Updated 6/26/19
How’s your email marketing going? We started the year off focusing on the impact of email marketing. We shared a lot of insightful blogs explaining why email marketing is right for everyone, how to get started and tips for those already in the mix. (Catch up on those blogs here)
If you haven’t gotten started, what’s the reason? If you slowed down a little, we’d ask the same thing. Email marketing is here to stay, it’s just a matter of creative strategy to reach your audience and standing out among the rest.
Many people have put email marketing on the back burner, marking it as a thing of the past or old marketing techniques for fear of what they see in their own inboxes. Hundreds of emails every day! Spammy emails, junkmail. Big brands inundating our inboxes with emails we can’t pass up, leaving little time for the “mom and pop” business and organization trying to catch our attention with their newsworthy items. And that’s all completely true. Email can often be slightly overwhelming when we’re dealing with day in and day out. HOWEVER, in that same thought, consider the fact that 2.5 billion people check their email every day. It should be a part of your marketing efforts, it just needs proper execution. The ones that aren’t successful are the ones that aren’t making the right moves.
Let’s cover some of the Cheat Sheet Guide Wordtracker.com has shared.
1. Strategy
Create a strategy based on your overall marketing goals. What calls to action do you want to make? What’s the purpose of each newsletter and content within it. What direction are you headed in to meet your marketing needs? Plan it out, coordinate with your other marketing efforts and stick to the plan to create an effective email campaign.
2. Personalization
Most all ENewsletter platforms offer multiple ways for you to personalize your subscriber lists and emails and you should definitely be using it. Consider segmenting your subscribers by levels of involvement for corresponding triggers.
Each of these segments should receive unique messages, personalized for where they are in their relationship with you.
“Consider triggered emails. Emails can be automated for a variety of reasons – to upsell existing customers, to remind customers of abandoned carts, for re-engagement, and as welcomes, etc.”
“Get personal about your business. Conversions are the result of relationship-building. Consumers want to know the people behind a brand, and it is up to you to tell your story and establish human connections with all segments of your audience.”
Timing. Monitor the open rates and analytics provided with each newsletter to determine the most active times to send your emails. Also be cautious of the frequency in which you send. Don’t bombard your subscribers with endless emails, they’ll quickly get annoyed and are more likely to unsubscribe as a result.
4. Re-engagement
“If you see that a subscriber has not opened your emails for several months, it’s time to re-engage that person. If you don’t know exactly how to craft re-engagement emails so that they actually get opened by the subscriber, your best tactic here is to take a look at successful re-engagement examples and try to emulate them.”
5. Responsive design
“This goes without saying. You should adopt a mobile-first strategy in your email design, as many emails are opened on mobile devices by busy consumers on the go. Mobile device use ranges from 49.7% up to 78% depending upon global regions.”
6. Content
Content is king! Do we sound like a broken record with that phrase by now? We should, it’s true for all marketing and it’s not going to change! Start with your subject line, what is going to catch their eye and encourage them to open the email in the first place? Once they are reviewing the ENewsletter, what kind of content is going to hold their attention long enough to scan the entire email? Now that they are intrigued, are your call to actions strong enough for follow through? From start to finish, analyze your email as the viewer and make note of what pulls you in, what deters you and what could be done better.
2019 EMAIL STATS
- 73 percent of millennials prefer communications from businesses to come via email.
- More than 50 percent of U.S. respondents check their personal email account more than 10 times a day, and it is by far their preferred way to receive updates from brands.
- 99% of consumers check their email every day.
- 80% of business professionals believe that email marketing increases customer retention.
- 59% of respondents say marketing emails influence their purchase decisions.
- 40 percent of B2B marketers say email newsletters are most critical to their content marketing success.
