When it comes to email marketing, there are no second chances. Because of this, E-marketing requires a certain amount of planning and strategy. Through research and preparation, emails to customers can be structured concisely and with a clear purpose. The main goals of these emails are to grab attention and get users back to your website. There are many ways to facilitate customer traffic on your site; all it takes is effective strategy and innovation to successfully manage your email marketing component.
The first way to improve E-marketing strategy is thorough research. Gathering information about your site’s users, their tendencies, and how they engage with your site are all factors in seeing a return on your investment.
Personalization, as studies have shown, is crucial in emailing clients, and significantly increases the likelihood that they will open the email, as well as visit your website. Collecting data on customer names, ages, interests, and where they live is extremely helpful to increase your E-marketing conversion rate.
Examples of how to use this information:
• Address users by their name: This is a great place to begin showing customers that they are valued through a custom touch. Using someone’s name in an email significantly increases the chances that they will open it.
• Use demographic information: Once collected, this data can be helpful in determining interests in certain products or articles. A person in Florida will be less likely to purchase snow boots in the same way that a person who read an article entitled, “This Season’s Best Fashion Trends” would be less likely to read, “How to Get the Best Fantasy Football Team.”
• Becoming familiar with the needs and desires of your audience allows you to send emails with specific content that have a higher conversion rate.
• Sending a targeted email to a subscriber or customer saying “you purchased/read/watched this, take a look at this next” have a high rate of success.
Promotions are a very effective strategy to draw customers back to your website. Having a sale? Let them know! Approaching a notoriously busy weekend for your product or service? Provide incentives for them to come to your site!
• Get right to the point in the email subject: Grab a reader’s attention with an exciting email subject such as “Save 20% Off (product/service)” or “Buy one get one free!”
• Use customer information for special promotions, like “We heard your birthday is coming up, take 30% of your next purchase” or “Treat yourself on your birthday- free drinks on us at (restaurant name).”
• Create opportunities: If a customer has purchased one product, suggest another to go with it- “We love the shoes you bought, we also love this purse with it. Take 15% off this bag to complete your look!” “You bought these pans; we’ll give you 10% off these utensils.”
Teasers are another great way to grab your readers’ attention. Much like movie trailers, they can be very effective in getting customers excited about new products and features on your website.
• If your site is coming out with a new feature: “Our site is about to get much better, stay tuned for (new feature).” “If you thought our site was great before, you’ll be amazed now- introducing (new feature). “
• When adding new products: “They’re almost here, be sure to get your (product).” “The wait is almost over; (product) is coming to you this week!)
Timing is another essential part of the email marketing. Research is key to properly determine when to send emails. A good start in the research process is to determine the optimal time to send emails to customers/subscribers. For example, some email marketers see a higher conversion rate in emails sent early in the morning as opposed to the afternoon. Similarly, emails sent on certain days of the week produce a better conversion rate than others. The concept of urgency is also important to note as a very helpful tactic in sending marketing emails. Keep in mind:
• To determine what time of day to send emails, break up the day into four time frames. Collect data and determine how many people are visiting your website from past emails sent, and at what times the visits occurred. Also gather data on how many people that visited your site purchased a product or clicked multiple pages. This will help you gauge what time is best to send emails.
• To determine what day to send emails, use the same process as above, but divide into three sections- beginning of the work week, end of the work week, and weekends. Again, collect data and determine which days are best to send emails.
• Compare the results of days and times to find the most effective times to send emails.
• To express urgency, give promotions or notify customers of sales with limited time left. This short time frame adds incentive for the customer to visit your site if they are interested. Higher conversion rates have been directly correlated with emails conveying urgency.
Once you’ve figure out the best time to send emails, there are some general rules and tips for constructing proper emails to customers. The structure and visual aspects are very important to look professional and engage the email’s audience.
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Do: Have a main heading and one or two small points to keep them reading. This gets their attention and holds it.
• Don’t: Use all caps or exclamation points in subject lines. This is off-putting to many people receiving marketing emails because it can be seen as aggressive or unprofessional. It also may indicate that the email is more likely to be spam.
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Do: Link internal pages of your site in emails, rather than just the homepage, to induce more traffic and page views. This also provides more targeted or specific information relating to the content of email.
• Don’t: Make emails image-heavy. Often, only a few, or none, of the pictures will open in an email if there is more than one of them. This can result in readers becoming uninterested in the email content because it looks sloppy.
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Do: Make emails visually interesting. Having custom graphics is important to your emails looking good aesthetically. Visual information is often more important than any text because it is the first thing that the reader notices. Making sure that the email is engaging to the eye of readers is crucial to a good conversion rate.
• Don’t: Be overly formal in email text. If an email is too formal, the content may seem dry or boring. Using a conversational, more informal style of writing is the best way to communicate with customers/subscribers.
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Do: Use social media in conjunction with Email Marketing. Put links to your websites social media on emails as a standard procedure for increased exposure.
Spam is likely the most problematic obstacle faced by email marketers. Being mindful of guidelines to avoid potential spam issues is imperative when creating emails. A primary goal is to make sure none of your emails or content within them could be considered as spam, otherwise there are serious consequences. Following these tips should be a strong foundation to protect your emails from being flagged as spam.
• Market with integrity: Identify your company with a name and location. This lets customers/subscribers know that they are dealing with real people.
• Do not use purchased email lists: If a person does not explicitly opt in to receiving emails from your company, this can be considered spam.
• Provide options: It is important to allow subscribers to control their email settings. People should be given the options to receive less frequent emails from your company or to unsubscribe altogether. Once a person asks to unsubscribe, your company has 30 days to remove them from an email list. It is recommended that you implement a system in which your customers/subscriber database is updated automatically to avoid this issue and keep all contacts up to date.