Nowadays, there are three efficient means of advertising:
- Email marketing campaigns
- Google ads
- Facebook ads
Other ways are also there, but these are by far less efficient, so we won’t go into details here.
Out of the three, email marketing is by far the most popular and most efficient, too, if done the proper way. Google and Facebook ads can be expensive, especially if you’re just starting out and they don’t do much good in the long run.
Email marketing, on the other hand, aims at boosting communication and feedback that can both help a brand grow and evolve and keep customers in the know continually. Newsletters, for example, are a great way to announce upcoming offers and special deals, which you can advertise later on via email campaigns.
However, even if email marketing is the most efficient and affordable, that doesn’t mean that it will necessarily be successful. Like everything in life, it requires planning, a good strategy and a continual effort to keep people engaged. In short – it’s marketing!
Let’s see how a brand can create a perfect email marketing campaign that will keep people wanting for more.
Segmentation and Targeting
These two words are so prominent nowadays that it’s a marvel we’re not all sick of them already. Still, the fact that segmentation and targeting are crucial for email campaigns’ success cannot be denied. One does not simply send random offers to random people and grow rich overnight, right?
Every serious brand defines an audience (or more than one, depending on the range of its offers) first. Different audiences call for different approaches and, by extension, a different communication style and personalized offer.
I.e., younger adults may well prefer a casual communication style, while middle-aged people may have different preferences. If your brand sells exclusive products, it will certainly need a more formal communication style to attract the kind of clientele that can afford exclusive products.
Next comes building a mailing list. Use emails obtained from the subscription form but also make an effort to attract more customers. The easiest way to do this is by offering a giveaway or a discount or a coupon in exchange for an email address. You know, just like when you search for something and then the site tells you that you can get a free ebook delivered to your inbox? That’s it.
Creating Urgency and Solving Issues
As a rule, emails that solve current issues of the customers’ and create urgency fare better than the rest. The reason is simple – time-limited offers will expire, and the issue needs to be solved preferably yesterday.
But, how do you know what issues your customers have? Easy-peasy! Use insights to get the answer. For one thing, purchase history will tell you a lot about a customer: the purchase range, their interests and their current needs. Offer a complementary product or a similar one.
As far as creating urgency is concerned, we have seen this way too many times. You know those emails that announce “get it until the stock lasts?” Well, that’s one example. Others are seasonal, annual, back-to-school and similar sales.
Apply SEO Voodoo
Is there anything virtual that can bypass SEO? Not really.
Email marketing campaigns are not so SEO-dependent as your website, but in actual fact, the two are closely linked. How come?
Well, every good email marketing campaign features a call to action (CTA). When the recipient clicks on the link (or button), they will be redirected to a page on your website where to perform the desired action. That means that every new visitor your website gets will increase its traffic and, by extension, enhance your Google ranking.
Optimized web pages increase inbound traffic way better than paid ads – 65.72% compared to 3.82% clicks.
Now, SEO-optimized websites rank considerably better than those that don’t use keywords and backlinks at the very least. If the customer doesn’t like what they’re seeing, they’ll neither perform the action nor browse around your offer.
That’s why SEO is crucial and another factor besides – optimization for mobile devices.
A responsive website is a standard, full stop. More than 50% of people read emails on their mobile devices. If they end up on a mobile-unfriendly webpage, you will have lost them for all eternity. Not good.
In that sense, the emails you send should also be optimized for mobile readers. Use an appropriate font and font size, format the text, don’t use large images or any other elements that “eat” bandwidth, and feature buttons for CTA whenever possible.
Learn From Stats
Stats can show you the direction to take. In spite of the fact they change all the time, they can help you predict trends. For example, mobile usage is predicted to keep stepping up, which means that mobile optimization should become a standard.
Presently, stats tell as that:
- 53% of email messages are being accessed on mobile device
- 75% of Gmail users check incoming messages on mobile devices
- Gmail is the most popular email client
- iPhone is the most popular mobile device
- 70% of mobile phone users re-read their messages at least once
- One-third of all CTRs occurs on mobile devices
- The majority of subscriptions are performed on mobile devices
As you can see, some devices and clients are more popular than others. That means that your messages should be displayed properly on them, which you will check by test sending the message and accessing it on multiple devices.
This is especially important if you’re using emojis, which tend to be displayed differently on different devices and in different browsers (if they’re displayed at all).
Further out, iPhone subject line limit is 41 characters and Gmail’s – 70 characters. It goes without saying that subject lines mustn’t be cut. They are the most important element of your email since they decide its fate. Whether your message will be read, deleted or flagged as spam depends solely on the quality of your subject line.
That means that you should experiment until you can come up with the best subject line formula. Subject lines should be concise and descriptive enough to make the recipient wish to read the rest of the message. They should be personal rather than generic and get straight to the point in as few words as possible. Tricky, isn’t it?
It is, but if you keep in mind the urgency and issue-solving mentioned above, you will target these two aspects. The way in which you’ll do it is solely upon your brand image and communication style, so no shortcuts there.
Final Thoughts
Emails have become a form of art, especially when it comes to marketing campaigns. However, there’s lots of hard work to be performed and more planning still before your email even gets a chance to shine.
Our advice is – do your research, define a strategy, use a posting calendar, check and re-check your mailing list, use a cross-platform approach to increase the visibility of your brand and its offer, and communicate, communicate, communicate.
Marketing is, in its essence, the art of skillful communication where both sides are left satisfied and eagerly awaiting the next “meet-up” – online or otherwise.
