Using email to promote products and services and encourage customer loyalty is a popular marketing technique.
It involves sending emails to customers on your list, informing them about new products, discounts, and other services, and educating them about your brand.
It is necessary for any brand to design, build, and optimize its email marketing campaign for the best possible return on investment. This article will explain how email marketing can help your business grow and provide tips for creating a successful campaign.
What is Email Marketing?
Email marketing is a highly effective means of promoting a business’s products or services, and falls within the categories of direct and digital marketing.
This form of marketing involves the use of email to inform customers about new offerings or promotions and can be integrated into broader marketing automation initiatives.
Moreover, it can be leveraged to achieve various strategic objectives, such as generating leads, boosting brand recognition, cultivating customer relationships, and sustaining engagement with clients between purchases, through different categories of marketing emails.
Email: A Brief History
The inaugural electronic mail was transmitted in 1971 by Ray Tomlinson, a computer engineer. Although the message was merely an amalgamation of alphanumeric characters, it marked the dawn of a novel epoch of communication.
In 1978, Gary Thuerk, a marketing manager at Digital Equipment Corp, employed this innovative mode of direct communication to dispatch the first commercial email advertising a new product.
During the ’90s, the Internet became available to the general public for commercial purposes. As a consequence, communication between individuals underwent a drastic transformation, and marketers discovered that email could be an effective mode of advertisement.
The emergence of marketing emails also necessitated regulatory revisions; for instance, the Data Protection Act of the U.K. was modified to mandate an “opt-out” alternative for all marketing emails.
Benefits of Email Marketing
The rising popularity of email as a marketing tool can be attributed, in part, to its ability to prompt users to take action. Emails remain in the inbox until they are opened, discarded, or archived.
Effective email marketing can establish a connection with your target audience while directing them to your blog, social media channels, or other desired locations. By segmenting your email list, you can target specific demographics with messages tailored to their interests.
In addition, email marketing software facilitates A/B testing of subject lines and calls to action to optimize message performance. Here are six advantages listed.
1. Cost Effectiveness
In contrast to traditional marketing campaigns such as print or direct marketing, email marketing campaigns are a more cost-effective approach.
By eliminating expenses associated with photoshoots, location fees, printers, mailing, and placement, email marketing campaigns only require the expertise of a copywriter and graphic artist, if original images are needed. This can be easily accomplished by a single individual on a team.
In addition, email campaigns require minimal production time, as they can be produced within a day, unlike direct or print campaigns that require more time and investment.
By considering the limitations of time and budget for marketers, email marketing campaigns are a more efficient option that can also generate leads and revenue.
2. Better Value Addition
The primary objective of a business is to ensure customer satisfaction and retention by delivering valuable services. Email marketing serves as an excellent platform to build customer loyalty by providing additional value, even when they are not making purchases.
Moreover, since the recipients have subscribed to your email list, you can leverage it to furnish more resources to those who express an interest in your content.
Consistent provision of value to your target audience enhances your brand’s visibility, leading to higher returns on investment.
3. Better Lead Generation
To enhance the number of leads, using email marketing is a feasible approach similar to boosting sales. Inbound techniques leverage email marketing to cultivate leads and optimise conversions.
To illustrate, after accessing a lead magnet from a website, drip emails follow, which ultimately lead you to schedule a demo and gain more knowledge.
Consequently, you transform from a Marketing Qualified Lead to a Sales Qualified Lead, contributing to an increased number of qualified leads for the marketing team to pass on to the sales team.
Email marketing campaigns serve to further validate leads, preventing the sales team from wasting time on unproductive leads.Furthermore, incorporating lead scoring enables monitoring of the leads’ engagement, such as opening emails or clicking on the email links.
4. Higher Traffic Generation
In the realm of content creation, the dissemination of produced content to the target audience is a crucial aspect. Usually, a common method is through electronic mail communication.
The use of email marketing campaigns, in particular, offers various advantages such as directing website traffic and enhancing search engine optimization.
Additionally, it maintains audience engagement with a brand and its website. It is vital to note that a well-crafted email should have a call to action (CTA) that directs the readers to click through to the website.
5. Makes communication with audience more relatable
As a marketing professional, it is imperative to enhance the efficacy of your communication with your target audience. The establishment of an effective dialogue with your audience cultivates loyalty towards your brand.
It is noteworthy that consumers acknowledge quality emails. Reflect on the last marketing email you received from a brand you admire – did it disrupt your workflow or was it a pleasurable experience?
If it’s a brand you appreciate, chances are it was an enjoyable encounter that enabled you to keep abreast of your favourite brand’s updates.
Email marketing facilitates reaching a greater portion of your audience while concurrently enabling seamless communication with brand advocates. Additionally, these emails offer a platform to sustain audience engagement throughout the year, irrespective of the season’s pace.
6. Improved Sales
Though often recognized as an effective marketing tool, email marketing has the potential to significantly boost sales. According to a recent survey, email generates the highest return on investment for 59% of marketers, and segmented campaigns have reportedly led to a 760% increase in revenue.
Such campaigns can showcase products or services, entice customers to complete abandoned purchases, or provide exclusive offers to recipients.
Additionally, the survey revealed that a similar 59% of participants consider marketing emails to influence their buying decisions. Given that email marketing targets a receptive audience.
it presents a prime opportunity to incorporate persuasive messaging that promotes purchases. Furthermore, automating certain aspects of the sales process through email marketing can also drive sales.
Do’s and Don’ts in E-mail marketing
Email marketing remains a favored marketing technique for numerous companies and industries, as it enables them to target sizable audiences and disseminate multiple targeted messages through their content.
As a result, email has become an integral part of people’s lives, with many individuals checking their inboxes at least once a day and some doing so even more frequently.
However, while email marketing can be highly effective, it is not always a straightforward process. Poor email etiquette on the part of content managers may result in messages being ignored and deleted.
Furthermore, even if recipients open an email, they may not engage with the content. Therefore, to optimize your email marketing strategy, it is essential to observe the following six crucial do’s and don’ts of email marketing.
1. Always Quality over Quantity
Some individuals eagerly purchase email lists or pressure their clientele to subscribe to their emails to showcase impressive subscription figures.
Although having a large subscriber list is a desirable objective, such a list is essentially worthless if your audience never engages with your content, either by opening, clicking, or buying.
In the realm of email marketing, less is indeed more. It is advisable to regularly eliminate individuals from your email list who never open your emails, and you should consider reducing the number of emails you send to people who seldom click through to your content.
Why bother messaging those who are not interested in your offerings anyway? By doing so, your overall subscriber list may decrease, but your other metrics should improve.
Fortunately, for marketers who are hesitant to delete subscribers, you can initiate a re-engagement campaign a few months after removing inactive subscribers
As long as they have not actively unsubscribed from your messages, you can email them again to evaluate their level of engagement and draw them back after a short hiatus.
2. Stop sending emails to each and every subscriber
Some novice marketers make the mistake of maintaining an extensive email list, but only sending one generic message to all customers.
This practice can be frustrating for customers, as they may receive irrelevant messages, such as an email encouraging them to repurchase a product they have already bought.
However, even free email formats have features that allow marketers to segment audiences based on customer needs and intents.
For instance, a realtor may have three different target audiences, including potential buyers or sellers, current homeowners looking to sell, and recent homeowners who are satisfied with their purchase.
By creating tailored content for each group, marketers can increase engagement and receive better overall responses from their audience. Sending a single message to all three groups will likely result in low engagement rates and ineffective marketing efforts.
3. Try out various lengths and formats
To avoid monotony and maintain reader interest, it is advisable to experiment with varying email formats in addition to altering message content.
Rather than repeatedly utilising the same format, companies could potentially employ different approaches such as shorter messages, graphics, or teasers to determine which format resonates most effectively with target audiences.
By employing this approach, one may uncover a fresh and compelling format which resonates with the intended audience.
4. Never bomb your email list all at once
The practice of email scheduling enables one to establish varying email delivery times without being restricted to a physical office. When dealing with clients located across different time zones, it is important to stagger the email blasts accordingly.
The preferred time to send an email may not coincide with the optimal time for the clients, as exemplified by the potential disconnect between a New York-based sender and clients who prefer receiving emails at 7 a.m.
This advice may not be universally applicable, but it underscores the significance of timing. It is advisable to experiment with sending emails at different times and employing analytical tools to determine the peak opening times for email messages.
One should avoid sending important messages during peak traffic periods to avoid getting lost in the flurry of incoming emails.
5. Try out A/B testing for subject lines
Composing subject lines may appear simple, yet they have a significant impact on the success of your email communication. The effectiveness of your email’s body and website links rely heavily on the subject line’s ability to engage and inform the recipient.
While specific subject line best practices differ across industries and businesses, a common approach is to limit the subject line to two or three words or no more than 35 characters.
Lengthy subject lines may truncate and consequently prevent the recipient from viewing your message. It is essential to experiment with different subject line styles, such as utilising leading words or questions to increase click-through rates, or adding emojis and exclamation points consistent with your brand.
By measuring audience data and open rates, you can evaluate the effectiveness of your subject line and make necessary adjustments.
6. Never use Flash, Java script or Video in your email body
While it may be tempting to use intricate coding, dynamic graphics, and video in your email marketing campaign to capture your audience’s attention, the likelihood of all elements loading quickly and correctly on various devices and email providers is low.
Your audience may only see a grey box instead of the intended content. To mitigate this risk, it is advisable to keep your email content simple and uncluttered.
If you have a video that you want to share, link to it on your website instead of embedding it in the email. This approach can increase click-through rates and prevent your audience from receiving a bulky email.
Successful email marketing campaigns depend on content managers understanding their audience’s preferences and behaviours. Therefore, it is important to adjust your formats to match those of your audience.
By following the above recommendations, you can create engaging digital content that provides the best possible experience for your audience.
Success Rate of email marketing campaign
Email Open Rate
Upon analysing various surveys across industries, we determined that the typical open rate for emails is 21.33%. Measuring
the percentage of recipients who open your emails is an effective method to evaluate the success of your email approach. A higher open rate indicates that your audience finds your subject lines appealing.
A low open rate commonly suggests one of the following scenarios:
- An irrelevant or uninteresting subject line
- A diverse range of subscribers in your audience
- An inadequate frequency of sent campaigns
Click Through Rate
In email marketing, the click-through rate (CTR) serves as a crucial benchmark for gauging the success of a campaign.
The significance of this metric lies in the fact that merely having a high number of registered email users or open rates does not matter if recipients do not click on the content.
Generally, the ideal CTR for an email marketing campaign is approximately 3%, although it may vary between 2-5% depending on the industry.
Notably, the restaurant sector exhibits the lowest average CTR of 1.34%, while the hobbies industry has the highest with 5.1%.
A CTR is calculated by assessing the number of clicks on links, images, or calls-to-action in the email, indicating recipient enthusiasm or interest. Total clicks are divided by the number of emails delivered in the campaign to arrive at the CTR.
To assess the effectiveness of your emails, it is recommended to evaluate the click rates. This metric represents the proportion of delivered emails that received at least one click.
This parameter indicates the degree of relevance perceived by your audience and their willingness to engage with the content provided in the email.
Conclusion
Generating email campaigns that offer value is the optimal approach to establish a connection with your target audience.
Highlighting cost savings, fresh products, new services, and product benefits in your emails reinforces the notion that they possess value for the recipient, encouraging them to read on.
Email marketing is an excellent strategy for ensuring your business remains in the forefront of customers’ and prospects’ minds, making it less likely for them to consider competitors.
Effectively executed email campaigns can exhibit significant success and drive customers to act, a primary objective for businesses when crafting their marketing strategie.