Email Marketing is Here to Stay: Learn How To Do It Right

Email marketing may have been overshadowed by newer forms of marketing, but veteran marketers know that sometimes, older is better.

What is email marketing?

Email marketing is a marketing strategy that uses emails to send promotional content to existing and potential clients, in the hopes of building a brand, expanding reach, sharing product information, and increasing sales.

There are different types of emails. Emails can be informational (ex. newsletters, brand stories, event alerts), transactional (ex. welcome emails, action notifications, confirmations), commercial (ex. sale alerts, promotions, offers), and more (ex. re-engagement emails, review requests, brand pitches), depending on the intent or goal of the email marketing campaign.

The importance of email marketing is shown in its results and numbers. (Photo by Torsten Dettlaff on Pexels)

What are the advantages of email marketing?

When there’re so many forms of marketing available today, it’s natural to ask: Is email marketing important? Our answer is a solid ‘YES’ and these are the reasons why.

1. While most people are focusing on social media marketing and influencer marketing, they are missing out on the fact that there are over 4 billion email users worldwide. And in 2021, there were about 319.6 billion emails sent and received daily (Statista, 2022).

2. While people use social media by choice for connection, fun, and entertainment, people are required to have an email for their work, study, and even product registrations. And all these people can be your potential customers should you use email marketing right.

3. Emails are more of a blank slate compared to social media pages and ads that often come with a prescribed format. You can design your email any way you want to achieve the best results. You can include text, images, infographics, and even videos, among other types of media. You can also include customized CTA buttons and links to relevant websites and product pages.

4. Email outperforms social media in marketing due to social media’s ever-changing algorithms limiting organic reach. The average click-through rate (CTR) for emails is 2.3% vs Facebook Ads’s 0.90%.

5. Through email marketing coupled with data analysis, you can personalize your pitch per customer for higher rates of conversion and better customer relationship management.

Build your email list like a PRO

Before you can start an email marketing campaign, you first need to build an email list.

An email list refers to the email addresses your business has of current and possible leads.

It is important that email lists only contain email addresses that have been gathered with the express permission of their owners to avoid being reported as spam which damages your business reputation. Sending cold emails, or emails sent unsolicited, are not very effective. Moreover, only sending emails to those who have opted to share them after an interaction with your brand gives you a higher conversion rate since the recipients have already expressed interest at least once.

You know it’s time to send emails once you’ve achieved an extensive email list. (Photo by Viktoria Slowikowska on Pexels)

So how do you build your email list organically?

• Provide added value by offering exclusive benefits after email subscriptions. These benefits can include informational PDFs, ebooks, studies, or any form of content your leads might be interested in. They can also take the form of shop bonuses like discounts, free samples, free trials, and product giveaways.
• Hold events, campaigns, and even contests that require email registration. The added value this time is the prize and the experience.
• Make sure your subscription button/form is always VISIBLE. As they say, out of sight, out of mind. Make sure the option to subscribe is always ready to be taken by using sticky buttons/forms, omnipresent chatbots, permanent CTAs on your website, and even pop-ups, especially when users are about to leave your website for one last attempt. You can also share your subscription button/form on all your business platforms including social media.

Email marketing best practices

Once you have your email list/s, you’re now ready to start your email marketing campaign. Here, we’ve gathered some of the best email marketing strategies to help boost your results. We have email marketing tips for beginners, as well as veterans who need some ideas for improving their campaigns.

Email marketing is more than just sending emails. Subject lines and email copy need to be crafted carefully to get and keep the interest of recipients until they result in a conversion.

Here’s how to write effective email marketing content and design an effective email marketing strategy.

Perfect your subject line

Your subject line is the very first thing that’s seen in your email. It sets the reader’s first impression. And as we all know, first impressions last.

Did you know that according to research, about 33% of people who have received emails open said emails based on the subject line alone (SuperOffice, 2021)? That’s almost a third of your recipients and accounts for a lot of the success of your email marketing campaigns.

Your subject line is your first hello to your potential customers. (Photo by Tyler Lastovich on Unsplash)

Make your headlines better by doing the following:

• Pique the interest of the recipient. You can do so by highlighting the significance of the email content in the recipient’s life. Perhaps bring up a problem and offer a solution. You can also do this by sharing interesting or shocking information that requires the recipients to click the email open to know more about it. Leave them hanging but promise them more. How many “Did you know…. Here’s how…” headlines have you clicked so far?
• Personalize your headlines. People are more likely to respond if they feel acknowledged as individuals. To personalize your headlines, you can address the recipients by name, and introduce the sender as an individual person (perhaps a brand representative) with their own name as well. Use a friendly and conversational tone. You can also include information and offers specifically chosen based on the recipients’ previous activity on your website. Personalization is the reason why you should avoid email templates if possible. Templates lack warmth and do not address recipients’ individuality, including their unique needs and interests.
• Create an emotional reaction through power words. Power words cause a reaction in the reader. Take for example the headlines “The Best Books You’ll Ever Read” versus “Selected Books You Should Read.” Which of the two headlines would you open in your email? The phrase ‘Best books’ garners more reaction than ‘Selected books’ even though both refer to a collection of titles chosen by the writer. The first headline is more powerful and more likely to be clicked because of the power word ‘Best’.
• Take advantage of the preview text that appears beside the headline. Headlines often come with a preview text. A mistake many are prone to make is leaving it as is, often displaying part of the email without direction. Customize it instead and share essential and/or interesting information about your email, such as how many people it has helped so far or for how long the offer will stand.

Make powerful copy

Your email copy contains all the information that you want to share with your recipient. But not many read them through word for word. That is unless you make sure that it’s interesting, informative, and persuasive.

A persuasive email copy is a powerful marketing tool. (Photo by Kaitlyn Baker on Unsplash)

• Keep your email copy short and sweet. Unlike blog posts, email copies are made more to entice rather than educate. And when someone is just discovering your brand, they often have limited interest and attention span. As such, you want your email copy to be brief and memorable. Again, power words are your friends. Your message should be understood at a quick glance so make smart use of font style, font size, as well as text placement. Remember that larger fonts are often read first, and text is usually read from left to right in most countries.
• Share the value of your product. No matter how great your product is, if your recipient has no use for it, it’s unlikely that they would buy it, or even open the email that sells it. So focus on product benefits over product details and features, at least initially. Product features can take the spotlight once you’ve convinced the recipient of the product’s value. Perhaps offer exclusive content as a reward for opening the email to increase interest as well.
• Include multimedia. The younger generations have always had a multimedia internet experience. By only including text in your email copy, you might not hold their interest long enough to sell. Infographics are a great option for emails. They are visual and rich with information yet not too heavy a file as video.
• Include CTA buttons, links, etc. A call to action reminds your audience that their journey with you does not and should not end with your email. And the more visible and actionable calls to action are, the more convenient your customer journey is and the more likely customers are to continue on. CTA buttons are preferred as they are both visually appealing and identifiable, yet it may involve a bit of coding and/or the use of 3rd party apps. Unless you’re using Gmail, in which case you can simply follow this instructional Youtube video.
• Ask to be added to the address book to avoid going to spam. This simple action ensures that you appear together with other relevant emails, upping your click-through rate (CTR).

Optimize your email marketing campaign

After doing everything you can to perfect your headline and email copy, there’s one thing left to do and that is optimizing your email marketing campaign to ensure your content is read and not put to waste.

Characteristics of sales promotions tools (also called sales promotional tools) to look out for include having automation features, a secure data management system, a responsive content interface, and an intensive data analytic capability. (Photo by freestocks on Unsplash)

• Make sure your email is responsive and mobile-friendly. 41% of emails are viewed through mobile while 39% are viewed through desktop (HubSpot Blog Research, 2021). By not being responsive, you can lose the interest of the majority of your email recipients.
• Segment your email list based on customer interest and business intent for best results. Interest is key to sales. As such, sending the same set of emails to different types of leads can result in low open rates. That’s also why paid email lists are often not that effective. Instead, when you plan email marketing campaigns, make sure to segment your email list based on customer/lead interest and send a customized email set for each segment.
• Use data analysis to determine the best times to send marketing emails and the most effective ways to write them. To do this, try to send your emails at different times of days (taking into consideration different time zones if needed), vary your set days to send emails, and use different styles of headlines and email copies. Then, check when emails get the most response. From the results, you can create an optimized email marketing campaign content calendar. Because emails receive direct responses from the intended recipients, email marketing is a useful and accurate tool to test marketing strategies.
• Make it easy to subscribe and unsubscribe to your campaign. When recipients are not worried about being pestered just by participating, they can focus more on following the customer journey you have laid out.
• Send follow-up emails for actions that were not taken. This is great for abandoned cart recovery and upselling relevant products to the reader. However, don’t do it too often. No one likes a sales representative that doesn’t know when to stop.
• Use email marketing tools. Online sales promotions tools, examples of which include Mailchimp and Zotabox, help in launching and running email marketing campaigns through marketing automation. Thanks to technology, you can easily set a time to send emails without having to set alarms, and at any time of day even when you’re sleeping. With it, you can even access data analytics features to see patterns of success and failure for campaign guidance.

Launch your email marketing campaign with Cafe24’s Zotabox App

Email marketing remains one of the most profitable marketing campaigns with the ability to have $42 ROI for every dollar spent (dma.org.uk, 2019).

And with Cafe24’s Zotabox app, you can join in the success! A powerful sales promotions tool, it lets you integrate Mailchimp, one of the global front runners in email marketing optimization and automation, as well as 20+ other email marketing providers into your online store operations.

Not only that, but Zotabox also allows you to add and embed various marketing and promotional features into your online store website including banners, pop-ups, social feeds, and testimonials.

All its features work to upsell your online store and your products effectively.

The Zotabox app is just one of the many powerful ecommerce solutions offered by Cafe24. Discover more by signing up today!