Effective email marketing for blockchain and crypto projects in 2024

Despite the recent drop in the crypto market, the sector is still alive and well, with projects continuing to work at full speed within a landscape that is rapidly maturing. The rapid rise of decentralized finance (DeFi) in 2021, presented a huge case to many blockchain developers, who could now see a path to providing services that would be come part of the wider Web3 ecosystem. After all, DeFi’s principals of automation, decentralization, and data controlled by its users perfectly matches Tim Berners Lee’s optimistic view of what he refers to as the ‘semantic web’.

Continued serious investment in blockchain, Web3 and crypto has meant that market competition has become fierce. This, in turn, means that any project wanting to rise above the competition needs to have a spot-on marketing game. 

What’s more, projects face an extra hurdle: that of proving legitimacy amid a sector that has been characterized as the “Wild West”. As the Chainalysis Crypto Crime Trends for 2022 report shows, legitimate adoption is far outstripping any illegality, as cryptocurrency moves into the mainstream and platforms become more serious about audits and security; however, the reputation somewhat remains, meaning establishing trust out of the gates is crucial.

Having worked with large and small crypto projects since 2017, our team is able to share with you our hard-won experience in the field of crypto email marketing, an area that can yield an extremely impressive ROI of $36 for every $1 spent!

In this blog we will take a look at:

• Why a good email marketing strategy can be such a powerful tool for nurturing subscribers and moving them through your marketing funnel;
  
• The difference between a B2B email marketing strategy and email marketing for crypto;
  
• Top crypto-friendly email marketing ideas; and
  
• The best email marketing tools for Web3 projects.

How can email marketing fuel your overall inbound crypto marketing strategy?

Amid the constant bombardment of advertisements that form part of our everyday lives, email is still a great channel for developing relationships with investors and users, and vital to improving your conversion rate. Every member of your potential audience will have different preferred communication channels, such as Discord, Telegram, and Twitter, but pretty much everyone has an email address, making your connection to them more straightforward.

Importantly, email marketing is a form of media that you own, so the information that you send out can be a real expression of your project, without the pressure to change to conform to algorithms or the blanket guidelines of someone else’s platform. 

As this section’s heading suggests, crypto and blockchain email marketing should not be a implemented by itself, but as one part of an overall marketing funnel, which is in turn part of a wider digital strategy that also often includes app notifications, SMM marketing, and content marketing.

B2B and crypto email marketing: similarities and differences

In the end, email marketing strategy for B2B and for crypto show significant overlap; after all, the goal is the same, to grow a user-base that learns about, trusts, and then engages more deeply with your brand. 

To this end, whether for B2B or crypto marketing, you will need to do the following: 

• Create an overarching strategy 
• Choose a mail provider
• Develop a sequence of emails 
• Differentiate them by audience and/or levels of engagement 
• Collect statistics based on different metrics to improve communication and better target your audience.
  

All the while, you need to come up with interesting ways to get prospective investors/clients/users to part with their emails so you can grow your audience. This is an important point, as cold outreach can hurt your domain deliverability and bring negligible results if best practices aren’t followed.

See how to approach cold outreach the right way in our recent blog 

Crypto email marketing campaign strategy specifics

Now that we have talked in general, we can examine the elements that set crypto communication apart from normal marketing outreach efforts.

Complexity

A lot of crypto projects, especially ones that are developed to run over the long-term as part of Web3, will require a certain amount of background knowledge on the part of the reader. That being said, it is also up to you to explain things as clearly and concisely as possible.

Fostering loyalty 

Crypto and blockchain projects often inspire a huge level of devotion among members of the community. This can be a powerful thing, but requires continued demonstration that you are in fact trustworthy and worth engaging with through professional communication. Building a solid community is also key, but you need to make sure you’re engaging the right audience. Having the wrong type of followers attaching themselves to your brand could have a negative effect on getting good prospective users.

Two blockchain and crypto projects that do really well in terms of communication are Solana and NEAR Protocol, combining fun info and images, interesting announcements, links to educational blogs and videos, and other updates, all presented in a professional manner.

Spam filter dangers

Another feature of crypto marketing is the need to bypass spam filters. Email services don’t know you or your project, and can therefore employ filters that are unfair on legitimate cryptocurrency projects. This adds another layer of complexity to your work, as you need to explain your project well and sell it in a convincing way, while also making sure your emails get properly delivered.

Later in this blog we refer to SendX and SendGrid, two software that aim to increase email deliverability by scanning your text and suggesting improvements, but you can also use services such as mailmeteor to test whether the content of an email is likely to be seen as trustworthy, and Glockapps, which examines authentication records, sender IP address reputation, and more.

Educational aspect

Crypto is a new industry that is constantly changing, so literacy in this area is low. You’re likely selling something that requires some time to properly understand, which is why there is often the need to make sure your audience educates themselves in the context of your project. They can then better determine why your features stand out from the rest. 

While it may take a bit longer to get your communications right, there’s a big positive in the fact that crypto is interesting, and email marketing done well can give you a really high engagement rate. 

Top blockchain email marketing ideas

We’ve mentioned above the impressive ROI that can be achieved through email marketing, but we’ve also acknowledged the increased competition. As Hubspot statistics show, 37% of brands are increasing their email budget to reach the 4 billion(!) daily email users. So what steps can you take to ensure your strategy works, beating out the competitors? Here are just a few key ideas that we have fine-tuned to drive great results for our clients.

Valuable content

A good email marketing content strategy works wonders, providing your audience with interesting information that they can actually use. Not only does it give readers a stronger incentive to engage with your communications, it also establishes you as an authority, building the trust that is especially important to projects operating in the crypto sphere.

Examples of valuable content might include market research, comparison articles, or newsletters leading to more in-depth blogs. Time and effort should be invested into creating pieces that are original and contain insights that can’t be readily obtained just by doing a quick Google search.

Optimized CTAs

Make sure your email marketing call to actions (CTAs) are part of an accurately built marketing funnel. This means that they shouldn’t just be put in using a scattergun approach. Different CTAs need to be included depending on the audience and stage of the marketing funnel they are at; for example, in one instance a demo might not work, but a solid case study might be appropriate, giving the audience time to read something informative at their own pace and get a sense of trust before engaging further.

Audience segmentation and email customization

Related to the above section, audience segmentation is crucial! We can use tools to differentiate our emails based on the interests of different groups and their stages of the marketing funnel.

To this end, you can build drip campaign, setting up email automations that begin when your lead has just become a subscriber. You can examine a subscriber’s website journey to determine which content to send first, and if they are visiting high-intention pages like specific landing and pricing pages, this can automatically trigger emails with things like trial offers or incentivization programs.

Use Your Full Suite of Tools

Closely tied to audience segmentation and email customization, exploring all the tools your email provider offers, as well as others in your marketing arsenal, can allow you to harness data for better campaigns:
 

• Email software that supports A/B testing subjects and email bodies is very powerful, allowing you to test the subject and preview text to improve the open rate. You can further test header images, text structure, the text itself, and even CTA buttons to improve the click-through rate.
  
• You can also check your analytics software to find the right time to send emails. For example, Google Analytics shows the peak times for your website traffic. Some email software can also offer you predictions on the best time to send based on its own algorithms.

The best email marketing tools for Web3 projects

Not every email marketing service is crypto-friendly. Take MailChimp — one of the most established and accessible tools on the market with wide-ranging features. Nevertheless, it does not allow crypto marketing emails through its platform. In its terms of use, MailChimp justifies its decision by stating that cryptocurrencies are one of the areas that has higher-than-average abuse complaints, which affect deliverability and the reliability of the MailChimp platform.

This tells us that we should look for platforms that don’t just allow cryptocurrency emails, but have experience making sure that they will be delivered and reach their objectives. Although there are many, we’ll take a look at three top email marketing tools, with our personal recommendation being HubSpot!

SendGrid

SendGrid is an email marketing platform that is optimized for every type of business, from startups to large enterprises. One of its big drawcards is email deliverability, meaning that your communications will actually make it to their intended recipients, rather than languishing in the junk mail folder. One way SendGrid does this is through its editor, which assesses how professional your email looks and how likely it is to end up classed as spam.

While a great feature for any campaign, optimizing email deliverability is extra important for crypto projects, which are more likely to be judged as illegitimate from the outset. What’s more, SendGrid has previous form in this area, providing email API services to crypto.com, one of the largest exchanges serving 50 million+ users.

With an extensive list of features, one of the negatives seems to be its limited audience segmentation capabilities.

SendX

SendX positions itself as a platform that provides the customer support and customization options that its competitors cannot. It offers email template functionality, A/B testing, and strong analytics through graphs and heatmaps. As with SendGrid, high email deliverability is also a key feature.

Unlike the likes of MailChimp, SendX affirms that it is there to support legitimate businesses of any stripe, regardless of whether they are in industries that have had their reputation lowered by unscrupulous actors.

HubSpot

HubSpot is a comprehensive CRM platform that incorporates strong built-in email marketing functionality, but also includes chats, web pages, marketing automation, and much more. Scalable, easy-to-use and packed with features, even its competitors know it is #1, which is why so many are forced to market as a HubSpot alternative.

Our recommendation for HubSpot as a great blockchain digital marketing platform isn’t just a case of believing the hype; we have been using this CRM for our marketing activities since 2016, allowing us to concurrently serve fintechs, SaaS platforms, B2B businesses, and of course, crypto and blockchain projects.

We think HubSpot is great because:

• It has the most convenient interface for building automated email workflows without the hassle of repeating connection logic.
• A/B testing for emails is supported.
• Triggers for automated emails are easy to set up.
• All marketing & sales materials can be kept in one place and drawn upon if needed.

How 42DM assists with crypto email marketing

Having been involved with innovative crypto projects before the meteoric rise of the market in 2017, we have seen the industry mature, prioritizing trust and transparency to bring in users not just for the short-term, but as active participants in Web3, a collection of online spaces that will finally give power back to users, and open up more possibilities in the fields of AI, machine learning, gaming, and social interactions.

We are incredibly excited about this future and are proud to work with companies who have the same motivations as us. If you think you’re on our wavelength and are looking for a dedicated and skilled agency to boost your marketing activities, get in touch via the form below — we’d love to hear from you!