The Essential Steps to Optimising Your Email Marketing Campaigns in 2019
In the massive ocean of competition that is email marketing, it’s hard to see significant growth using run of the mill tactics. You need to make sure you stand out and connect with your audience with a personalised approach. Certain practices can help you be a cut above the rest, and that’s exactly what we’ll be talking about today.
Few online marketing methods can really hold a candle to email marketing. It’s been used for a long time now, but it still holds major relevance in this field, and it yields a lot of perks compared to other well known marketing methods.
But sending emails to as many people as possible without any thought put into them will get you nowhere. As always, knowledge is power — knowing your audience goes a very long way to making use of email marketing.
If you’re experiencing serious problems with your click rates, odds are you’re missing some crucial steps in email optimisation. This article will cover the email marketing essentials you need to implement in 2019.
Don’t Take Email Lists From Third-Party Sources
Acquiring a reliable email list is hard work and it takes time to build it. Paying for an extensive list or otherwise getting your hands on it may sound like a quick and easy solution to this problem, but it will ultimately do you more harm than good.
More often than not, these third-party lists don’t contain the audience best suited to what your brand is about. And by continually sending emails to people who don’t want anything from you, all you’re really sending is a negative image as an annoying, spammy brand.
As tempting as it may sound to expand your email reach significantly, doing it this way brings you more trouble than it’s worth. A much better, although slower, plan would be to nurture a small yet active subscriber base. These are people who actually want to hear from you. Let this base grow organically.
Once you’ve earned a considerable audience, you need to interact with them in a meaningful way. And that’s where segmentation comes in.
Segmentation
It’s important to realize that your subscribers aren’t just a statistic — they’re real people with different interests. More importantly, they’re not all the same in regards to what they need and how they interact with your brand.
That’s why segmentation is so important. It helps you give your subscribers what they expect from you, rather than bother them with unnecessary offers and notifications.
Their appreciation shines through the numbers — segmented email plans double click-through rates!
There are many ways to go about segmentation. You can divide subscribers based on the level of their activity, location, age, gender, purchase history — any way that fits your business needs. The only thing you need to do is to find out as much information as you can so that you could engage subscribers properly.
Grouping customers in categories lets you take a more personalised approach to the emails you send. However, you ought to go a step further with personalisation.
Personalisation
Personalisation is crucial in assuring your subscribers that you don’t see them only as a potential source of income. In return, they’re more likely to interact with your brand. Personalised emails boost sales by about 20% on average.
Making your emails more personalised is a somewhat broad topic, but here are some must-know points you can benefit from:
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Personalise the “from” name. This one’s pretty simple. You can make a more personal experience by having the “from” name be that of your account managers, for instance.
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Spice up your subject line. Always include the receiver’s name because it increases open rates by 26%. Another smart move would be to put emojis in the subject line to make it pop.
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Add visuals. Images, gifs, and videos are a great way to grab your audience’s attention. Just be sure that the visuals scale properly on all devices, and add metadata that describe them.
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Recommend products. Based on a customer’s browsing or purchasing history, you could try to sell something they’re interested in. This would also show that you care about providing a service tailored specifically to them, rather than shoving them what you intend to sell in general.
These tips will guarantee better engagement, but it’s all for naught if they can’t access your email as it was intended in the first place. So let’s address that problem with mobile optimisation.
Create Mobile-Friendly Emails
Smartphones and other mobile devices play a large role in email marketing and already have a massive influence on the industry. Around half of all emails are opened via mobile phones, and 80% of people delete an email that doesn’t open properly on a mobile device.
It makes sense then to cater to the mobile crowd for optimal email marketing results.
The gist is that you need to make it easy for mobile users to interact with your message. The clickable buttons you include need to be large enough to click with your fingers, the text should be easy to read, the images should scale with smaller screens, and landing pages need to be mobile friendly, too.
The Takeaway
Paying more attention to what your subscribers want and need is one of the most important things you can do as a goods or service provider. By interacting with them in a meaningful, personal way, you build more trust and loyalty. And if you follow these steps, you are sure to see more success in your email effectiveness.