By Kevin George
Email marketing holds a place in the top 3 most effective channels for driving website visits, leads and sales. Wondering why is it so? With so many new communication channels doing the rounds of the Internet, why is this decade-old technology still relevant? The answer is simple. People make use of this channel more than any other platform. These actionable email marketing tips will help you reach your target audience.
According to Statista, 70% of people check their email often. In fact, 19% of people check emails in real-time notifications i.e as soon as it arrives. So, if you leverage email marketing the right way, it can work wonders for engaging your target audience, thereby giving you an edge over competitors.
Simply put, email marketing doesn’t only bring visitors to your website but also encourages them to read your content while converting leads into loyal customers.
Here is a look at the biggest benefits of email marketing:
- Fosters strong relationship with customers – It helps in building connections with customers through personalized engagement.
- Accelerates brand awareness – It works in keeping your company as well as your product and services on the top of your customer’s mind through regular communication. This, in turn, transforms prospective customers into loyal ones when they are ready to engage with your brand.
- Assists in content promotion – It helps you in sharing content such as blogs and newsletters that are relevant and useful for your prospective customers.
- Works towards the lead generation – It helps in generating leads by enticing customers to provide their personal information in exchange for a product, an asset of information that they would find valuable.
- Helps in product marketing – It helps in seamless and smooth marketing of your products and services by consistently sending impactful emails that provide value to the customer’s inbox, thereby making way for lead nurturing.
These are a few of the many benefits that email marketing can provide you. However, to extract these benefits to the core, you must know how to use email marketing the right way and engage your target audience. Here are some actionable email marketing tips to help you do it.
1. Harness the Power of Storytelling
If you wish to get a direct response to your email marketing strategy, try including a story in your content. Remember, people connect with emotions. So, invoking their emotional quotient through a story can certainly motivate them to connect and engage with your brand.
See how Really Good Emails has incorporated storytelling like a pro.
Since, the rat symbolizes wealth, success, and wisdom for the Chinese, Really Good Emails resorted to storytelling where it puts the focus on intelligence and quick witticism of rats for motivating people to double down their email smarts this Chinese New Year which is also known as the Year of the Rat.
2. Incorporate Strong CTAs
As mentioned already, CTAs motivate people to take a particular action. So, incorporating strong CTAs that make your message clear to your subscribers can definitely increase your sales and boost your revenue. Remember, a good CTA grabs the customer’s attention and prompts them to click and engage with your message. Hence, make sure your CTA has the following critical aspects.
Design
It should be well designed. You can do so by making use of bright and vibrant colors which are in contrast with the rest of your email. In addition, you can also make use of white space to differentiate your CTA from the email copy just the way Nadaam did it.
Clarity
Your CTA should be precise, short and compelling. All you need to do is determine what action you want your customer to take. For instance, CTAs such as “Learn more,” “Redeem the coupon” give a clear message that would encourage users to click.
Placement
You must place your CTA in a way that it appears prominent within your email template. So, start by placing your CTA above the fold. This allows customers to see your CTA without having to scroll through the whole email, thereby eliminating the risk of customers deleting or dropping out of your email without taking an action. Take some inspiration from Wine Enthusiast. See how aptly they have placed their CTA.
3. Say Hello to Welcome Emails
We all know how the first impression is the last impression. Consequently, welcome emails play a critical role in setting up your first brand impression in front of your subscribers. To put it in other words, they set the tone of how your relationship is going to be with your customers. So, make sure you do your best to ace your welcome email strategy. Here are a few actionable email marketing tips that can help you:
- Send it immediately once the user signs up with your brand while your business is still fresh in their brand.
- Make use of personalization and include the first name of your subscriber in the email. Do it the way Discord does.
- Avoid incorporating no-reply emails and allow customers to get in touch with you.
- Let your subscribers know what to expect from your brand. From the kind of content you will send to the frequency of your email, let them know about it in your welcome email. See how Glossier does it like a pro.
4. Segmentation Is the Key
You must segment your email list to target the right audience at the right time. Remember, relevancy is the key to email marketing success. So, once the customer signs up with your brand, start by asking your subscribers to choose their areas of interests along with the kind of content they want to receive. You can do so in different ways. Take a look:
- Ask about their preferences in the welcome email.
- Encourage your subscribers to complete a user profile.
- Tell your existing subscribers to update their preferences.
Apart from the ways mentioned above, you can also segment your list based on past purchases, sales funnel position, demography, purchasing power, browsing history etc.
5. Make Use of Rich and Interactive Media
Research by Martech Advisor shows that interactive email content enhances the click-through rate by 73%. So, it wouldn’t be wrong to say that interactive emails engage with the customers effectively. This tactic allows subscribers to interact with specific elements in your email that interest them. Take a look at this example from TOMS.
This email features a glow in the dark shoes. With the help of interactivity, the readers can scroll the switch given and see how the shoes look like in the dark. How cool is that?
Now, let’s take a look at various elements that can help you create a top-notch interactive email.
Static Images
According to a study, 65% of people grasp information in a better way when it is presented visually. As a result, including static images in your email can convey the message faster to your subscribers, thereby increasing their chances of engaging with your brand. Good eggs does a good job with its static image email.
However, make sure you don’t rely on image-only or image-heavy emails. It can make your email look like spam and slow down its loading time.
GIFs
With 70% of marketers witnessing an increase in the transaction to click rates when using GIFs, it is certainly a great way of increasing the creative visual appeal of your email just the way Bonobos did it.
Videos
Do you know an onboarding email with a video receives an increase in click-through rate by 96%? So, if you want to increase your email metrics, include videos in your email. You can take some cues from this email from Shopify.
Kinetic Emails
Kinetic emails take interactivity to the next level by keeping in control the email template design elements through HTML and CSS. Here’s a perfect kinetic email example from Adidas.
6. Analyze Your Results
The last but not the least is analyzing the performance of your email marketing campaign to see how successful your campaign has been at targeting your customer base. You can do so by keeping a check on your click-through rates, open rates, spam rates, bounce rates and take corrective measures to improve your performance.
Wrap Up
There is no one-size-fits-all approach when it comes to targeting and engaging your customer base. Every customer is different and so are their needs and wants. In short, it is all about experimenting with different strategies and finding out what works the best for your business.
The above-mentioned actionable email marketing tips will surely help you in figuring out what strategy resonates with your brand, thereby assisting you in optimizing your email marketing campaign and making you successful in the long run of business.