EMAIL MARKETING – TRANSFORMING IDEAS INTO ACTION
Email marketing is said to be one of the strongest marketing channels. It is claimed to be an incredibly effective marketing tactic. And it can be, if backed by an effective email marketing strategy.
An email marketing strategy is part of your overall marketing strategy and business plan. It helps you market your products and services with the use of the email channel with the best chances for making a profit and reaching your goals.
What makes email marketing so effective?
Email marketing has some significant advantages compared to most other marketing methods:
High Reach – When you get people to join your email list (aka “subscribe to updates” or “opt in”), you can actually reach them. Sure, not everyone opens your emails, but the numbers are usually still in favor of email compared to other communication methods.
Great flexibility – Email marketing can work for pretty much any kind of business. It doesn’t matter whether you sell houses, apparels, or consulting, you can get lots of sales as long as you use the right email marketing strategy in the right place.
Full control - Most other marketing tactics are at the mercy of policy changes (e.g., Google and AdWords) and other decisions beyond your control. Sure, some laws affect how you can use email marketing, but laws rarely change with short notice and they even more infrequently radically change what you can do.
Strategy for Effective email marketing
Personalize your email without using the recipient’s name - The practice of personalized email greetings is not nearly as effective as it may seem. In fact, research by Temple’s Fox School of Business suggests that this particular kind of personalization could be harmful. Use personalization as an email strategy, do so in a meaningful way. It takes little knowledge or relationship to place someone’s name in your greeting. It shows far greater care to send personalized email that is specific to a recipient’s needs and history. Sending email that acknowledges a subscriber’s individuality (e.g., purchase history or demographic) would be a better strategy. (The study) also found that product personalization, in which customers are directed to products that their past purchasing patterns suggest they will like, triggered positive responses in 98 percent of customers.
The long and short of subject lines - According to research by Adestra, which tracked over 900 million emails for its report subject lines 70 characters and up tested to be most beneficial to engage readers in clicking through to the content, and subject lines 49 characters and below tested well with open rate. So the question becomes: Do you want to boost clicks (response) or opens (awareness)? Go long for click-throughs, keep it short for opens. Either way, a helpful email strategy is to squeeze out more words or cut back just a bit to avoid that 60 to 70 character’s dead zone.
Mobile Friendly Email templates
According to numbers provided by email marketing firm Litmus, Mobile opens accounts for 47 percent of all email opens. Design responsively to ensure that your email looks great no matter where it’s read. Here are some quick mobile design tips:
Convert your email to a one column template for an easy mobile fix.
Bump up the font size for improved readability on smart phones.
Follow the iOS guideline of buttons at least 44 pixels wide by 44 pixels tall.
Make the call-to-action obvious and easy to tap. Above the fold is preferable.
Consider ergonomics. Many users tap and scroll with their thumb, so keep important tappable elements in the middle of the screen.
Set your business goals and ambitions with regards to email marketing and keep doing experiments. Very likely, if you are doing your own experiments, you might actually have found different results. It is important to analyze results, have learnings and execute it in the next strategy.
Source: blog.bufferapp.com
