Email marketing is an invaluable strategy for any serious digital marketer. According to this study, it is the most popular tactic for increasing brand awareness and reaching out to new customers among small businesses.
There are two main reasons for the popularity of this digital marketing strategy. First, it is cheap, making it feasible for SMEs. Secondly, it is one of the few strategies that almost guarantee a positive ROI for your business.
That said, it is impossible to achieve success if your emails are bland and predictable. The increasing popularity of email marketing means that consumers are exposed to various messages. As a result, you must use a unique approach to make your message outstanding and effective. Note that email marketing can also help to drive traffic to your blog.
Here are a few hacks you should implement to ensure that clients read your emails and perform the intended action.
Pre-header Text
Pre-header text, also referred to as preview text, are the words that follow the subject line in your email inbox. A common mistake made by email marketers is failing to delete the ‘view in a web browser’ phrase that usually appears at the beginning of email messages.
Both Gmail and Yahoo support pre-header texts, allowing you to add more beyond the email’s subject. You should capitalize on this feature to encourage the reader to click the email. In the past, you had to use custom code to include preview text in your emails. This is no longer the case, as you can type the text directly.
When crafting the pre-header text, make it as creative as the subject line. The text should be detailed since most browsers show the entire preview text. An excellent tactic of improving open rates is by using a call-to-action statement on the preview text.
Embedded Surveys
Email marketing is a smart method of conducting market research. Emails are useful in studying consumer behavior, as one message can reach millions of users in one instance. The challenge, however, is getting people to click the button that initiates the survey.
If only a few people click on the survey button, it means that the results of your survey will not be as reliable as you want.
You can boost participation in your survey by including it in the body of the email. Embedded surveys are known to increase the response rate in market research by a whopping 125%. You can use them for a product review, gauging client satisfaction, completing user profiles, and so forth.
When creating a survey, keep it short. Including several questions will discourage the user and lower your response rates. Use a variation of check-boxes, radio buttons and open text fields to make the survey form appealing to the user. Remember that monotony is tedious.
Always confirm that your email marketing platform supports embedded surveys. Before sending an email, preview it to see if the survey forms display correctly.
Automate Segmentation and Targeting
As more marketers focus on email marketing to increase ROI, there is an increasing reliance on smarter data collection strategies to maximize profits. According to HubSpot, segmented and targeted emails account for 58% of the revenue generated from email marketing campaigns.
If you use automated tools for targeting and segmentation, you can boost profits significantly. Smart automation tools ensure that your content gets delivered to audiences who find it valuable and are likely to engage with it. For instance, if a subscriber in your mailing list fails to open emails for an extended period, the tool will stop sending emails to that address. On the contrary, if a user frequently visits your website, or opens and responds to your emails, the tool will send automated emails that prompt them to take action. You can easily automate your email campaigns by segmenting and targeting with the help of EasySendy Pro.
Data Privacy
Personalizing emails is crucial, but you should exercise caution with your campaigns, as there is a lot of contentiousness concerning the misuse of personal data. Most jurisdictions around the world are enforcing stringent data protection laws.
The most notable development of recent time is the introduction of the GDPR in the EU. This law requires businesses to obtain consent from individuals before processing such data and using it for activities such as marketing.
According to this survey, 60% of consumers feel uncomfortable when sharing their personal data with brands. Users are mainly concerned with how these brands are using their information. Therefore, you should design your email marketing campaign in a way that benefits your clients without them feeling exploited.
Interactivity
Emails with static content appear too formal and dull. On the other hand, customers are likely to engage with emails that have image carousels, hamburger menus, games, quizzes, and rotating banners, and so on.
You should create kinetic emails, which are emails designed to look and feel like a website. These offer more interactivity and better user experience than regular emails. According to this study, interactive content increases open rates by 73%. As a brand, you want assurances that clients will read your promotional messages, and there is no better way than using interactive emails.
Storytelling Content
Interactive content is an excellent way of increasing user engagement levels. That said, using a storytelling approach is better, as it grabs the attention of the reader and influences their behaviour.
The key to impactful storytelling is to ensure that your story is relevant to the reader. As the story progresses, you can subtly introduce the products or services you intend to sell to the reader. A compelling story connects with the user and significantly boosts the potential ROI of your email marketing campaign.
Conclusion
If you are yet to implement the strategies mentioned above to your email marketing campaign, you risk falling behind to your competitors.
As is the case with other strategies, it is advisable to assess your email marketing campaign regularly. Identify what is working and what is not. After this, find ways to improve what is yielding results and work on the strategies that are not productive.
Email marketing is here to stay. Since technology and consumer behaviors are constantly evolving, new trends will keep on emerging. As a marketer, it is your job to ensure that you keep a close eye on these developments.
Finally, if you have an ecommerce store, check out this guide on how to optimize it like a pro. Optimization will greatly help your email marketing campaign to succeed by ensuring users get the best experience when they land on it.
