11 Effective Email Marketing Strategies You Should Be Using
Digital marketing offers businesses multiple communication channels to connect with consumers, with the most popular channels being the company website, email campaigns and social media platforms.
Email marketing is considered one of the most cost-effective marketing channels, providing the best ROI (Return on Investment) compared to other platforms. In fact, according to Campaign Monitor, for every USD $1 spent, email generates USD $44 in ROI, making it one of the most used channels by start-up and scale-up companies.
For this reason, today we will be discussing the key elements of a successful email marketing campaign.
First, imagine you are scrolling through a batch of new, unread emails. You see some promotional emails from your favourite brands, the daily digest from a news platform, some new study results from consulting companies, and delicious looking recipes from a culinary website. With plenty of emails to read, you can pick and choose based on what you are in the mood for. Finally, as you are scrolling through, a subject line piques your attention and you decide to click. You open the email only to find another dull sales pitch with a limited time offer that you know will be available for another month or two. How disappointing! You think to yourself: If I were the sender, I would not harass my readers with this non-sense. I would only send them quality content and only when it’s relevant to them.
Readers all over the world have similar thoughts about the emails they are receiving daily. Let’s face it; you don’t want to be the business that gets blocked or redirected to the SPAM folder.
Below are the 11 key strategies that will make your readers eagerly anticipate what is coming next:
1. Sign-up forms are a vital element of your overall email marketing strategy. Constantly growing your contact list should be the first task. Without quality leads, there is hardly any point in investing time in your email marketing efforts. It’s not as easy as it sounds. You have to give your website visitors and social media followers a reason to sign up. We recommend placing an opt-in form on your website (if the visitor who reads your blog wants to receive blog updates). For first time subscribers, you can offer a discount voucher. For consumers who are familiar with your business and want to find out more, create freebies, such as content a website visitor can download by providing his or her name and email address in exchange.
2. Mobile-friendly emails are a must in this day and age. Although the desktop is still the leading device readers use to go through their emails, we cannot deny smartphone users the same smooth user experience. Thankfully, email-marketing platforms, such as MailChimp or Campaign monitor, automatically create emails responsive to desktop, tablet and mobile devices.
3. Sending time is a tricky topic. You have to sit down and analyse the reports provided by your email marketing platform. You can see when the most opens and clicks happen and adjust your send time accordingly. There are multiple studies that share advice on the most common email sending times, but those are only averages. Why use them if you have specific data at your disposal, providing insight into subscriber behaviour?
4. Call-to-action buttons are elements that always need to be present in all of your emails. When you are developing an email marketing campaign, you need to have a goal in mind. If you are sending a newly published article, you want people to read it. If you are sharing upcoming events, you want them to attend. It is all about guiding our readers in the right direction. Make their life easier and provide them with the next step by asking them to “Read Article” or “Attend Event.”
5. Automation, segmentation, and personalisation are the buzzwords everyone is talking about in the marketing industry. With email and marketing automation, you can create workflows to support and engage your readers every step of the way. Send welcome emails, reminders, special birthday and VIP offers or even re-engagement emails. This all can be set up in advance and then you can let the automation do its magic.
6. Segmentation is a vital part of your email automation process and the main driver of the conversion rate. Let’s go back to the basics for a minute and take a look at the buyer’s journey. It all starts with awareness when a potential customer realises a need; a consideration when he or she starts researching the right solution; decision when a purchase is made. Ideally, you want to target all consumers in all of the three buying stages.
7. Use personalised content to help convince searchers you have the right solution to their problem. Having subscribers come from different channels and downloading different content will help you understand which stage of the buyer’s journey they are in currently. This way, you will be able to address specific questions in your email marketing campaign(s).
8. Take advantage of user-generated content by sharing customer reviews and pictures of the product used by the customer in your emails. Nothing can convince a potential buyer to convert more than seeing someone else using the product.
9. Gain more exposure by providing social sharing options in the email body. Again peer-to-peer sharing will help you build trust with potential customers.
10. I cannot stress enough that the truth rests in the analytics. The data will give you the raw facts and figures on how your email content is performing and what parts require adjustments.
11. Last but not least, make sure to provide an opt-out feature in every single one of your emails. You do not want to continue sending messages to people who are not interested in receiving your communication anymore. Plus, you want to comply with legal requirements. In fact, this can even damage open and click through rates.
Please keep in mind email marketing represents a direct channel, and you are not the only one requesting your reader’s attention. Make sure when you do get the chance, and your email does get opened, that your message is clear and the action you want your reader to take is right there at their fingertips.
SPIN Ideas is a strategy marketing agency, focusing on startups and SMS. We help our clients find their place in the market and grow. If you want to hear more about what we do and have monthly marketing updates, subscribe to SPIN Ideas’ Journal.
