Yes, there is a right way to wield this medium. And, several digital marketers are already doing it. So much so that they and other industry experts rank email marketing as the most effective promotional platform. Even more than social media, affiliate marketing, and search engine optimization (SEO).
Why is that, you may reckon? Probably because email marketing returns organizations 38$ on every dollar spent. Pretty high, wouldn’t you say! But, this happens when you carefully draft your email marketing strategy and send valuable communication to your leads to engage them. How? Find out in the next section.
Strategize Your Next Email Marketing Campaign in 4 Simple Ways
Now that you know why solid email marketing – one that is worth your lead’s time, is critical, here’s how you should gear your future campaigns.
1. Begin by segmenting your email list
Don’t have an email list? Build one now! Because if you’re not in possession of warm leads to email, none of this will work. There are several ways to create an email list. You can generate leads through website pop-up forms, market surveys, or better yet, by investing in third-party email lists. Once you’ve built a qualified lead database, it’s time to segment them into relevant categories.
Segmenting your email list automatically makes your email marketing campaigns far more targeted. Here is a simple example. Suppose your company wants to host a product launch for small businesses only. If they don’t have a pre-segmented email list of small business owners out of their entire dump of contacts, they’ll end up spamming all types of leads.
Such a thing could potentially damage your company’s credibility, and entities other than small businesses will stop taking your email communication seriously.
You can segment your email list depending on hundreds of parameters like purchase triggers, likes and dislikes, motivations, age, occupation, and the list goes on.
Remember, the finer your segmentation, the more targeted your email campaign. Creating and segmenting your email list also helps you etch out Ideal Customer Profiles or ICPs. Through these personas, you can identify who your future clients are and prep email content for them.
2. Personalize Your Emails to the Hilt
No, email personalization does not mean sending out a unique email to every email list subscriber. But your subscribers sure should feel unique! Personalizing emails means using your lead’s personal information, their likes and dislikes, and pitching email content that is highly relevant to them.
Furthermore, email personalization doesn’t stop at addressing a lead by their first name over email. Sure, do this as well. But, along with this, you must ideally pitch an offering the lead is most likely looking for. Don’t send an email if you don’t have anything relevant or remotely valuable to say.
For example, suppose a customer services manager is struggling to streamline customer information. No matter how hard they try, a ton of customer data is pouring in each day, and they can’t seem to manage it. Sharing with such leads a marketing email for a robust CRM software highlighting its customer service management features is a win-win for both parties.
For those wondering if email personalization drives results – an Experian study reveals that email personalization delivers 6x higher transaction rates than generic email communication.
3. Design Mobile-Friendly Emails
Even though this strategy does not directly link to improving your promotional email’s content, it contributes to boosting readability, click-through rates, and subsequent conversions.
The screen on your phone is way smaller than a laptop or desktop, which leads to zooming in or out a lot. Your leads may struggle to find Call-to-Action or CTA buttons and lose interest quickly if your emails are not optimized for smartphones.
Simply put, what do you think will happen if your promotional email is not optimized for a friendly interaction over smartphones? The lead will lose interest quickly and delete it or unsubscribe from your list.
So, design mobile-friendly emails to make it easier for prospects to browse through them. Here are 5 ways to create mobile-friendly emails.
- White short subject lines. Ones that can be read in entirety on a smartphone screen.
- Don’t use heavy imagery. Your email should instantly load.
- Keep the text concise. Remember, less is more when sharing emails over mobile phones. Also, don’t write a block of text. Instead, break paras into spaced-out sentences, and use bullets where necessary.
- Place big CTA buttons on top or bottom so they are clearly visible. More importantly, ensure that the landing pages these buttons take a customer to are also optimized for mobile phones.
- Remember that a whopping 1.7 billion people are reading emails on their smartphones, which royally outnumbers the ones checking it on their desktops (0.9 billion). Therefore, designing a mobile-friendly email marketing campaign is non-negotiable.
4. A/B Test Your Subject Lines, Email Layout, and CTAs
These three elements are cardinal to your email marketing strategy. So:
- Write unambiguous yet witty subject lines. Studies say a subject line under 9 words is ideal.
- Don’t design a cluttered layout.
- Utilize white space intelligently.
- Do not roll out emails without adding impactful CTAs. They prompt your reader to take action.
- Finish your email body within 50 to 125 words. Research suggests that email copy within 25 to 50 words offers response rates of 50%.
Further, draft two emails with separate subject lines, body text, and CTAs, and test them with a chunk of leads. This exercise is called A/B testing, and through it, you’ll figure out which email subject line, CTA, and text work better with a particular lead segment.
Over to You
Know that your prospects receive hundreds of emails every day, and a majority of them contain promotional content. But, this shouldn’t mean your email stays on the backburner.
Such a thing won’t happen if you employ the four email marketing strategies listed above. So, segment your email list, pitch prospects what they want, make your emails easy-to-read on different devices, use imagery, and uncluttered layouts, and you’re good to go.
Maintain the sanctity of email marketing, make it more customer-centric, and you shall be rewarded rather quickly!
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by Stella Simon
source: SiteProNews