All of us find our inboxes flooded with emails every day. Some of these automated emails end up in our trash without even reading them. Either we delete or unsubscribe them altogether. However, email is an integral part of marketing, and a well-constructed email marketing campaign can generate leads and lead to higher revenue.
Email marketing is considered one of the most powerful tools for marketing in today’s world. It creates awareness around your brand, enhances your sale, and subsequently helps grow your business.
It is one of the most advanced digital marketing strategies to convert leads into customers.
With the help of the guide given below, you will be able to:
- Successfully leverage your emails to the targeted groups
- Optimize emails by assessing click-through rate and open rate
- Turn your prospects into potential customers
Why consider Email Marketing?
Since time immemorial, emails have been one of the longest-standing modes of communication. Even if it is to forward, reply, click-through something in the email, sign up, subscribe, or delete- email has always been inadvertently an essential mode of communication. A strong and effective email marketing strategy helps you connect with your audience in the best possible way. As long as you give customers something they enjoy reading, it will keep them engaged. There is no doubt that emails help you reach your targeted customers in real-time as they produce higher conversion rates. These days, many email marketing tools allow you to track click-through rate, open rate, unsubscribe rate, and bounce rates. This, in a way, enables you to understand if your strategy is effectively working or if you need to change it.
Advantages of Email Marketing
There are several reasons you should make email marketing one of your top priorities, but here are the top three:
- Email marketing is considered to be the best communication channel. Well, it is believed that more than 90% of users check their emails every day. That does not hold for any other type of channel of communication.
- You can reach your targeted audience at a minimum price. Compared to other modes of communication, email marketing is relatively cheaper and helps you connect with your audience faster.
- Email also converts better than other modes of communication. Do you know that people spend 138% times more via email marketing than those who don’t receive any email offers? Email marketing has a return on investment of 3800%. If you think that social media converts are better, then it’s time to bust that myth. The average order value of an email is at least five times higher than that of social media.
Now, let’s dive into the guide to successful email marketing. The following are the typical and primary steps involved:
- A well-defined Email List
The most crucial step for email marketing is to create a complete list. Before you start sending out emails to people, you need to have a list handy. So, start building your list of people to whom you want to send the emails. You can try offering an incentive to gather an email address. This can be done either by hosting a giveaway, a contest alert, a checklist, or any other exciting way that convinces people to share their email addresses with you. This would require a solid call to action and a meaningful, engaging copy.
- Content is the key
It is essential to deliver what customers want. A successful email campaign consists of a strong call to action, and it is necessary to follow up. It would be best if you tried sending out an introduction email. For example, Spotify sends out an email to confirm your subscription and tells you what’s in store for you. The initial follow-up email should consist of an introduction about yourself, and it should be written in quite a detailed manner. However, refrain from pitching right away.
- Analytics
Once you have understood the basics of email marketing, it is now crucial to pay attention to analytics to build a successful campaign. The essential types of analytics that can be tracked are click-through rate, open rate, and subscriptions. Click-through rate means how many people clicked on the link provided in the email. Open rate depicts how many people have opened your emails. This usually is a sign of how good a connection you have developed with your readers. A low open rate is a signal of poor engagement. Lastly, your unsubscribe rate indicates how many people clicked on the unsubscribe button at the end of the mail.
- Email segmentation
This is another step in building successful email marketing. It is more or less the practice of splitting up your entire list into specific targeted groups. You can divide your list based on the following metrics:
- Demographics (age, location, sex)
- Interests (marketing, sales)
- Subscribers, and so on.
Email marketing: campaigns that changed the revenue graphs
Several businesses and organizations have benefitted from email marketing and increased their ROIs. Given below are some examples to prove this.
Argos
Argos is a US Based toys and home retailer. They implemented a personalised cart abandonment email. They retargeted customers who abandoned the cart with personalised follow up emails. This follow-up email offered every customer six alternatives that the customer might be interested in. This was a huge success and generated significant revenue for them.
Dell
Visual content in the form of gifs/videos has always been a highlighting feature for emails. Dell increased their revenue by 109% by using a gif email marketing campaign.
How to create an email marketing campaign
1. Understand your targeted group
2. Create a strategy for the campaign
3. Create a well-defined structure for the emails
4. Spend some time on the subject line
5. Include personalized messages and visual imagery
6. Add a strong call to action.
Mistakes To Avoid in Email Marketing
It is essential to engage with your customers who have hit the subscription button. Your welcome email is critical and should be meticulously drafted depending on the tone of your brand. You can welcome the reader by introducing yourself and explaining to them what is in it for them.
Secondly, not having a clear call to action is a mistake you should avoid. Without a strong CTA, you are leaving your audience to figure out the objective of the mail. So it is imperative to have a clear vision of the outcome of the mail in your mind.
Thirdly, refrain from boasting about yourself and instead focus on them. Tell your readers about the experience or benefit they will get from your product/service.
Conclusion
Email marketing is, therefore, one of the best cost-effective ways to communicate with your customers. If planned and structured appropriately, it can boost your business to a great extent. You can benefit from email marketing if you build relationships with personalized engagement, share relevant content, promote your products or services and boost brand awareness.
