Social media ushered in a new era of digital revolution that has changed the modus operandi of business across the globe for the better. Branding and Marketing segment of businesses worldwide struck gold with the onset of digital era, with locations and borders ceasing to be barriers anymore. Digital marketing has become a complete science that can be mastered to take your brand to new heights of success with the right methods and approaches. The biggest advantage of this form of marketing is the real-time flexibility it lends the marketer to tune the strategy as per the response garnered from the audience. This makes it extremely cost efficient, since unlike the traditional methods, you don’t have to wait for the annual sales reports to see if the efforts put into marketing is reflected in it.
Email Marketing – The Most Effective Tool since the advent of Digital Marketing
Ever since the surge in usage of social media channels like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, it has been predicted that email marketing is nearing its death or isn’t as helpful as it once used to be. The fact is that, this can’t be further from truth! Over 270 billion emails are sent each day and there are three times more email accounts existing than Facebook and Twitter accounts combined. According to MarketingSherpa 72% of people prefer to receive promotional content through email as compared to 17% who prefer social media. The Email game is still going strong and your digital marketing efforts will fail to reach its maximum potential if this tool remains unutilized. Drafting an efficient email marketing campaign, dispersing them on and in time, and following up is a discipline that can be mastered through practice. Let us take you through the ABCDE of materializing a successful email marketing campaign;
Agenda
Establishing your goal is the foremost step to be taken when initiating a marketing campaign. You need to figure out the outcome that you wish to obtain through this tool. Is it generating more leads for your sales team through gathering data? Is it spreading awareness about the new product being launched? Is it inviting donations for your cause? Every campaign will demand a separate approach that will enable it to pop out among the thousands of other mails in the inbox calling out to the subscribers.
The most common objectives of most of the mainstream campaigns are
- Welcoming and Initiating new subscribers
- Promotional and engaging content to build stronger relation with the recipients
- Providing incentives or value to the existing recipients to keep them loyal
- Calling out to the inactive subscribers
Studying in detail, the result you want to achieve through the campaign, will guide you in defining your target and designing the content. This will help you in creating a high impact email that will result in conversion and realization of objectives.
Building Your Email List
Now that you have framed your marketing objectives, you are ready to build your email list. This involves identifying your target market and collecting their email addresses through various techniques. In any business and marketing operation, it is of utmost importance that an ethical path be followed. It is very easy to get carried away and violate user privacy and build up your list through backhanded means. Basically there are three methods to draw up an email list;
- Import your list of existing customers, if the aim is to keep in touch with the customer base
- Build a new list from scratch
- Use rented database from third party agency like Precise Communications
There are various tools available online that can help you import your list of customers. As easy as this may sound, it is imperative to get permission from the subscribers to email them. The basic approach to attracting new traffic for subscription is to offer them an incentive along with making the process of subscription simple.
1. Offering Incentive
Ask the question, what benefit do the target stand to receive in sharing their private details? The single most important motive that guide all our transactional behavior is finding incentive. Inviting plainly to subscribe for some mere product information won’t suffice. With respect to the product you are handling, find out what will be an amazing incentive that you can provide the subscriber. What will make a person excited to subscribe to your emails? Here are examples of a few incentives that can motivate people to join your list;
- Inside Information – you can entice the audience by offering more inside information, curated content or exclusive tips to the subscribers
- Discounts – if you sell products or services, then you can offer new sign-up discount, or percentage discount codes exclusively to those who subscribe
- Free passes and tickets – giving off free passes or tickets to events, classes or workshops pertaining to your field is a great way to secure subscribers
- Downloads – e-books and pdfs are a great way to lure the target to subscribe to your emails
2. Simplified Subscription
Now that you have crafted the perfect incentive to motivate the customer to hit the “Subscribe” button here are a few good practices to guide the traffic through the subscription process;
- Website – strategic placement of simple forms go a long way in building your list. A simple tick box at the end of a sign up or check out process will also do. Well-designed lightbox pop-ups, Welcome gates, exit intent pop-ups offer great ways to gather leads.
- Blogs – People who follow your blog are informed subscribers who will make valuable members of email list. They are likely to comment and share information 3 times more that general traffic.
- Social Handles – Lead forms can be generated and downloaded on Facebook and twitter. There are various tools on these social media platforms that can be used to target and generate leads. You can compel your followers through impactful and engaging posts to subscribe to your emails as well.
- Physical Subscription Forms – various primary methods like surveys forms, loyalty programs, placing subscription forms at check-out points or customer service points and even collecting business cards are all relevant and effective methods of adding to your email list ethically.
Content
This is the step where you must employ all your creative faculties. An impactful email content has the power to drive your conversion rate up by a great deal. Before creating the actual content it is necessary to identify the type of campaign that you intend to draft. Newsletters, marketing offers and promotions, announcements and invitations are a few types of email campaigns that you can use to further your cause. The type of campaign that you choose should align with the goals you have set and the target mail list that you have created to achieve maximum leads from your campaign.
Personalize your emails campaigns. MarketingSherpa reports that personalized emails generate six times more revenue than generalized broadcast. This being the fact, only less than 50% of email marketers utilize this avenue to engage with subscribers. Make your mails mobile friendly by optimizing for enhanced viewing.
Subject: Write a Short but Impactful Subject Line and a Cohesive Pre-Header Text
Subject line is the second highest driving force that compels a person to open the mail, first being the “From” name. Subject line usually appears in bold, making it stand out and therefore plays a great role in bringing up the open rate. It is highly advisable to keep the subject line short within the range of 30 characters, which is the average number of characters displayed on subject line in popular mobile devices. On a quick internet research, you will be able to arrive upon power words relating to your field that have been proven to improve open rates. Personalizing the email by adding dynamic tags to show recipient names and include words like “You” is an effective way to create an engaging subject line. Try to avoid using click-baits or tricks like using “Re:” or “Fwd:” in the subject line. This will eventually end up in losing subscriptions. Draft an Enticing Pre-Header Text. Pre-header text works in tandem with the subject line to make a compelling case to increase open rate. Be focused and make it cohesive so the message becomes clear and well rounded.
Body: Write an Engaging Copy for the Body
When you have staggering amount of ideas and information to pass on, it is very easy to get carried away while crafting a campaign. The best strategy to follow while creating the body of your email will be to create various templates before-hand and follow accordingly. Keep the content precise by writing up short and meaningful paragraphs. Make it a point to covey a strong feature in each paragraph.
Streamline Your Content. An individual experiences a bombardment of information every minute of every day. There is no guarantee that your mail will be opened, in case the mail has been opened remember that nobody has the time to go through lengthy and tiresome articles. Structure your content in such a way that it captures the attentions and flows smoothly all the way up to the ‘call-to-action’. Use visuals, statistics and info graphics to make the content engaging. This increases the recall value of the message. The instructions are better understood through visuals and videos and the reader can retain the message in their memory for long after.
Diversify
A common mistake that every email marketer makes that decreases their open rate is generating uniform and repetitive content too heavily. Segmentation is key! Only about 50% of marketers can segment on the attributes needed for greater diversification. General promotional messages or broadcast messages work in the overall scope of the entire campaign, but using them all the time will decrease the appeal of the campaign.
What is Segmentation? Segmentation is the process of categorizing your email list into more targeted groups. It opens up a whole new avenue of connecting with your subscribers and giving them what they want. You can split up your email list into different groups based on geographic location, demographics, market, past activity, workflow activity, and customer data. Going through and sorting entire mail lists with hundreds and thousands of emails is a herculean task, but the time and effort you put into it is an investment that will be beneficial. Segmentation can be done using the data that is provided by the subscriber during the time of sign up or you can design forms which allows self-segmentation by creating separate sign-up forms.
Estimating the Results
There can be different metrics to measure the success of your campaign. The most sought after metrics of success are;
- Number of Unique Opens
- Number of Bounces
- Click Through Rate
- Number of Unopened Emails
- Open Rate
- Shares
- Unsubscribe Rate
- Spam Complains
Click through Rate (CTR), Open Rate and Unsubscribe Rate are the key points used to estimate the success of your email campaign. Improving the layout or template of the email, including new images and redesigning the email, including visual CTAs are all methods to increase CTR. Timing plays a vital role in driving up the CTR as well. Analyze the relation between Open Rate, CTR and the times at which the mail was sent. An increase in the Unsubscribe Rate shows a fundamental mistake in the whole campaign. It may be the right time to step back and analyze the whole process right from the goals you have set for the campaign. Be sure to respect the privacy of the subscriber and remove his email from the list as soon as he hits Unsubscribe. Continuously emailing the person will only end up being reported for spam.
Speak To Us For The Right Platform
We provide the right platform for you to make use of digital marketing techniques in taking your business to new heights. Email marketing is a very effective tool in getting your message across along with conveying the values that your brand stands for. We have an extensive database of potential subscribers that has been built over time and with great care. Precise Communications understands the pulse of the market and can build a curated and authentic mail list suitable to your business. Speak to one of our team member to know more!
