How to improve the effectiveness of email marketing. Part I
Subscriber base, different email types and personalization
There is no magic recipe to quickly improve the effectiveness of an email campaign. This is only achieved by painstakingly working daily on all fronts.
In this series of articles, we have collected and presented the most complete list of ways to increase the efficiency of email marketing. In this part, we’ll talk about the subscriber database, email types and personalization.
Subscriber database
1. Use Double Opt-In. Double confirmation of the subscription will protect you from incorrect email addresses, as well as from subscribers who subscribed by mistake.
2. Come up with a subscription bonus. This bonus should be valuable to subscribers, but not so valuable that people will sign up just because of it. Otherwise, there is a risk of wasting money and clogging the base with “cold” contacts. Offer useful videos, instructions, checklists or a certificate for a small amount for purchases via email.
3. Strive to get into the “white list”. When subscribers add your address to their contact list, the probability of your emails going into spam reduces drastically. However, be sure to request the subscribers to do this in the first emails sent. For example, in a welcome chain. An email might be included, warning subscribers that they might miss useful content if they don’t add your address to their contact list.
4. Keep your base clean. Delete invalid addresses from the list, unsubscribe those who send your emails to spam, and transfer inactive users to separate lists. The more “live” your base is when you send an email, the more opens and clicks you will receive.
5. Reactivate. Reactivation is a series of emails sent to revive the interests of subscribers. The most obvious solution is to send a series of reactivation emails with gifts and bonuses. If you have several thousand inactive subscribers, do not carry out reactivation all over the list right away. Divide it into several parts so that a low percentage of opens will not harm future campaigns.
6. Make the “Unsubscribe” button noticeable. Each spam complaint increases the likelihood of all emails from your domain getting blocked. It is very important to build the unsubscribe process correctly. Make it possible for subscribers who are no longer interested in your emails to click the “Unsubscribe” button rather than the “This is spam” button.
Letter types
7. Set up trigger emails. These are letters that are sent to subscribers depending on a specific event. An example of such an event is when a person has subscribed to a newsletter, sent the goods to the cart, clicked on a specific link or didn’t buy anything for six months.
The convenience of setting up trigger emails is that you do not need to follow the actions of each of the thousands of subscribers. The emails are automatically sent and will not require effort from you. As a result, subscribers will receive emails at the right time, which means that they are more likely to perform the required action.
What trigger emails can you configure?
- Abandoned cart (an email is sent with the goods in the cart and a list of alternatives).
- Gratitude for the order (moments after the purchase, the client receives an email expressing gratitude and recommendation of goods that complement the purchase).
- Back in stock (if there is a product that the subscriber was interested in before).
- Regular purchase (if the product is bought at a certain frequency, the client will receive a letter with a reminder and a selection of alternatives).
- Reduction in the price of a product (the client will receive a letter when the price of the product he is interested in becomes lower).
8. Use a series of emails. A series of emails is instrumental in leading subscribers towards taking the desired action. Therefore, it is more effective than single emails. For example, here are two emails that encourage the visitor who has added goods to the cart to complete an order:
First email: reminds the customer of an abandoned cart and shows the goods that are left in it.
Second email: offers a discount on selected items or other special conditions. It is sent some time after the first email if the customer has not finished the order.
The series of emails works especially well when the product is complex and the decision to purchase is not made immediately.
9. Start meeting new subscribers with a welcome chain. This is a series of 4–5 welcome emails, which, according to statistics, are opened 2 times more often than usual.
10. Pay attention to transactional emails. These are the messages that are sent automatically in response to a user’s action on your site. For example, a client has filled out an application, ordered a product or subscribed to a newsletter. Unlike trigger emails, transactional emails do not sell anything, but provide some kind of information. However, subscribers are much more pleased to receive interesting and unusual transactional emails. This increases their loyalty and helps to establish friendships.
11. Congratulate subscribers on holidays. It is nice to receive congratulatory emails from the store, especially a gift comes with the email. Create vivid congratulatory emails not only for Valentine’s Day and Christmas, but also for such specialized holidays as Mother’s Day, Quality Day or Pet Day.
Personalization
12. Segment the base. The more individual content your subscribers receive, the more openings, clicks and sales an email channel gives. You can divide subscribers by activity, gender, age, preferences, geography, life cycle or by RFM analysis. You will find some data for segmentation in analytics systems, while others can be found out from the subscribers themselves.
13. Contact subscribers by name. The advice seems hackneyed, but it still works. According to MarketingSherpa, adding the recipient’s name to the subject of the message increases open rates up to 42%.
14. Send letters on behalf of an employee of the company. For example, a manager or director. Add his or her photo. Such letters will be perceived as more personal. Subscribers will be more willing to open it and follow the links.
15. Create a character. Employees are unstable, but you can always send letters on behalf of a fictional character. For example, you can choose an animal that characterizes your company. Then you will never have to introduce subscribers to a new sender.
16. Use dynamic content. Give recommendations based on products or pages viewed by a specific user or show individual promotions to subscribers. By taking care of users, this positively affects the results of the email campaign.
17. Conduct a survey. It will help to segment the base, as well as to increase the loyalty of subscribers. Subscribers will be pleased that you are interested in their opinions. The main thing is that the survey should be simple and short. You can put it directly in the letter or attach a link to it:
Wow! These are pretty much all the tips that we wanted to tell you about in this part. In the next article, we will give information about the content of the letter: design, HTML-coding and copywriting. Stay tuned!
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