More than 293 billion emails are sent every single day, which is expected to reach 347 billion by 2023. The techniques and strategies that worked five years ago no longer work. Everything regarding email marketing has changed over the years. Email marketing is still one of the most effective marketing strategies and offers a high ROI (return on investment).
In fact, email marketing outperforms other online marketing strategies like PPC, content marketing, and SEO. Let’s dig in and see how you can benefit from email marketing and grow your business.
What is email marketing?
Email marketing is a powerful form of digital marketing that involves emailing a list of clients and prospects.
As customers must opt to join your email marketing list, it means they already like what you are offering. Email marketing is a great opportunity to convert your “likes” into loyalty that keeps those customers coming back for more.
Benefits of email marketing?
It’s one of the most effective digital marketing tools available today. Around four billion people worldwide use email to communicate. And it’s not going anywhere soon with ever-growing use and implementation in the business environment.
Economic
It’s nearly impossible to beat email marketing in terms of the ROI (return on investment). Such that for every single dollar spent on email marketing, expect a return of $36 on average. That’s certainly more than you can expect from any other form of marketing, digital or traditional. Though some sources value it a little lower, overall, the return is significant for any business.
Grow your business
It might come as a surprise for you that an existing email list can help you grow your business, but in reality, it’s among some effective ways of gaining more leads and increase in sales.
You can follow up with your potential customers with a series of emails leading to purchase and turn the prospect into a customer.
Build relationships
People, on average, check their email 15 times a day. That offers you 15 distinctive opportunities to connect with a potential customer directly rather than waiting for them to find your ad on social media. Keep in mind, the people on the mailing list have signed up and show interest in what you have to offer.
It’s also the very direct link from your business to your customers. No matter if you are a B2B or B2C company, loyalty is important. Email marketing offers an effective and swift way to connect with your customers and start a conversation.
Tailored and personalized emails in your customer’s inbox strengthen your presence and remind them of how you care and meet their needs. Email is also an effective way of communicating special offers or events.
Promote brand awareness
Email can significantly reinforce your brand’s voice and message. Surely you can customize your email to match the brand’s colors, logo, and slogans.
Email can bolster your brand’s voice and image. Reinforce your emails with a casual, fun spirit with matching brand colors, slogans, and logos. Effective email marketing can also help share your mission, goals, and future endeavors.
Drive traffic to other platforms
Emails can support all your other marketing efforts. Prompt direct customers to take part in social media campaigns, highlight new blog posts, or direct them to alternative content marketing. Email marketing should be a part of a comprehensive and distinct strategy that encompasses multiple platforms.
Test the waters
Always keep an eye on the market, where feedback is crucial for survival. Email offers an effective and straightforward way for businesses to stay in touch with customers and accommodate them according to their needs. Comprehensive email campaigns should be carried out to survey customer needs and wants.
Similarly, marketing teams always struggle to finalize a single idea for a campaign. But email can help you stop the fight by allowing you to create several tests that allow you to see what works for your audience.
Take Email Marketing one step above with the following Strategies
There are many possible ways to grow your email list with different marketing strategies and benefit in the long run. Try some of the top strategies to make your email marketing efforts successful.
– Focus on a Visually appealing design
– Personalisation
– Segment Users based on their interests
– When feasible, automate email
Write creative subject lines to increase open rates
If you know how to write professional emails, you would agree that creative subjects or lead magnets can get sign-ups. To create and optimize your subject line, utilize the words that have already been proven to boost email open rates. Similarly, you wouldn’t want to include words that decrease the open rates or trigger spam filters easily.
Use emoji and numbers in your subject to increase unique open rates for your emails. Another thing to keep in mind is the length of the subject line because today, almost 50% of the emails are opened on mobile devices.
Send a welcome series
The average open rate of welcome emails is much higher than normal emails making them more effective. That’s why most modern businesses have a welcome email series, an automated campaign of emails sent consecutively to engage the user and introduce the product or service.
Some people delay regular emails until the new subscribers receive all the welcome series, giving more time and information to users to get the most out of your email campaign.
Segment your list – Audience relevant
Everyone has different expectations and opinions on what an effective email should look like. So, you need to understand the expectations of your audience to hit the right ground with the right information.
Similarly, segmenting your email subscribers list into groups can help you disseminate information according to their expectations. If you are an MVNO offering high-end VoIP connectivity services and people who use the free international calling services or users that need to make local calls, you can cater to both the segments separately by sending appropriate emails to each group.
Tailor emails to your needs – Aligned with goals
The more you know about your subscribers, the more it gets easier to cater to their needs and expectations. And it’s not just about adding a name in the subject line, which, in fact, shouldn’t be overdone.
Go a little further and add questions to your membership form. Such as, “Which plans do you want more information about?” or something similar in your context and see what your subscribers want to see.
Regular email surveys can be a quick way to connect with your subscribers. The technique can especially be helpful in performing market research for new or current products or services.
Automate some tasks
Today technology allows you to automate many of your email marketing tasks without any negative effects. Such as collecting email addresses, listing them, and sending emails on a scheduled basis can save a lot of time for the marketers.
There are many email marketing tools that allow you to create a series of emails such as welcome, follow-up and regular emails. Then set them up to be sent to subscribers at a specific time to automate the workflow.
Make emails mobile-friendly – Visually appealing
Around 58% of adults check email the very first thing in the morning. And most of them, 85% smartphone users, use mobile devices to access their emails. That basically shows the importance of a mobile platform from the email marketing perspective – emails always need to be mobile-friendly.
To make a mobile-friendly email, follow the tips below:
- Short subject lines
- Write a clear, concise, and direct text
- CTA needs to stand out
- Fonts should be clear and large
- Use small images to keep load times low
- Links should be properly highlighted with space
- Mobile users often see the first line along with the subject, so it should be the best
- Test before sending
Reward loyalty – Prompts the user to act
You can always have promotional campaigns to prompt the user to stay engaged. Every email subscriber is important. But the ones being with you for long should get something extra – a reward for their loyalty.
You can offer something extra with promotional codes, exclusive offers, or plans to people who recently bought or haven’t been buying for some time. Reward programs can go a long way by encouraging users for more purchases.
Know the best times to send emails
As the saying goes, “strike when the iron is hot.” As a marketer, you always need to use the opportunity and know the time when you should send the email that can convert a prospect into a customer.
There are times when it’s a necessity to send an email, such as a limited-time sale. The best time to send an email is 4:00 AM for global, US, and Canadian open rates and 6:00 AM for best click-through rates.
You can set the emails to be sent automatically to see a boost in email opening and click-through rates.
Analyze and test emails
Everything needs to be evaluated and tested before you can make it a success. Once you’re done with the strategy building, analyze and test it continuously. It’s the only way to ensure what you’re doing is working.
Similarly, all marketing experts prefer A / B testing to pit two emails against each other to see what works. By tracking the open rates, click-through, website landing, and much more.
Conclusion
No business can ignore the importance of email marketing today. With massive returns and high revenues, it’s the ultimate marketing direction every business needs to utilize. But it isn’t simple; sending the same email to all won’t likely benefit you that much. It’s time to update and evolve your marketing strategy.
Send targeted and tailored email campaigns to offer a more personalized and optimized experience. Test and evaluate every element because what might have worked for you a few years ago might not work today. Find ways to automate the email marketing processes and implement any new changes on the go to make your emails more responsive. All that will make your emails more effective, perform much better, and ultimately grow the business.
