Email may be a relatively “old” digital marketing tool. That said, it remains one of the most effective. There are many reasons this is the case. Primarily, though, email lets you stay in contact with your followers over an extended period of time. This is key to cultivating brand loyalty, guiding customers through a sales funnel, engaging leads, and more.
That’s not to say every email marketing campaign is as strong as the next. To take full advantage of this valuable channel, keep these points in mind.
Segment Your List
Again, studies and surveys indicate email is still a remarkably effective marketing channel, even when brands target younger customers.
Those same studies indicate many subscribers don’t actually open many of the emails businesses send to them. To guard against this, segment your email list into multiple categories. This makes it easier to send your followers content they actually find relevant to their interests and tastes.
For example, maybe you’ve created a fashion ecommerce app. The type of content you send to email list subscribers might include occasional fashion tips. However, a customer interested in menswear might not be interested in women’s fashion advice. You can avoid cluttering your followers’ inboxes with irrelevant content by segmenting your list accordingly. This has been proven to boost open rates.
Optimize for Mobile
You need to account for the devices people use to read your emails when developing content. After all, people now check email via mobile devices more often than via desktops.
Thus, it’s important to check how your emails appear on smartphones before sending them. Large chunks of text can make content difficult to consume on a small screen. You’re better off breaking it into sections by using headers and similar formatting elements. You can also incorporate images, GIFs, and other forms of multimedia to organize your content for mobile users.
A/B Test
Don’t assume your email marketing campaign is delivering the strongest possible return on investment. There is almost always room for improvement.
That’s why monitoring your performance is an essential part of email marketing. You want to pay attention to which tactics work, and which do not.
You should also A/B test. This involves choosing a specific element of an email, and testing multiple versions to learn which delivers better results.
For example, maybe you want to improve your subject lines. You could send half of your subscribers an email with one option, sending the same email to the other half of your list, this time with a different subject line. You might find that one yields a substantially higher open rate than the other. This gives you the opportunity to study the differences between the two and learn what makes a subject line stronger.
(Tip: Include recipient names in the subject lines of your emails whenever it makes sense to do so. This is another simple tactic that improves open rates.)
Survey Followers
Every brand is different. Although certain general email marketing tips work for virtually all businesses, it’s still crucial to learn what your specific followers want from your emails.
Find out by periodically surveying them. Ask what type of content they enjoy receiving, what type of subject line they are more likely to click on, what you might be doing that would make them unsubscribe, etc. For example, many people unsubscribe from email lists when businesses send content too frequently. No one wants an overcrowded inbox. If you’re not sure whether you’re sending emails too often (or not often enough), surveying your followers is an easy way to find out.
Remember, despite being one of the older digital marketing channels, email can still deliver a major return on investment. Instead of exposing leads to your brands once, it gives you the chance to engage followers with your brand for years. These tips will help you do so.
