Email marketing offers a fantastic, cost-effective way for businesses to connect with both potential and existing customers. It is a great way to build strong relationships with your audience, keeping them engaged whilst reminding them of your value, products, and services.
Over 304 billion emails are sent and received every single day. This is why strategic email marketing campaigns offer a significant return on investment if they are produced effectively. That’s why we’ve put together some tips for incorporating email into your marketing strategy so you can reap the rewards.
Define your audience
When operating online, customers expect customised offers that provide solutions to their specific problems. Defining your audience allows you to create email campaigns that appeal to your specific customer requirements to propose a solution to whatever problem they may be having. In order to define your target audience, take time to explore their interests, motivations, wants, needs, and pain points to get an in-depth understanding of how to effectively communicate your offerings towards them in a way that offers them value.
If you are just starting to build a customer profile, here are some key questions to consider when learning about your audience:
- Where do they live?
- What is their age?
- How much money do they earn?
- What is their education level?
- What are their challenges?
- Where do they find their content online?
Segment your audience
Whether you have 10, 100, 1000, or 10,000 subscribers chances are they won’t all share exactly the same needs, interests and preferences. Defining your audience is the first step, however, segmenting this audience into smaller segment lists will help you produce more targeted campaigns to smaller groups within your defined audience.
It has been found that segmented campaigns achieve 50% higher click-through rates and higher open rates than campaigns that are sent out to non-segmented audiences. You can segment your audience list based on a variety of factors such as; demographics, requested email frequency, content interest and purchase history.
Set SMART goals and track success metrics
A fundamental part of any marketing campaign is to determine your goals and success metrics, otherwise, how can you know if you are successful? Set SMART (specific, measurable, attainable, realistic and timebound) goals for your email marketing efforts. Setting realistic goals helps to provide clarity, focus and motivation that you need when testing different email marketing strategies. Some examples of SMART email marketing goals include:
- Increase company website sales by 15% within 12 months by running weekly email campaigns
- Boost email subscriber list by 20% within 6 months by offering exclusive product discounts
Regardless of your goals, you must have a way to measure the success of your email campaigns, otherwise, it will be difficult to determine which strategies are most effective. Some popular email marketing KPIs include:
- Clickthrough rate
- Conversion rate
- Bounce rate
- Open rate
Include calls to actions (CTAs)
When reading an email, your recipients should be given the next step to take. This is called a call to action. These should be clear and visible within your email to direct the reader to the net natural action performed. Which CTA you use will depend on the goals you have set for your email campaigns. Examples of effective CTA’s include:
- ‘Shop now’
- ‘Subscribe here’
- ‘Get Started’
- ‘Claim discount’
These CTA give your readers a specific route to take. A well-designed email and CTA will create a sense of urgency, motivating the readers to take immediate action.
Perform A/B testing
A/B testing, also known as split testing, is an effective way of working out which of two campaign options is the most effective in terms of facilitating opens or clicks. A/B testing allows you to set up two variations of one campaign, sending each one out to half of your recipients.
A/B testing allows you to test a variety of variables, such as subject line, CTAs, included audio, video or images. However, remember to only test one variable at a time for each A/B test to accurately depict which variable is more successful than the other.
Stick to your branding
The goal of email marketing is to strengthen your brand and build a list of subscribers who resonate with your brand message and are interested in the products/services you offer. Designing your emails in a way that immediately expresses your brand’s voice and tone, including your company logo, colour scheme and anything else that solidifies your brand is key to separating your emails from the rest of their inbox and keeping your subscribers engaged.
Be clear and concise
If your audience has subscribed to your mailing list, chances are that they have subscribed to others. These emails, along with other emails they will receive on a daily or weekly basis can make for an overwhelming inbox, resulting in many emails being overlooked if they are not to the point. Try and keep your emails as concise as possible to prevent from losing the reader’s attention. Introduce the topic, give them a brief explanation and finally include the CTA.
With a solid email marketing campaign, you can attract more customers, whilst retaining your current customer base. If your emails are missing the mark and not performing how you wish, Volume Marketing can help. Our expert email marketing team can help with building your audience list, design compelling email templates and formulate an email marketing strategy that delivers maximum results.