Email marketing means sending emails to promote your brand and your offer. Like any other form of marketing, it attempts to get to know the customers and to keep them happy in the long run. Gradually deepening the relationship with people is not an easy task, but it is definitely easier if you make use of email marketing.
How come?
Well, unlike other forms of marketing, most emails are actually welcome by the recipients. Provided that you’re doing email marketing properly, that is. If you send email offers only to your subscribers, not to people picked at random, chances are, you’ll attain a loyal customer base. Emails should keep your customers informed about the promotions to come, but also suggest products/services they may be interested in as well.
If you make use of insights (and you should!), you’ll easily establish which products each customer is interested in simply by observing their browsing history and behavior online.
Thus, email marketing strategies develop as relationships progress, allowing for the incorporation of customers’ desires. In addition to being faster and more efficient than traditional snail mail, email marketing is on top of that cost-effective. It also allows businesses to expand to other locations, seeing as regions have gotten a whole new meaning in the interconnected world of today.
Email Marketing Done Right
In order for email campaigns to be successful in the long run, they should observe a couple of rules, as follows:
· Be mobile-optimized
· Feature a clearly visible call to action
· Lead to a responsive page that loads fast
· Feature a subject line no longer than 30 characters
· Feature a pre-header text between 40 and 50 characters
· Be clear and concise
Next, the emails should be sent only to people interested in your offer, namely – your subscribers. Don’t buy lists or collect email addresses of your social media followers, as that is the fastest way to getting your emails being flagged as spam.
All messages that you send have to observe the following:
1. Deliverability
2. Personalization
3. Segmentation
4. Targeting
5. Mobile Optimization
Choose a trusty email service provider to increase the chances of your emails reaching people’s inboxes (not spam folders).Address people by their name – the info is easily obtainable from the subscription form. As regards segmentation and targeting, their importance can hardly be underlined enough. Defining a target audience is the key to building a stable customer base soon to become loyal. Make use of insights to segment your campaigns (location, gender, age, browsing history, etc.).Last but not least, keep mobile users in mind. An overwhelming percentage of emails are being accessed on mobile devices, which is to say that your emails and your web page must be mobile-optimized.
Why is this important? Because:
· 53% of email messages are accessed on mobile devices
· One third of all CTRs occurs 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
· Most subscriptions are performed on mobile devices
Normally, mobile users will mind slow loading times, image-heavy messages and complicated purchase processes. The action you want your recipients to perform (purchase, subscription, etc.) should be made easy and be accessible in as small a number of clicks as possible. That’s why all emails should feature a call to action (usually in the form of a button) that will lead the recipient directly to a responsive webpage explaining the offer in more detail. Don’t link your emails to unrelated content.
Brainstorming Your Emails
There are so many tips on how to write marketing emails that make it difficult to focus only on the content. That shouldn’t be the case. You should simply observe some general rules, such as the recommended length, form and tone of the message, and go on with your unique offer. Copying others is not a good idea, as you will never establish your brand as unique and trustworthy in this way. Providing quality and clear content always matters.
Starting with the subject line (which must deliver!) and concluding with the signature, your message must deliver on your business promise and leave no questions as to what the offer is, either. Follow up with a thank-you message after each purchase and make certain to always include contact information to each email you send. Encourage communication at all times. If something goes wrong (e.g., a customer has abandoned the shopping cart), ask them straight away for feedback.
Last but not least, always include a call to action and an unsubscribe button to your emails. People no longer interested in your offer should be given an easy way to unsubscribe rather than to be forced to mark your messages as spam.
Unsubscriptions are quite common even in case of big names in the industry. Audiences change over time, after all, so it is important to analyze your email marketing campaigns’ results and adjust your strategy accordingly.
Be flexible, honest and consistent, and your campaigns will always be successful!
