Email marketing has been around for quite a long time and helps you develop a connection with your audience to promote your brand or increase sales. It is digital marketing which is based on sending emails and developing relationships with potential prospects and customers. Email marketing can effectively sell products, new business awareness, share some news, and update with the latest features and plans. A successful email marketing campaign turns the potential prospects into regular customers for the marketers.
Successful email marketing is a critical element of digital marketing and often overlooked.
DOES EMAIL MARKETING WORK?
Email may seem less exciting on the surface than the other marketing platforms, but you could be seriously missing something out and underestimating the power of email. Email seems a traditional touch but is very much alive in this modern world.
Email marketing is the most effective channel for communicating something about your brand or selling something from your business. National client email report 2015 states that for every $1 spent, email has an average return on investment (ROI) of about $38, which classify 10$ for subscriptions.
Based on the ‘Smart Insights’ 2018 data, email marketing is still ranked as the most successful and potent marketing strategy over the social media platforms, search engine optimization, blogging, website management and other traditional marketing methods.
According to another report of Statista 2017, 4.1 billion people worldwide use email whereas other social media platform, i.e., Facebook owns only 2.8 billion monthly annual users. That is why email marketing is on the rise because people tend to check their email more frequently than other social networks or websites. Even out of total email users, more than half around 58%, check their email first thing in the morning.
People use social media for pleasure, while email has the edge geared more towards business. People will be more receptive towards marketing products from brands they trust in their inbox than on any other platform. However, there are more prospects for business developments of email click-through and email opening rate than other social media platforms.
FIRST IMPRESSION BEING THE LAST IMPRESSION
People are now interrupted by advertisements, displays, announcements, promotions almost everywhere, so sending an email is not so special unless it has the attraction or competitive edge over the other techniques and mails. So, overall stats are relying on the email itself being the most crucial element in e-marketing.
Email is like being a guest at someone’s place to either be a good friend or be the least wanted person. So, while composing an email for marketing purposes, one should be in his best manners possible.
EMAIL MARKETING CAMPAIGN
For successful email marketing, some baseline processes need to be followed for strong credibility and call to action. Following are some general rules for email designing, especially for the marketing purpose:
Target Audience
The most critical part of email marketing is to reach out to the specific target audience and the marketers. You can’t buy the email addresses for email marketing but can build an email list using the obvious signup form on your website for increased subscriptions. When people come to your website and are interested in your business, they will want to stay in and know more about your brand, so offer a newsletter signup form to develop a connection. A small dialog box asking for the email subscription should be added to your website. As the website is critical for SEO, there should be an explicit form for the email list to reduce the visitors. The signup form can also be driven to another platform for email listing.
Know Your Goal
When a user has sign-up, the real struggle is brand marketing by sending the follow-up or greeting mail. That is just like the first impression and crucial for the success of your email marketing efforts. Follow-up mail or the greeting is the autoresponder sequence. One should take advantage of it by compiling the email with the brand introduction and your plan about the new subscriber's email address. It should be concisely and quickly at explaining the brand description or business plan and its prospects.
Strong Content and Personalization
Presentation is everything as it is said. An essential part of the email is the preheader or subject of the email, which needs to be designed with a great thought process because it would help the subscriber's decision to stay or move away. The preheader should be very clearly defined and engaging to the users.
The email content should also be written with well-chosen words and engage with the business or product specification. If you are in business to send the email regularly for the product selling, try to put yourself in the reader's shoes.
Personalization and segmentation are also essential parts of email marketing. Personalized and targeted emails help increase engagement between the marketers, increase email click-through rate, build a trust relationship, and hence generate more significant ROI. Sending separate emails to a diverse group can improve the marketing statistics.
Lastly, sending out an email without concern shows the negative impact to the customers. Counterchecking the email for errors before sending it also helps give a good impression and strengthen the connection.
Use Technology Wisely
Template of email and its appearance also matters, and it should be attractive and pleasing with inserted animations, pictures and information. People do not like dull or wordy documents and hence results in decreased email opening rate. Consider ergonomics while designing the email content and place the buttons at the center for easy accessibility.
The timings of the email need to be adjusted according to the marketer's location. According to the Statista report, most people check their email at the start of the day. Timely-specific response to the marketer can also help in customer satisfaction and improved click-through email rates.
Marketing automation is a convenient tool for rewarding the subscribers with special incentives and streamlining the buyers' connection.
Email marketing wonders have a multitude of metrics that should drive any marketing decision you create. Measure the campaign performance by the indicators like average email click-through rate, average click-to-open rate etc. The performance of email marketing can be assessed by measuring the website traffic.
Interactive Interface
Making your interactive content design is the key to email marketing. According to the Buffer 2013 report, 47% of email users open their email on their phones and hence, interactivity between the web and android or IOS is essential. Consider ergonomics while designing the email content and place the buttons at the center for easy accessibility.
Keeping up to the Expectations
The primary key in email marketing is the follow-up process and keeping-up to the expectation you have provided. Most experts believe that the value degrades after 48 hours, so a quick response is necessary, engaging and informative. Follow through with the promise which is expected of you and line up with the subscribers' engagement offers. Regular follow-up and analytics assessment are essential for successful marketing.
Conclusion
Email marketing is a more assertive marketing approach overall is worth your time and effort. The follow-up and monitoring on the segmentation and analytics, i.e., email click-through rate, email-opening rate and number of subscriptions etc., will help in the successful email marketing with increased ROI. There is no hard and fast rule for email marketing, but what's works best for you and your brand.