promotional pop-up to advertise this on your site. Upon visiting your site, people will be greeted by the pop-up notifying them about the discount. 

Advertise your mailing list on your social media. 

Leverage the audience your brand has on social media and advertise your mailing lists there. With Squarespace Email Campaigns, you can even copy the permalink URL for one of your blast campaigns to give your audience a taste of what they can expect from your emails. 

Utilize email sign-up form on your checkout page.

When a customer is purchasing from you, they already have an interest in your brand or products. By including an email sign-up form on your checkout page, you’re making it easier for them to stay in the know about any new products or newsletters your release. 

 

2. Once I have a mailing list, how can I segment my subscribers and customers to boost sales? 

Are you familiar with your site’s Contacts panel? The Contacts panel displays all customers, mailing list subscribers, members, donors, and form submitters in one place so that you can better manage your brand’s relationships. 

The Contacts panel automatically sorts visitors who have interacted with your site into the following smart lists: Subscribers, Leads (subscribers who have not made a purchase), Customers, First-Time Customers, Repeat Customers, Donors, and Form Submitters. This is helpful data you can use to tailor blast campaigns. For example, you can send a blast campaign with a discount to your Leads smart list to encourage them to make a purchase or you can reward your Repeat Customers smart list with this discount. 

In addition to smart lists, you can create your own segments by using various filtering options (like tags, minimum amount spent, number of orders, etc.) to really take control of your customer relationship management. Like smart lists, you can send email campaigns directly to the segments that you create. 

 

3. What are some best practices for creating holiday campaigns? 

Did you know that there are seasonal email campaign templates available? These were designed with best practices in mind to help you create eye-catching holiday campaigns. You can check them out in the Email Campaigns composer. That said, many best practices for holiday campaigns are best practices for email marketing in general. 

Subject line and preview text. 

The subject line of your email should be as specific and concise as possible. Your subscribers should have an idea of what the contents of the email consist of before they open it. Actionable language is best. For example, for advertising your brand’s Black Friday sale, the subject line, “Take 25% off this Black Friday” is better than “Big news!”. 

Your email preview text goes hand-in-hand with your subject line. You can think of it as an additional opportunity to entice your subscribers into opening the email and give them a preview of the content. An example of preview text would be, “Build your new holiday wardrobe at great prices''. If your preview text is too short, many email clients will display some text from the start of your email. Therefore, make sure to maximize the standard character limit for email preview text to prevent this from happening.

Create buzz with a teaser email. 

Before you announce the launch of a new collection or a sale, you can send out a teaser email to your subscribers to let them know that something is coming and when they can visit your site to get it. These emails not only create expectations and excitement, they can also prompt subscribers to visit your website and shop your current offerings. For example, you can include a call to action (anything in your email that is clickable) encouraging people to preview your products. 

You can find templates for teaser emails within the Seasonal category of the Email Campaigns composer. 

Create urgency. 

This may be a given, but it’s important to create a sense of urgency especially if you’re running a limited time sale or releasing a limited collection. To create urgency, you can use phrases such as, “while supplies last”, “for a limited time only”, or “last chance to shop the sale”. If you are running a sale, be sure to let your subscribers know when it ends. 

 

4. How can I use Email Campaigns to create drip campaigns? 

A drip campaign is an automated series of emails that are sent to your subscribers on a set cadence, and it’s a great way to keep them engaged. For example, if you sell jewelry on your site, you can set up a drip campaign that’s sent to purchasers sharing tips on how to care for their jewelry. That way, you’re staying in touch with your customers and offering them valuable information. 

To set up drip campaigns in Email Campaigns, create multiple subscriber-activity or customer-activity automated campaigns and schedule them to be sent out at different times. Your emails will then be sent out automatically as scheduled.  

 

5. Can I use AI to write my emails? 

You certainly can! When you’re adding text to your email in Email Campaigns, click the lightning bolt icon and enter a prompt. You can have Squarespace AI write a paragraph, a pitch, or a blurb directly in your email. AI is a helpful tool that you can use to get a first draft of content, but we always recommend that you review it to ensure that it’s accurate, appropriate, and includes your brand’s unique voice. 

As a note, by using Squarespace AI, you agree to the Content Generation Terms and that you are responsible for any text you use. 

 

Do you have any email marketing tips? Share them in the comments below!