It is no surprise that new media efforts have pushed traditional media almost out the door but out of all media channels, one of them, in particular, has stood the test of time. Emails. And they are here to stay.
Email marketing still ranks as the most effective marketing effort, even above social media and other related marketing techniques. How so, you ask? A strong point favoring email marketing over social media is the fact that despite the multitude of algorithm changes, emails remain essentially the same.
Speaking of algorithms, social media platforms constantly go through changes on theirs to stay ahead of their competition. As a result, social media marketers have to find ways to outsmart and stay on top of the constant updates. With emails, you can own and manage your strategy. If you’ve been ignoring your email marketing strategy, now is the best time to jump back on this massive opportunity!
Some additional benefits email marketing can have on your business include:
- Reaching a wider audience.
- Driving sales.
- Recovering the users in the sales funnel (i.e., the users who were about to schedule a call)
- Developing your relationship with clients beyond a call.
- Pushing your firm’s customer acquisition and retention.
And perhaps the most relevant benefit is that it is one of the most cost-effective marketing strategies. To give you one email marketing statistic, you could see an ROI of up $42 for every $1 spent! On top of that, around 60% of consumers purchase a product/service as a result of a marketing email they’ve received.
So, does email marketing really work? Should businesses place their time and effort into an email strategy? 100% yes.
Stay with us as we dive deep into the top email marketing strategies you can start implementing today.
Even though there isn’t an exact formula that works for all businesses, there are still general best practices to follow.
Keep Your Clients Engaged With the Perfect Email Marketing Strategy.
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To date, most businesses still don’t know how to optimize an email marketing strategy into one that works for them. The biggest downfalls here are missing out on client retention and losing prospects on the verge of using your services.
The following are the top actionable steps you can start implementing now:
1. Plan your work ahead
Before diving into the actual work behind email marketing, it is essential to take a step back and create an email marketing plan around your target audience.
First, you will need to define your audience(s). Usually, you will have more than one audience because different sales funnel stages require different solutions. For example, your audience in the ‘awareness’ phase of the sales funnel is looking for more information. Meanwhile, the audience between the ‘evaluation’ and ‘purchase’ stages needs just one last extra push of persuasion to convert into a client. Their various wants and needs mean their emails require separate copy with differing tones.
Second, it is crucial to know where users are signing up to receive emails. For example, are people signing up via your website? A sign-up sheet? Social media platforms? It’s important to know where users are coming from to push more efforts in acquiring more users there.
Third, you’ll need to decide what to write and how often you will send out emails. This comes hand-in-hand with your overall content marketing efforts. Your frequency will depend on your goals, but the average customer expects at least a monthly email. Your email needs to:
- Add value.
- Provide benefits.
- Push users to take action.
2. Power in personalization
Using your existing customer data can help your email’s personalized message. There are many ways you can personalize your message, but the most evident is to address the client by their name.
Other ways you can personalize your message is through:
- Using HTML campaigns (personalizing messages/ images/ fonts and layout of the email.)
- Using their name/company name/location in sign up forms
- Using an actual email to reply (avoiding i.e., donotreply@emailsample.com)
- Using your factual information in the signature at the bottom of the email. This also gives the reader contact information.
3. Segmentation matters… a lot
Segmentation in email marketing means dividing and organizing the subscribers into different groups.
Some ways you can segment each group according to demographics, industry, size of the business, or sales cycle. Of course, there are other ways you can segment emails.
Nevertheless, segmentation matters a lot. According to research, some benefits of segmenting your email in different categories include:
- Increased open rates.
- Greater relevance and therefore increasing open-rate.
- Higher opt-in rates.
- Increasing sales leads and thus increasing your revenue.
4. Your Key? Mobile-friendliness and Automation
Despite the fact that there are many best practices to optimize your email marketing, two critical ones are:
A. Mobile-friendliness optimization
B. Automation
Every day, more and more people are switching to mobile. In fact, cell phones are one of the first things people check in the morning for messages, calls, and, yes, even emails. Therefore, adjusting to a mobile-friendly email format is the way to go – especially if you’re aiming for a higher ROI.
You can implement the RED (responsive email design) technique. Most ESP (email service providers) already have RED in their design. But you can make sure to follow some of the best practices like:
- Adjusting the email to a single column layout no wider than 600 to 640 pixels.
- Keeping your message concise.
- Making sure the links and buttons are a minimum area of 44×44 pixels.
- Keeping the subject line short.
- Making the CTA (calls-to-action) short.
On the other hand, email automation helps you send trigger-based emails automatically. Some examples of trigger-based emails you can already set up are welcome emails, re-activation emails, birthday emails, thank you, and transactional emails.
Other important email automation includes the following:
- Win-back trigger-based emails – This is helpful when a client is approaching the end of their contract. It can increase your customer retention.
- Surprise trigger-based emails – Who doesn’t love freebies? By creating a surprise email with a free gift i.e., a free guidebook, you can increase your customer loyalty.
5. Measure Your Success
In order to grow, you need to find out what works and what doesn’t, and A/B testing can be your solution for this. With A/B testing, you are able to create different versions of an email to determine the best performance.
A note to keep in mind is that first impressions matter. A/B testing the subject line can be a good first step, as this is the first thing your email recipients will see.
Other email A/B testings you can do besides the subject line are:
- Word order (i.e. Get 25% off today versus Today you can get 25% off)
- Plain text versus HTML campaigns – Sending an email without images/design versus sending an email with HTML campaigns like illustrations/designs/highlights etc.
- Changing the “from” – Do you want the email to be sent from a specific person in the company? Or the company as a whole?
- Long-form / short form emails
Small Steps Towards Significant Impact
To this day, email marketing is one of the most powerful channels, and one whose potential your firm will want to squeeze to the last drop.
With a high-quality email marketing strategy, you can build conversion-rich relationships with all your audiences.
While we have mentioned some of the best email marketing practices proven by research, there isn’t a blueprint that fits all businesses alike. A high-quality email marketing strategy constantly evolves and adapts to what the clients currently want and need.
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