Email Marketing: Best Practices
The ultimate goal of email marketing is to attract and convert customers through the use of good, relevant and most importantly valuable email content. Email marketing is a popular marketing practice but it does need to be executed correctly in order to see a return in the money and time invested in creating the campaign. There are multiple ways to achieve this and a few things to consider when creating an email marketing campaign.
Firstly is segmentation. You want to be able to tailor your content to specific audiences and personalise emails based on this. You can achieve this by splitting your subscribed audience into more targeted groups known as segmentation. Just like targeting in paid ads, dividing your list gives you the ability to send more targeted communications (Neil Patel, n.d). By splitting your audience into segments, you are ensuring that your open rate and click through rate increases as content is a lot more tailored to individuals and they are more likely to be interested in the content you have to offer them.
Content is another major factor in a successful email. Strong and appealing content is vital in order to attract customers on a buying journey. Images and any artwork or design should be eye catching and attractive. Also, any email copy should be brief, friendly in nature and to the point with strong links provided so that the customer can click through to a product or a landing page. The more an email looks like a personal conversation with a friend, the better it will perform (Angela Hausman, 2018). By providing good content, the customer is more likely to have a good experience and want to click through to what you have to offer.
On a typical day, customers are being bombarded with multiple email campaigns, so it’s really important to stand out from the crowd and attract attention when sending one. One of the best ways to do this is through a good subject line. It’s the first thing a customer sees when looking at their inbox and the subject line is a chance to shout about what you have to offer in your email and grab the attention of those customers interested in your company and brand. Subject lines can be complemented with good preview text. This is another thing that the customer may see in their inbox, so a good eye-catching sentence is vital to draw people in. If your subject line isn’t compelling, your subscribers won’t open your email. An unopened email means they won’t see the links to all the new products you’ve launched or the blog post you just wrote. When they don’t do that, your campaign’s a goner (Ted Vrountas, 2021)
Email Marketing: Mistakes to avoid
In order in to run a successful email campaign there are some key factors to avoid and the first one is too much text. It’s easy to get carried away with text but too much will have subscribers turning away in no time. When your subscribers open a text heavy email on their mobile devices, chances are they’ll lose interest quickly if they have to scroll several times just to reach the call-to-action (Patrika Cheston, 2016)
Figure 1 source: Cheston, P (2016)
Failing to segment audiences is another mistake many companies make. Segmentation is very important in order to offer a more personalised email to the customer according to their needs. Generic emails aren’t great for conversion so it’s important to offer something to your customers that they feel is valuable to their time and this is where segmentation helps. Your audiences are tired of generic marketing. They don’t want the same offers that everyone else who buys from you receives. Give your customers targeted content based on their past behaviour, demographics, and needs. (Craig Smith, n.d)
Consent plays a huge part in any email marketing and if a subscriber wishes to unsubscribe to your emails, you must give them a clear option to do so. Customers often get frustrated if they can’t find an unsubscribe link or if the unsubscribing process is too complicated. This can damage the reputation of a company. Any marketing email must have a clear and easy to follow unsubscribe link. Allowing your customers to unsubscribe should be as easy as possible. And if someone doesn’t want to receive your emails anymore, hiding the unsubscribe link isn’t going to make them suddenly want to purchase your product. (Steven MacDonald, 2020)
Figure 2 source: MacDonald, S (2020)
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
Patel, N. (n.d.) A Beginner’s Guide to Successful Email Marketing [Online], Available at: www.neilpatel.com/blog/beginners-guide-email-marketing [Accessed 28 April 2021]
Vrountas, T. (2021) 12 Types of Email Subject Lines That Will Increase Your Open Rates [Online], Available at: www.instapage.com/blog/email-subject-lines [Accessed 14 June 2021]
Hausman, A. (2018) 5 Keys to Successful Email Marketing [Online], Available at: www.business2community.com/email-marketing/5-keys-successful-email-marketing-02020249 [Accessed 14 June 2021]
Cheston, P. (2016) Worst and bad email examples [Online], Available at: www.mailjet.com/blog/news/email-design-halloween [Accessed 14 June 2021]
Smith, C. (n.d) 5 Worst Email Marketing Mistakes [Online], Available at: www.trinity.one/insights/digital-marketing/email-marketing-mistakes [Accessed 14 June 2021]
MacDonald, S. (2020) 5 Killer Email Marketing Mistakes (Backed by Research) [Online], Available at: www.superoffice.com/blog/5-killer-email-marketing-mistakes-to-avoid [Accessed 14 June 2021]
