Email marketing campaigns are a great way to reach potential customers as it is less intrusive than telephone marketing. In recent times marketing has seen a lot of trends in its delivery. Technology has squashed traditional marketing where it was either physical or through media. These methods were not as effective as not everyone is an adept television viewer or a fan of salespersons. Advertisers could only target a small group of people at a time due to geographical restrictions, medium coverage, and the general interest of the target audience.
Email Marketing Campaigns
The birth of internet-enabled marketing was easier as the geographical constraint was trampled. With the internet, it was possible now to send information to a person thousands of miles away from you as the sender. This was a real game-changer, with many industries taking on the new gem and capitalizing on its abilities to reach millions of people. This revolution branched to using newsletters to make marketing appeals instead of the traditional brochures that you hand at the farmers’ market.
While e-mail marketing doesn’t shun away the need for traditional marketing, it is a great add-on to your marketing efforts. The ROI in retail trade for email marketing campaigns is estimated at 65%, three times more than traditional door-to-door marketing. The reason for this upsurge is the personal touch evoked by e-mails. Primarily, you send an e-mail to someone you care about deeply. The fact that it is convenient to the prospect and gives them the information they need is the selling point of e-mail marketing.
Advantages of Email Marketing Campaigns over Traditional Marketing
As a seller, you may be wondering if e-mail marketing will work for your niche. The good news is marketing works for any niche and any product type you are selling. From SaaS, GT, FMCG, etc., all these products and services can be marketed using e-mail. In addition, the e-mail you send your prospect gives them the needed push to go ahead and buy the product. By frequent and consistent engagement, you can create a bond of trust with your customer around the product you intend to sell them. It costs less to install an e-mail marketing routine.
Advantages include:
- You can see an increase in your ROI.
- Management is easy by using CRMs and other customer management tools where you can track conversions.
- E-mail marketing uses the internet, which is not geographically sensitive.
- Your business can target the e-mails to certain clients according to marketing metrics like location.
- You can engage your clients one on one, offering them a platform where they can reach you as well as get information on what they are looking for
- Traffic to your website or e-commerce store increases.
- You are talking to people who are already introduced or interested in your product-they sign up for the newsletter most likely.
How to Improve Email Marketing Campaigns?
Sending e-mails as part of a marketing campaign is the most effective game-changer you can incorporate into your broader marketing strategy. E-mails can convey a more intimate message than an ad on social media. It is a time that you can talk with your prospects directly in their inbox.
But having the perfect email marketing campaigns are not easily accessible to many businesses, and those who do it probably are doing it wrong. As previously mentioned, e-mails are meant to build a constant communication channel between you and your audience. You are trying to put a value on the communication in a way that the client sees the e-mail as help rather than you trying to sell a product to them.
The audience today is not like the way it was a couple of years back. They are clever and can recognize a sales pitch from a mile away. So, how do you improve your e-mail campaign efficiency?
Below is a ten-pointer of how you can approach your e-mails for a more fruitful campaign.
1. E-mail List Segmentation
E-mail relevance increases the click-through rate of your audience. You can give your audience what they need, which reduces subscriptions on your e-mail list. Segmentation can be according to age, gender, purchase behavior, etc. For example, if you have an offer for women, it would be wise to send that e-mail campaign to women rather than your whole e-mail list, including men.
Receiving the wrong message in their inbox can prompt your subscriber to be frustrated, which is the last thing you want.
You can also divide your e-mail list according to your interests. You can decide on a campaign that gives a coupon on the purchase of certain goods worth. The e-mail will do better for a client who generally buys those product lines. Also, there are people in your audience who will opt for news or events from your business. To best decide on what and how to segment the e-mail list, look at the individual interests and history. Information like this can help you craft a more efficient and responsive listing for the content you decide to market.
2. Optimize Your E-mails for Mobile Viewing
Most of the e-mails you send are opened on mobile devices. Research shows that 71% of people will delete an e-mail if it displays incorrectly on their mobile devices. This goes to show how important optimizing your e-mail design to be mobile-friendly is. A single-column design is suitable for mobile vertical scrolling.
Ensure that the images incorporated in the e-mail are not big as this too can fail to display correctly on the mobile phone interface. In addition, these images can cause breakages in the message, thereby appearing incomplete, which is a complete turn-off to your reader.
For easy scanning and reading, use white lines-these trick the eye to see easily and thereby not struggle. This translates to more reading time which is what you want. Also, try having short sentences. They are easily understandable and readable. Your readers will have a lot of information out of a single sentence. Short sentences are good to avoid fluff. By crafting short and precise e-mails, you can communicate more, catch your reader’s attention and thereby help them without wasting their precious resource time.
Call to action buttons should be big enough to be clickable but not too absurdly big. A recommended sizing will be 44 pixels. Check how your e-mail displays in the various e-mail providers (Hotmail, Gmail, Outlook, etc.) gives you a rough idea of how the receiver will see it. You can edit a template that is ideal for displays reducing frustrations on your subscribers’ end. A responsive e-mail design grants a 55% more click-through rate than conventional default designs.
3. Consider Text-Only E-mails
For starters, e-mails can be hard to craft. You may think that packing your e-mail with loads of images and videos is the best way to keep your reader engaged. But sometimes, this much information and graphics can be too much for your dear subscriber. You need to tone down on image usage. Experiment with text-only e-mails and measure response against the former. Remember that the goal is to make the reader aware of the primary information/deal of the e-mail. So if a few graphic free sentences can do it, do that.
Some e-mail service providers like outlook block images automatically. This can make your message on the receiver’s end appear broken. Instead, use short paragraphs with tagged links to your website or blog. You can then track what links people are clicking and what are attracting less traffic and edit accordingly.
4. Move Away From The “No-Reply” Address
I know you have received an auto-generated e-mail from a “do-not-reply@example.com,” and it was not the most attractive thing to open, right? Why make your subscribers go through the same hell? Having an e-mail like this creates an image in your reader’s mind that you do not wish to be bothered by them, so why should they read your e-mail?
Have an e-mail address that shows that the e-mail came from a person. Statistics show that 64% of people will open an e-mail based on who sends it. Trust is part of business, and there is no better way of creating trust than making sure that you care for your audience.
5. Have A Compelling and Concise Subject
A subject line can make or break a campaign. Choosing a subject that resonates with the audience is key to how well your marketing will be. Spelling offers in the subject line or making special announcements makes the e-mail meatier to the reader. In other words. it makes them curious about what is inside the email. Keep a subject title below 50 characters-anything above has a high chance of being truncated. You are looking at an 8% increase in click-to-open rate by having good catchy and informative subjects.
6. Personalization
Customize your e-mails with the name of the subscriber to show a personal touch in the message. After that, add as much information about them in the e-mail as possible. Capitalize on buyer history to introduce deals, new products, and special events that are inclined to them. You make their judgment easier by introducing something they are already interested in. You can give them the push needed to make that purchase of your product.
Studies indicate that 74% of people are frustrated by the e-mails they receive about products and news that don’t interest them. This brings back the importance of segmenting your e-mail list. Personalized subject lines attract a 26% increase in click-to-open rate. Additionally, introduce social media into your e-mail marketing as a way to connect to your subscribers. You can moreover invest in social media tools to help you manage your social media. According to folks at Socialays, monitors your social media activity like comments and notifies you of changes and notifications of posts you make, etc.
7. Create A Clear Call To Action
The main reason you send an e-mail campaign to subscribers is to achieve a particular goal that promotes the growth of your business. Whether to get more leads, garner more subscriptions or drive traffic to your sites, the call to action must be clear enough for the reader to recognize it after opening your e-mail. A general rule is if a reader cannot ascertain what the e-mail is coaxing them to do, then the e-mail has failed to communicate its attention. For instance, before sending out e-mails to the masses in the subscriber list, give the draft to someone else to read. Subsequently, ask them within five seconds if they get what they are supposed to do according to the e-mail message. If they don’t, please go back to the drawing board.
8. Avoid Sounding Pushy
No one likes a pushy salesman, so do not be one. Moreover, try selling without sounding too obvious. You should be telling how the product can solve your readers’ problems, not praising the product! Allow the customer to make the big decision.
9. Measure Impact of The E-mail Campaign
Record your e-mail delivery rates, opening rates, click-through rates, and reading time. Also, take note of the reaction such as unsubscribes, sharing, bounce rate, revenues per e-mail, and subscribers. This helps you measure the effectiveness of the campaign.
10. Concentrate on Nurturing Relationships
Business is about relationships and solving problems. You have to ensure that the heart of your campaign is inspired by a people spirit, showing your reader that you can be depended upon, that you are not just there to make a sale. In addition, offer informative content that they can use. This way, every time they see your e-mail, they smile while opening it.
E-mail Marketing Strategy and Preparation
An e-mail strategy involves the goals you have for a particular campaign and the targets you want to achieve. It details what is to be done to bring you closer to realizing the business objectives. An e-mail plan assists how you are going to implement your e-mail strategy so that it bears fruit. It states the how, where, and when questions. Essentially, the plan is a roadmap detailing how to walk the e-mail strategy.
For a successful e-mail strategy, preparation must involve:
1. Identify Your Audience
This is important for easy implementation of the strategy. Your audience dictates what you will sell, when, and how.
2. Goals and Objectives
The objectives of the campaign must be in line with the long-term business goals. So, you can know that your business is heading the right way.
3. Develop a Content Strategy
A content outline for the e-mail campaign will guide you on what to write and when to send it to your subscribers. In short, content is the heart of the e-mail campaign. So, having a plan of how you are going to develop it is essential for the campaign’s success. Discuss offers and events that you would like to unfold here.
4. Measure Results
This will determine the success rate of your email marketing campaigns. Additionally, the results will direct you on what is working and what is not, giving you time to update your content strategy for better results. Record the click-through rate, bounce back rate, opening rate, etc.
5. Build Your E-mail List
The larger your e-mail list, the better your chances of landing clients. In your e-mails, ensure that you encourage sharing so that you can indirectly get more subscribers.
What’s a Good E-mail Click-Through Rate?
After you send an e-mail, you expect or hope that your subscriber will open the e-mail and respond to the content therein. So, after implementing the above tips and sending the cutting edge e-mail marketing text ever, how effective is your campaign? What answers this is the click-through rate traffic created to your destination. It could be you are selling an offer, seeking subscriptions, looking for traffic, etc.
Your industry can have a large impact on your CTO. If you work in the automobile industry, your CTO may be lower than average compared to someone in the food industry with an above-average rate. Averagely, a good click-through rate should be around 2.6%-3% for any industry.
The formula for calculating your actual CTO is obtained by dividing the number of e-mail clicks by the total number of e-mails received, then multiplying the value by 100.
CTO = (No. of clicks / Total of e-mails received) x 100
Conclusion
When implementing email marketing campaigns, it is vital to look at the demographics that may affect its outcome and adjust accordingly. Provide a clear and precise message that communicates the message directly and clearly to the reader. In addition, personalize your emails to reflect trust and the need to help rather than sell.
