Email marketing has grown to become the most popular means of advertising. Everyone uses it but not to the same level of success. The reason for that lies in poor planning and sometimes poor use of insights, which are the key to stellar, targeted and segmented campaigns. Any email marketing campaign that isn’t targeted and segmented isn’t successful. As simple as that.
However, there is more to email marketing than meets the eye. It’s far more sophisticated and premeditated than it may appear to a layman, and lots of hard work stands behind the effort. In order for an email campaign to be perfect, it needs to bring to the next level the core of every marketing effort: communication. Need we underline it needs to go both ways?
Planning Ahead
Planning a campaign is the second step – after defining your audiences. Presumably, you have an idea which groups to target based on your offer. If you sell makeup, it’s only logical that you’ll target women; if you sell baby clothing – you’ll target parents (notably mothers), etc.
Once you know your target groups, it’s time to plan the first campaign and loosely all others that will follow. To keep track of the developments, use a calendar. It will help you avoid repetition, keep track of promotions, and show at a glance all the aspects of your campaign.
Building a Mailing List
The first rule of successful email marketing: never buy lists. Use subscription forms to gather the email addresses of people interested in your offer. To add additional ones, offer free giveaways or other benefits in exchange for people providing their email address.
As far as giveaways are concerned, they needn’t be expensive or exclusive. They may comprise a free ebook, a discount on the next purchase, free shipping for the next purchase, etc. Use your imagination. If you’re giving away coupons, mind the location. I.e., I have recently received discount coupons for premium wines from my favorite book seller, but the wine seller is located in Australia. So, the shipping costs are making the special offer, well, not so “special.” Also, the idea that all avid readers drink wine is also far-fetched. You get the drift. Be clever in the choice of the bonus.
On top of building a mailing list, it is also essential to update it regularly. Some subscribers will unsubscribe while others will change their email addresses. To avoid confusing bounce rates, this is the easiest way to keep the stats realistic.
Send Only Quality Offers
To build a base of loyal customers, your offer needs to stand out and also to continually deliver on your brand’s business promise. The offers you advertise should be high-quality, have affordable prices and solve problems.
Many marketers create urgency to boost the sales. This is achieved in various ways, the most common of which is by offering time-limited discounts and coupons. It is important, however, that the message announcing the deal isn’t overbearing or aggressive in its approach. The customer comes first; revenue comes second.
Use the insights to help you come up with relevant offers for EACH customer. Sending generic offers is fine for themed-sales, but purchase history can tell you much and more about your customers’ preferences. To boost sales dramatically, use engaging videos and offer relevant products only..
Write State-of-the-Art Emails
It goes without saying that all emails you send must be literate, no matter how casual they may or may not be. As for the communication style, it depends on your business’ style, the audience and other factors besides.
Pick one approach to communication and stick to it. Changing your style will come across as unreliable and untrustworthy – the worst thing that can happen to a brand.
Spell-check all your emails. At least there are plenty of free apps and extensions that can help with that.
As regards the contents, the email should be concise, easily scannable (note that most people will scan your message rather than read it) and consistent. Stick to the offer and never beat around the bush. Use newsletters to announce the upcoming offer and email marketing campaigns to advertise one event or a group of products only. Offering everything in your store in one email is as ineffective as it is pointless.
Use one font and a proper font size, and don’t opt for image-heavy messages. The majority of recipients will be checking your offer on mobile devices, so bear that in mind. Nothing too heavy on the bandwidth. If you must include images, format them so that they retain quality but are smaller in size.
Add a call to action (CTA). It should stand out from the rest of the text so that it can be spotted immediately. A button is a good choice. It is of different color than the rest of the text. The CTA text should clearly communicate what will happen when the button is clicked on.
Add an unsubscribe button or link. It shouldn’t be as large or as dramatic as the CTA button, but it must be there. Contrary to popular belief, the strategy is not counterproductive. It’s better to have people no longer interested in your brand’s offer unsubscribe than flag your email as spam, simply because they’ve forgotten they can unsubscribe with ease.
Lastly, add contact information. This should be a norm for all emails you send since only by encouraging communication will you be able to deepen the relationship with your customers and build trust in the long run (which should be your ultimate goal).
Mind the Subject Lines
We come last to that which is, perhaps, the most important – subject lines. Simply put, subject lines decide the fate of your email and, by extension, the fate of your further marketing efforts with a customer.
If a subject line is cut, vague, tricky, generic, random or illiterate, chances are, your message will be either deleted or marked as spam. Note that most people receive way too many emails a day that they don’t have enough time to address.
For that reason, it is important to feature a stellar subject line that will make your email stand out from the rest and to send the message either around 8 AM or 1 PM. Namely, various studies show that it is around these times that most people access their inboxes.
In a Nutshell
These are the basics of successful email marketing. Fine-tuning and adjusting is certainly needed, especially as your customer base grows. However, if you keep using insights regularly and adjust your offer so that it remains competitive, you only need to add a zest to communication to prolong your brand’s success.
The best way to do this is by sharing your offer on your social media pages. They are also the most common means of communication. Make an effort to reply to all queries and encourage people to leave feedback. Learn from your customers and grow with them. In this way, your brand will remain evergreen and retain loyal customers in the future.
