Considering the number of emails you ignore, delete, or mark as spam it is understandable if you think that email marketing is dead. While other social media marketing platforms, like Facebook and Instagram, have had tremendous growth in recent years it is also true that for every $1 you spend on email marketing, you can expect an average return of $36. That’s a higher return than you can expect from any other form of marketing — digital or otherwise.
There are more than 4.3 billion Internet users in the world and nearly 80% of them have social media accounts. Actually, an average of 5.5 social media accounts (and even higher among Millennials). That’s huge! And, nearly all of them have active email accounts. Regardless of the size of your business, you can benefit from email marketing.
Here’s an interesting statistic: 60% of consumers say they’ve made a purchase as a result of a marketing email they received. Contrast that with the 12.5% of consumers who say they’d consider using the ‘buy’ button on social media, and it’s not much of a contest.
Clearly, the gold standard of marketing still involves getting people to sign up for your email list.
And, while Social media marketing is an important tool for growing your business it doesn’t touch email marketing.
All this being said there is still the question of how to create engaging emails that your clients and prospects will want to read. Let’s take a deeper dive into some of the factors you need to consider to create effective email marketing campaigns.
Provide Value
From your personal experience, you know that people do not want to go through hundreds of emails. This is why you should focus on the value your email delivers to prospects and clients over quantity. Send emails that add value to your readers’ lives and create copy that people want to read.
This implies a few things:
- Your Subject Line is what drives people to open your email. Keep it short and snappy so that it grabs their attention.
- You need to create a message that resonates with the reader so that they are willing to engage with it.
- Make sure to include an image or video right at the top to grab the reader’s attention.
This all means that it is vital to understand what your readers and prospects are searching for before creating the copy. The best way to do this is by performing customer research to understand your clients and prospects better.
Decide on the type of emails
Depending on your type of business, and the type of product, you will need to decide on the type of emails you will be sending. For instance, will you be sending a monthly newsletter or promotional messages? You will also need to decide on how frequently you will be sending the emails. This is where the “Goldilocks Effect” comes into play. If you send emails too frequently they will eventually be ignored. Not often enough and they won’t get noticed. You’re looking for the sweet spot, so think this through and do your research wisely.
Creating an Engaging Experience
According to 80 percent of professionals, email marketing drives customer acquisition and retention. In simple terms, that means more customers coming to you for their needs, and staying with you when needs arise again.
It is likely that if you plan on using email marketing, you have a call to action on your website and social media posts. Something like, “Subscribe to our Weekly Newsletter”. However, have you taken the time to think about the type of experience your subscribers get when they click on your call to action?
Here’re a few tips for creating engaging emails:
- Use dynamic content. Yes, language matters!
- Use images and animated GIFs
- When you can put live content into action with video
- Utilize automation. Simple automation, like sending an automatic welcome email when someone subscribes to your list, or an email reminder to finish shopping and check out to customers who abandoned their digital shopping carts helps you find and keep more customers.
- Leverage external email analytics tools.
Focus on Customer Relations
Optimizing and personalizing your email marketing campaigns should be a priority.
Personalizing allows your business to engage with customers in a far more meaningful way.
A straightforward way to drive this point home is instead of an email starting with hey, or hello, you can choose to start with the reader’s name.
Set Up Your Mailing List
Email marketing requires you to have email contacts of potential leads. But how do you create a mailing list? One way is to create a signup form and place it on your social media and your website. One thing to note here is that you should always ensure that customers know what they are signing up for. You could also offer an incentive, like a free download, to prompt them to provide their email.
The signup form should not just be on your website’s homepage. You should include this in the blog, as well as on other pages of your site. The goal here is to entice readers on different web pages to provide their contact emails. The more the readers see the signup form, the more likely it is for them to sign up.
A/B testing
We cannot overemphasize the importance of A/B testing when it comes to email marketing campaigns. Through analyzing previous customer data, you will know precisely what your customers respond to and can use this information in your next campaign.
Some of the information that you can find out is:
- Does the subject line affect your email response?
- What happens when you increase the number of images?
- What time of the day do you get the most emails?
- Where do people read the majority of your emails – Desktop, Pads, or Mobile?
With A/B testing, you may find that your hypothesis fails. However, you should never look at it this way. Instead, view this as an opportunity to learn what you shouldn’t do with your next email campaign.
Speaking of mobile phones
Over 70% of people would rather read their emails via their mobile apps than on the desktop.
It makes sense to ensure that your email marketing campaigns are optimized for mobile. In 2021, 42% of email was opened on a mobile device, 39.8% of email is opened on web-based apps, and 18.2% of email is opened on a desktop app.
Optimizing your emails for mobile is one of the most critical actions that you can do when it comes to email marketing. The reason here is that now most people use their phones to read their emails and to shop. Today’s customers have a short attention span and will quickly move to the following email if yours isn’t optimized for mobile.
Remember, people now decide whether or not to proceed with a purchase within seconds.
This means that you can quickly lose a customer if they don’t like what they see in their emails. It makes sense, therefore, to optimize your emails for mobile phones.
A Final Word
While it’s easy to think that email marketing is dead, the truth is that it is still alive and well in 2022… If you use it right! Done the right way email marketing will help improve your company’s bottom line. All you need is to learn the tricks that can help recipients view your email as an important email and want to engage with it.
At Obsessed With Success, we are here to teach you how to create engaging email campaigns or we can create and run email campaigns for you. Let’s connect today and get the ball rolling.
