Marketing

5 Ways to Get More Results from Email Marketing

Successful marketing campaigns don’t just happen on their own. It takes a carefully calculated strategy, technically flawless website, relevant and valuable content that’s optimized for search, and a combination of tactics to get your messages in front of the audience you want to reach.

We are in the middle of a series on the six elements of a successful digital marketing strategy, and in this post we’ll show you why email isn’t dead and shed some light on tactics that can level-up your email marketing game.  

Email tends to get a bad rap; yet half of all Americans said that they check email more than 10 times a day. Furthermore, Hubspot recently released a report revealing that email marketing generates $42 for every $1 spent. That being said, email isn’t something marketers can afford to ignore. So if you’re not seeing results from your email marketing efforts, it may be time to rethink your strategy. 

Here are five things you can do to get more results from email marketing.

1 – Send Personalized Email Messages

Email newsletters can be a useful marketing tool, but if you’re approaching your e-news like an old-school newsletter you’re missing an opportunity. The newsletter approach comes across as impersonal and is typically more about the company or organization sending it than it is about the recipient. As we have said before, the best messages are written in a way that make the customer the hero of the story. Changing your email mindset from newsletters to personalized messages helps you make a connection and show your customers how you can make their lives better. 

When we talk about personalized email messages, we don’t just mean including their name in the greeting. Providing content that is relevant and useful to your subscribers (like we talked about in our last post) builds trust and loyalty between you and your customers. And don’t be lazy with subject lines. If your subject line is always the same, your subscribers will stop opening your emails. Coschedule has some great advice on how to craft the perfect email subject line. 

From a technical perspective, personalized emails between a brand and a customer take into account several data points that help you customize content specifically to that individual. With this data, you can create multiple emails and test them to see which have better open rates. There are many software as a service tools you can use to help you identify and track this data. Please get in touch with us if you need help capturing this information. 

2 – Segment Your Email List

Grouping your email subscribers into sub-lists can help you communicate more personalized messages. There are several ways you can do this. Email lists can be segmented by demographics such as age, location, gender, or life-stage (e.g. empty nester versus college student). B2B companies may find it useful to segment their lists based on type of business, professional title (e.g. CFO), or company size. If you lead a nonprofit you may consider segmenting your email messages into donors and volunteers. 

Some businesses leverage landing pages and lead offers to gather email addresses from specific personas. A landing page is a stand-alone webpage that a visitor “lands” on after clicking some sort of call-to-action (CTA). This could be from paid advertising like social media ads or PPC, or it could be from a targeted email campaign. Lead offers are useful and relevant content that you offer in exchange for a person’s email address. These are typically pdf, video, or audio downloads that can also help you segment your lists. 

If you use a landing page, be sure that the form captures at least one type of unique identifier to help you understand why this person wants to hear from you. Maybe you could try running two different lead offers based on services you provide, e.g. a checklist for bathroom renovations versus three things to look for in a home improvement business. People downloading the offer on what to look for in a home improvement business are likely further along in the buyer’s journey and may not need as much nurturing as the people downloading the checklist to help them do it themselves. 

3 – Create Interactive Emails With Dynamic Design

Not only do consumers expect to receive personalized content from the brands they follow, they also want more interactive content. If you’re creating videos for social media, be sure to include those videos in your email messages as well—you may increase your click-through rate by 300%! Reward loyal customers and subscribers with promotions, discounts, give-aways, and other insider information only available via your email list. An email without some kind of interactive call to action is always a missed opportunity. 

Dynamic design takes all of this a step further by giving you more HTML options to tailor content to the recipient based on known data points. These data points can range from the type of phone used and time of day the email is opened, to transaction history and social influence. 

4 – Make Sure Your Email Design is Mobile Friendly

This should go without saying, but you would be surprised how many businesses are still sending out emails that are not mobile device-friendly. Responsive design doesn’t just apply to websites. As people turn to their phones and tablets more than their laptops and desktop computers, it’s imperative that all of your digital marketing communication vehicles will function properly across multiple platforms and devices. You cannot expect to have a successful digital marketing campaign independent of responsive design. 

5 – Consider Email Automation to Help You Drive Results

Email automation helps you stay on top of electronic communications with visitors to your website by sending customized messages to the right people at the right time so you don’t have to do the work every time. When someone signs up for your email list, automation software with a predefined set of criteria will automatically begin sending emails to the person. You can set it up to send a series of emails over a set course of time with the goal of nurturing the lead toward a specific product or service. These messages contain a variety of content from testimonials and special offers to sneak peaks “behind the curtain.”

In terms of ecommerce there are tools that will trigger an email if someone with an account adds something to their cart but never checks out.

According to Active Campaign, the average open rate for brand emails is approximately 15% while emails automatically triggered by cart abandonment have a near 50% open rate. Clearly email automation is a powerful and effective tool in the digital marketing toolbox. 

Email Marketing is a Powerful and Important Element in Every Digital Marketing Strategy

Whether you’re already making use of lead nurture strategies, or just realizing you need to reformat your e-newsletter to something more customer-focused, we are here to help you make sense of email marketing and every other aspect of digital marketing. Please let us know if you need help or want to understand more about automation tools, we offer process automation services or can suggest one that best fits your needs. We can also help with dynamic design and offer ideas to help you leverage landing pages and lead offers to grow your email list. We are here to help you rock your digital marketing strategy and win more business. Let’s schedule a meeting and get started today!