We’re sure you’re tired of hearing/reading that email marketing is the cheapest form of advertising. Everyone knows that, but what they don’t know is that the statement comes with a couple of prerequisites.
It’s a no-brainer that everyone can use email services for free and that larger audiences can be accessed in this way. However, many new marketers make the mistake of confusing every email user in the target areas as a potential customer.
This is a huge no-go! Email marketing may be popular, cost-efficient and available to everyone, but that doesn’t mean it shouldn’t follow the general marketing rules.
Building an Email List
First of all, in order for an email marketing campaign to be successful, it should be sent only to the people likely to be interested in the offer. To build an email list, you may use one of the following methods:
1. Collect subscribers’ email addresses
2. Collect email addresses via giveaways
3. Collect email addresses of your social media followers
Subscription forms are the most obvious starting point for collecting email addresses. It is only logical to expect that a subscriber will be interested in your offer – otherwise they wouldn’t have subscribed in the first place.
To attract subscribers, you need to clearly communicate your offer and then don’t fail on that promise. It is always recommended to explain what type of content subscribers can expect to receive to avoid uninterested parties subscribing (these are most likely to flag your messages as spam).
Giveaways are a great way to get more people interested in your brand. Offer an incentive in exchange for contestants’ email addresses. The reward doesn’t have to be expensive or “never seen before”. A simple e-book may do the trick, if it is of high quality and related to the niche.
Collecting email addresses from your social media followers is a tricky method and may backfire, but some marketers argue that people who don’t want to share their email addresses would simply have made them private in the first place. Whatever your choice, keep in mind that email addresses collected in this way have 50:50 percent of turning their owners into your brand’s customers.
Send Only Personalized Emails
The trick to every successful marketing strategy is to make people feel special. In terms of online marketing, that translates into letting them know that they aren’t simply an email on your list.
For starters, use subscription forms to collect people’s names. Always address your customers by their names.
Next on, send a welcome message to every new subscriber. Nothing shows better that you care than immediately letting the subscribers know that their action has been noticed.
In a similar fashion, you should also always send a thank you message to every customer after they have performed the desired action.
The latter two types of messages are often overlooked, even by large brands, so they are your golden chance to stand out.
Deliverability, Targeting and Segmentation
Even the most creative of email marketing campaigns won’t render the desired results if technicalities aren’t being observed properly.
For starters, you will want to choose a trusted email service provider to ensure that the messages you send reach recipients’ inboxes, rather than their spam folders.
Further out, you should test-send your messages before sending it to all your subscribers. The messages should be optimized for mobile devices and display properly in all browsers and on all devices. Pay particular attention to emojis – they tend to be displayed improperly depending on the device and OS. Finally, the subject lines should be displayed IN FULL. Make sure to double-check them on mobile devices.
Optimizing emails for mobile devices is a tremendously important point. In fact, it wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that you should count on the majority of your subscribers reading your offer on their mobile devices. Stats speak louder than words:
· 53% of email messages are accessed on mobile devices
· 23% of people who open emails on mobile phones will them again at least once
· 75% of Gmail users check incoming messages on mobile devices
· 70% of mobile phone users re-read their messages at least once
· One-third of all CTRs occurs on mobile devices
· Over half of overall subscriptions are performed on mobile devices
Finally, targeting and segmentation are crucial for the success of an email marketing campaign. Use insights to determine the offers to be set to different groups of your customers and mind the time zones, especially if you run an international brand.
The best times to send emails are when people are most likely to see them. Never send emails in the middle of the night, as that increases the chances of them being deleted without even being opened, or being flagged as spam.
All in all, the best email marketing strategies rely on in-depth research, personalization and customers’ feedback. This is just the beginning, though. It is important to track the progress of the campaigns and to continually ask customers for their opinion. This is easiest performed via social media, where the majority of queries are being posted.