An Email has signified the beginning of modern communication. It is gathered that approximately 2.8 million emails are sent per second, and over 4 billion email users worldwide. Though the number is gigantic but not surprising because its impact is profound throughout history.
Sending a personal message is considered informal and falls under social obligations. Emails require a professional and formal tone arranged with a creative writing style, commonly referred to as Email Marketing.
What is Email Marketing?
Email marketing is the main communication channel used to advertise your product or services using a marketing campaign to reach your audience. In simpler terms, it’s a type of direct marketing use to reach your target customers to achieve specific goals, to increase the lead, sales, retention, or engagement.
When you incorporate Email Marketing as part of your advertising campaign, your marketing personnel is often accepted because it is quick, simple, and flexible. Also, most smartphone users have Email accounts that allow them to receive and access almost unlimited emails instantly.
As mentioned before, Email has flexibility, which can accommodate a wide range of messages, and almost any form of a message can be sent.
Writing creative and apt content can lure your customer easily. But still, many fail to do so.
The content of the mail could be simple text, images, video, or multimedia. Some organizations also mention various links to capture readers’ attention.
The add on advantage of Email marketing is it is tailored made. It caters to only a specific type of target customers, unlike conventional advertisement where the campaign is often broadcasted to the people who are not the direct consumer.
Types of Email Marketing
Direct mails
They are used to give information about your product’s arrival, any special offers or upcoming sales. The information provided will be coherent and brief in the mail body with an appropriate link that takes the reader to the landing page.
Email Newsletter
They are regular filler messages which often keep the customer attached to the company. Although they don’t have any exciting sales offer, they always provide news or information relevant to the consumer. It is a way of maintaining a long-term relationship with your buyer without selling anything to them; the newsletter is only received by customers who agree to accept the company’s mail, i.e., they are the subscribers of your newsletters.
Transactional mail
These emails are sent when a specific action has already happened and has benefited the company. It is generally the trigger mail that delights the customer with an enticing offer indirectly. They may not pitch the offer directly to make an attempt to purchase right on the spot. For example, when you book your tickets for a movie show, the next message will tell you do you prefer a combo lunch to be served at your seat during the interval.
Why is Email marketing still considered a viable choice for all types of businesses?
With the convenience of clicking through Emails, we tend to think that Email is easily ignored, and investing in Email campaigns is considered a waste of time.
The facts mentioned above and all other sources reckon that Email can never be dead; it has been used more effectively all these years and will continue to do so.
Below mentioned reasons will always show how email marketing can become an integral part of your businesses. An easy way to reach your audience. A study by Radicati shows that 196 billion emails are sent daily. Out of that, 109 billion are business emails. This shows you how easy it is to send emails to your customers.
Effective than Social media
Using social media as a marketing strategy is never a harm. But your ultimate goal of converting your customers cannot be achieved with only social media. The Email has a long history associated with converting potential customers into actual customers. 80% of respondents said that email marketing drives customers acquisition and retention.
Cost-effective
Easy, inexpensive, and practical all rolled into one – Email marketing. Email marketing is considered a gold mine in the world of marketing.
Emails can be personalized or customized.
In Email marketing, segmentation and target emails generate 58% of all the revenue. And marketers using campaigns based on segmentation notices a multifold increase in revenue. Some Email marketing software allows you to address people with their name a personal approach, thus increasing customer engagement.
Action-oriented
Emails that are action-oriented tend to have more subscribers and vice versa. Emails are transactional in nature! When you use Emails to direct traffic to your website, it will ultimately turn into sales. Transactional emails have 8 times more opens and clicks than any other type.
Tips for Successful Email Marketing Campaign
After realizing the importance of Email Marketing in the market, you must probably be serious about devising an Email marketing campaign.
These tips will help you pay close attention to your audience and your content to build, execute, and maintain a continuous effective email marketing campaign.
To boost up your lead engagement and ROI, here are 10 tips for successful Email Marketing Campaigns:
Easy to Subscribe
If the content of the product or service provided by you is liked by the audience, they will obviously expect more. Now that you have created a hunger pool, I believe making it easy to subscribe will further cement your relationship. Post a sign-up form on the homepage of your blog, Facebook, or any other media where you think your fans and customers are active. Social media and Email always work mutually exclusive.
Do not ask for too much information; let it be essential and straightforward rest will follow up eventually.
Easy to Unsubscribe
Similarly, like subscribing, you should make it easy to unsubscribe. Although this is ironic, the other option is that your Email may be pushed into a junk folder or tainted as spam. Easy solution for your subscribers as it is easy for them if unsubscription takes a lot of time
If your emails are flagged spam by users, you may have a low reputation among email providers. Therefore it is always easy to let Customers decide if they aren’t happy. It’s better to unsubscribe than to degrade your reputation.
Give a brief idea about your newsletter.
Hint them what it will be all about; this way, you can upfront state what shall be in your newsletters’ content. Let them know if they will receive weekly updates, sales or tips, or any other thing your company deals with. Give them succinct information on their sign form; this shall be helpful later down the line.
Welcome Email
If someone has subscribed, it means they are ready to engage with you. The act of gratitude can be multifold if you send them a humble welcome message. It will make them understand that their information was received correctly and make them feel special. You can also delight them with some exclusive content or any offer for new subscribers.
Design your newsletter to fit your Brand
Every company will have different tactics to garner their audience’s attention. Therefore, if you have personal or engaging content, a plain text without any element is sufficient. These emails tend to have more personal warmth than corporate heat. If it is about your Brand, try to make it attractive with visuals and images or customize your template, highlighting your company logo and other branding tools.
Pique your Customers Interest
Remember, you are not the only company sending emails to your subscribers. 1000s of them are sending mails every nanosecond to make them feel wanted and special. So if you’re going to make a difference, you should make it more appealing in your customers’ eyes. Try inculcating short para, simple language, bullet points, or highlighting important issues. This will make help in scanning the content more comfortably and faster.
Also, use your Subject line cautiously. It should have coherence and brevity in it. It all depends upon the subject line whether the subscriber will open the mail or ignore it.
When a customer is a king…
If you are sending EMails where none of your customers are interested, you may eventually lose them. Therefore, always send mails what your customers want and not what you want. The segmentation phenomenon applies here; if you segment your target customers according to their interest, you can easily please all your customers. Relevant content will keep your reader engaged, and engaged readers will look forward to your Email.
Plan in advance
Failing to plan is planning to fail” This is a famous quote we are always reminded of. The same applies here; if you plan to send an email or newsletter to your subscriber, make it a habit to send them regularly. Which can only happen when you plan it and note it down in your calendar.
Make a habit of planning, writing, design, and send your emails regularly. Lest you forget, make it a part of your content calendar.
Mobile use
When it comes to being tech, savvy, and convenient, we all skew towards our mobile phones. It is mentioned in a few articles that 81% of people prefer checking emails on their mobile phones. Therefore, with your software buddy’s help, make your Email marketing campaign mobile-friendly. It will control your Email layout, making sure to fit the content within the user’s screen.
Pilot Testing
It is essential to conduct a pilot testing before you send the mail out into the subscriber inbox. The major benefit is that it will allow you to preview your Email across your customers to make sure it will work with every popular device available in the market. Few Service providers also help test the emails to ensure they make it through spam filters and land in the users’ inboxes.
Send emails and only if you have something to say.
Yes, this is too obvious because nobody will tolerate any jokes or any gibberish content as a part of your professionalism. Therefore, make it a commitment to plan in advance about what shall you put forth in the email newsletter. You can always draft a few questions like, What is my goal of this communication? How will this communication serve my role as an email marketing manager? Can we measure the goals to see if we are on the right track? These few questions will help you streamline your email communication.
Once you have followed these tips, your subscribers can easily make an attempt to add your name to the contact list. These tips won’t make you perfect, but they will undoubtedly make you better than most!
Why an Email list is essential?
Though the modern outlook often signifies adaptation to changes in the fittest’s survival, you must change to survive and grow. Hence, businesses tend to employ all sorts of strategies and tactics to sustain themselves in this competitive landscape.
People still tend to doubt the effectiveness of Email marketing campaigns. Email marketing has withstood the test of time. It enables the highest ROI($40 returns on $1 spent), pretty much blowing other digital outreach methods out of water.
So now, it is obvious why Email is still a valuable part of your digital marketing strategy. To start with an Email campaign, you need to have the strong support of your Customer or Email list, which will help you gain more leads and conversions.
It seems easy to get an email address, and gaining loyalty from these lists is another undaunting task. The 2 main conditions which are essential for email list building are:
- Traffic to your website
- A decent Sign-up form
What is an Email List?
An email list is considered a collection of email addresses; it could be people subscribing to your newsletter, blog, website, or any other method.
The more you intend to grow your Email address database, the more leads you can generate. More conversion can be promoted.
Watch out for these practices to create a healthy and wealthy Email List.
Get an Email Service Provider
Always go for the experienced and reputed service provider who can blend well with your business model.
You can choose many more service providers at your disposal according to your finances and customization.
While choosing your Email provider, take into account the following capabilities:
- An array of sign up forms to look put for
- Customization in sign up forms for different target customers in the list
- Monitoring the effectiveness of each sign-up form
- Ending automated messages to the segmented customers in the list
This is the first step to start an email list from scratch.
Keep your list healthy.
Focus on the quality rather than quantity.
It is vital to keep your Email list healthy because inactive email lists will not give you the desired results. Active email lists are the drivers of generating revenue from your email marketing campaign. An active email list is where customers are aware of your company, engaged with you, and subscribed to your newsletter. These lists can result in high conversion and generate accurate marketing results.
Never Buy an Email list.
I repeat, never buy an email list. You may be enticed with extraordinary figures claiming that they have helped many thriving businesses, which is a full proof trap. Why will anyone consider an unknown mail inside their mailbox? It is similar to allowing an unknown person in your house, 90% of the time, it will not be permitted or spam in this case. This will also hamper your reputation in your email providers list because of the flagged spam on your messages. This is no less than a scam that can dupe your campaign before starting it.
Following are the successful Email tactics to use while building a qualitative Email list
- Decent Opt-in form
- A surprise pop up
- Offer an attractive offer
- Interactive Gamification forms
- A targeted landing page instead of the homepage
- Lead magnets
Now that you have learned the tactics of Email marketing, I am sure your Email marketing will be a huge success and deliver unrivaled ROI for your businesses.
Sure short ways to have a successful Email Marketing
Email marketing comes under the Digital marketing platform. The strategy is simple, you have to send mails and develop relationships with the prospects and customers. Effective mail marketing converts prospects into customers and engages your customers with your company for a longer time, resulting in a strong customer base that may develop into recurring customers.
In an era of video, artificial intelligence, Virtual reality, and chatbots, do you think Email is sidelined?
If you think it is, you are missing out on actual metrics. Email marketing is still considered the best possible strategy for your business. It is still going strong, beating out Social media, SEO, and Affiliate marketing. Therefore, a successful campaign can serve you with more benefits. But the problem lies in the hands of email marketers because they don’t know how to do it right.
Here are a few ways which will help you in strategizing an Email Marketing Campaign
Using a professional tone
Remember, your Customer is the King! And you address your king with high regards and brevity.
Customers are always surrounded by advertisements, pitches, or interruptions. They may tend to ignore your mail, which is neither wrong from their point of view. That is why it is essential to make your Email stand out; you should treat them with respect to your language’s tone.
Seeking permission
No marketer can get away with getting an Email list through the wrong methods; you can seek your customer’s permission before asking for an email Id.
I believe just by simple posting, please sign up for regular updates won’t get you your sizable customer addresses.
You can creatively use your copywriting services to lure them with a free subscription for any channel for a month or exciting offers for subscribers.
Source: https://reallygoodemails.com/emails/give-the-gift-youd-like-to-receive-the-new-york-times
Keeping your promise
You succeed by achieving a subscribers list, but you may see your subscribers’ receding numbers when you fail to follow with great content. Therefore consistently following through with great content is necessary. Do not disappoint your subscriber; they have signed up for your newsletter looking forward to more. Therefore live up to their expectations.
You can start with a welcome email to your targeted customers. Here’s a primary welcome email from Starbucks.
Tell them how privileged you feel when they have signed up for your subscriber list.
It is best if you have an autoresponder that will follow up instantly when someone signs up. It should introduce your brand or service and explain in detail what your plans are for the subscribers.
Once this is done, you just have to live up to their expectations.
Analysis
Now that you are familiar with the strategies to follow for your email campaign, we may move on to the next level.
A primary campaign would not give specific results; however, refining the campaign may provide better results, which could be achieved by analytics.
In an email campaign, there are 3 essential analytics points to be looking out for:
Open rate
How many people have opened your Emails is called the Open rate. This also predicts how many people anticipate your next mail to open up. If the opening rate is low, it means you have lots of unengaged customers.
Click through Rate
This shows how many subscribers have clicked on a link provided in your Email messages. If CTR is low, you need to focus on your content, which could take them to the link and earn your Click-through-rate
Unsubscribe rate
This is self-explanatory. It shows you how many of the targeted customers have unsubscribed from your Emails. It is high time when you have a long list of unsubscribers. You have to work on it seriously.
Try to gauge your subscribers’ activity as to when they don’t open their mail or why they unsubscribe. Try to point out the loopholes.
For example, are they unsubscribing because of the autoresponder, by looking at your subject line, wrong placement of your product or service to the wrong customer, or any reason?
Email analytics is not easy as it sometimes seems; you could lose your existing subscriber list with wrong judgments. But analyzing your campaign allows you to manage your target audience’s expectations and provide them the value they expect.
Conclusions
There is no formula for carrying out an Email marketing campaign. It’s all about what works best for you and your organization.
Today Email marketing is delivering huge returns when proper strategies are applied. If you are ignoring email marketing, it’s high time to reevaluate your strategy.
