Source: marketinglogiq.com
Whenever you want to communicate something about your brand or sell your products & services, email marketing is one of the most cost-effective ways to do so. As email gives a direct line of communication with your audience, it has become one of the best ways to promote all other marketing strategies. In terms of ROI and Sales also, email marketing campaigns help generate more sales than other digital channels as shown in the following figure.
Source: lyfemarketing.com
For every $1 you spend on email marketing, you can able to generate $40 in return. To get the most out of your email marketing strategies, you have to go beyond just sending several emails to your list. For that, you have to take the right steps to make your email marketing campaigns stand out from the rest.
To maximize the potential of email marketing for your business, here we are providing ten essential tips to run a successful email campaign.
Know Your Target Audience
To be successful with email marketing, it is crucial to know about your target audience along with their interests and challenges. This also suggests that sending the same email content to the entire mailing list is not successful as multiple audiences have different interests. Therefore, make sure that you have ample data on your target audience and how best you can reach them.
The goal of email marketing is to nurture and build relationships with your audience based on the information they would like to have from your company. In recent researches, it was found that emails relevant to the recipient tend to drive 18 times more revenue when compared to general emails. Hence, implementing a targeted approach can definitely make a difference.
Segmentation
As a marketer, you should understand that all the customers are not interested in all of your marketing emails. Hence, you must segment your email list based on the audience purchase history, location and interests. This makes segmentation as one of the essential elements that help increase the response rate for your email campaigns. Segmentation is all about dividing your email list into smaller, more targeted sub-groups. Here, in this picture, you can see – on what basis you can segment your customers’ database.
Source: Lyfemarketing.com
Segmenting your customer’s list will let you target your consumers based on their personal preferences. Also, it enables you to promote your products or services in a personalized manner.
Here are some of the positive outcomes you can expect from customer database segmentation:
Source: Lyris, Inc.
Customer database segmentation allows your marketing teams to send the right email to the right person at the right time. Furthermore, it allows your emails to stay relevant and gives you a chance to understand the needs of your customers. So, you can offer specific products that are actually needed by your customers.
Personalization
Your email marketing strategies work well when it comes to creating a unique experience for your prospects. By leveraging the power of personalization, you can make your customers feel exclusive or unique which ultimately leads to sales conversion. According to the email marketing company “Campaign Monitor”, emails with a personalized subject line are 26 per cent more likely to be opened than emails with a generic, non-personalized subject line. Here, you can view some interesting facts about personalization in the following figure.
Source: OptinMonster
So if you have access to your email recipient’s first name, it makes sense to use it in both the subject line and in the body of the email. To give a personalized touch, you can also go about asking simple and appropriate questions in the email. As a b2b marketer, you should recognize the significance of adding a personal touch to your email marketing as it has a direct impact on the number of conversions you get.
A/B Testing
Running an A/B test is one of the best email marketing practices as it generates good results. The only strategy that eliminates guesswork from your email marketing is A/B testing and gives you a road map of what modifications you need to make. Here, you can see the significance of A/B testing in the following image.
Source: LyfeMarketing.com
A/B split testing is nothing more than a way of splitting your email audience into different segments or classes and figuring out which version of your email offers the best conversion performance. By testing out different versions of your emails, you’ll be able to optimize your overall campaign and get better results.
Provide a Dedicated Landing Page for Your Campaign
Most of the time your subscribers visit your homepage, product page or specific landing page through email. To get good conversions and the best return on your investment, it is always recommended to create a dedicated landing page and direct your email traffic to it. A dedicated landing page is much more relevant and targeted, which makes your email campaign really effective.
Keep Your Layout Simple & Short
Don’t overload your email layout with flashy graphics, huge fonts and other elements. It is always crucial to keep your email layout clean and simple. Maintain your email layout look like a professional and easy to navigate as complex email layouts will turn your recipients off and enables them to throw off your email campaign or newsletter right into the trash file. To increase your chances of getting responses from customers, you have to stay concise and clear.
Hence, it is important to keep your content shortly and clearly so that they can easily take action. To keep your messages simple & short, it can be smart to use bullet points. Also, be sure to stick to a clear call-to-action (CTA) as it conveys the information in a way that makes your email recipients want to click through to your website to learn more.
Use Scannable Content
When it comes to rolling out effective email marketing campaigns, your email structure needs to have scannable content. In other words, you need to keep your email layout with short paragraphs, effective subheadings along with any mentionable facts. That’s how you can get the undivided attention of your prospects and increase your chances of converting them through your email campaigns. Here, in this image – you can see how scannable content enhances readability while comparing with paragraph blocks.
Source: Lyfemarketing.com
When compared to paragraph blocks, scannable content is more readable which can indirectly improve your reader’s experience and leads to better sales in the longer run. For this, you can use several email service providers such as MailChimp, AWeber, ConstantContact, GetResponse and more. Also, you can consider the checking of HTML version of your email before sending them out.
Use Mobile-Responsive Designs
If your emails are not optimized for mobile devices, it’s possible that your message won’t get the attention it deserves. The most important factor for effective mobile email marketing is mobile-friendly design. In fact, according to Blue Hornet, 80 per cent of users would delete an email if it does not look good on their mobile devices.
Clean Your Email Lists
You need to clean the bad email addresses in your list as it will impact your credibility and your overall deliverability to get good results from email marketing. Most of the marketers only concentrate on expanding their email list while ignoring the reach of their email campaigns.
Hence, don’t invest all your time and resources in trying to get more individuals on your list, instead of that, steer some of your resources to hit your subscribers’ inboxes.
Pay Attention to Your Metrics
One of the major keys to improving the effectiveness of your email marketing campaigns is to analyze the results of your each email marketing campaign. Here are some of the most useful metrics you need to monitor for email marketing performance:
Source: V12data.com
To optimize your email campaigns for success, monitoring open rates, click-through, conversions, and other significant variables help you to derive a clear picture on what needs to be corrected, changed, and/or eliminated within your email marketing strategies.
Final Thoughts
Email marketing is a process which takes time to get successful outcomes, but it is worth spending time and working on. Not only it is a perfect way to connect and keep your clients updated, but statistics show that email marketing provides marketers with the highest ROI.
As a marketer, if you are trying to make most out of your email marketing campaigns, don’t forget to pay attention to the above-mentioned email marketing tips!
