In a world dominated by social and mobile, email marketing is not bright and new. Still, it remains one of the most effective channels of a company to reach its audience.
The reason? According to a 2016 eMarketer report, US marketers report a median ROI of 122% through e-mail communications, more than four times more than social media, direct mail and search. pay. This is why the majority of marketers will turn to email to interact with consumers during the holiday season.
E-mail marketing tips have been around for a long time, but with the holidays, marketers can not forget these basic (and often overlooked) tips for delivering organized consumer experiences.
1. Optimize for Mobile
The average American adult spends almost three hours on his smartphone each day. They probably check social media, switch between applications, and read e-mail. Regarding e-mail, the office accounts for 16% of all e-mail openings, 30% webmail and 54% mobile, according to Litmus. For marketers, this means that it is essential to optimize mobile campaigns.
The first thing to consider as a marketer when it comes to mobile is obvious: Know your audience. Know the makeup of your mobile audience, which will allow you to deploy more advanced tactics to try to increase engagement.
If your mobile makeup tilts towards iOS, you can easily add animations and videos to increase engagement. When adding images, they should be optimized for Retina, but not with the new iPhone X because image sizes can reach four times the size of new screens.
Last but not least, moving buttons should have a minimum of 40 pixels around the button for the finger target.
2. Think Beyond the Body of E-mail
The name of the sender is the first thing your audience will see, so do not treat it as an afterthought. Instead of using the same sender name for each message, change it to reflect the content – this alone can increase the opening rates.
The subject line is also important. It should have a sense of urgency and, ideally, mystery. For example, instead of an object line announcing that registration to an event is open, saying "It's On" or "It's Almost Time" is no longer likely to pique the curiosity of your audience. But do not get carried away: Keep the line of simple object, with no more than 75 characters.
The pre-heads, the short text that you see after the subject line on most emails, are also often overlooked. This is your last chance to have someone to open your email, so treat it in a targeted way, and avoid simply pasting a body phrase from the email. Rather, in about 120 characters, convey the value of opening the message.
3. Transmitting a feeling of urgency
Although web-based writing is generally passive, the content of emails should be simple and motivate to act. Apply this approach when trying to induce someone to click on an offer or to sign up for an event, and when you try to offer more value to a consumer via email.
For example, if someone just bought your product, say, a flat screen TV, your follow-up email should encourage them to move on to the next step, as is the case. purchase of accessories or the hiring of a technician, and include relevant offers
The call to the action of a reader is particularly important. Deleting items, such as "the" or "a", can drive your message home: "Read e-book" or "Buy jeans" sounds more pressing than "Read the eBook" or "Buy the jeans. "
4. Get used to AI
A unique approach to email marketing is a thing of the past. Personalized emails, especially those that are influenced by the predictive power of artificial intelligence (AI), are much more effective in boosting consumer engagement. For example, when our customer, Aldo, focused on personalized messages, the shoe retailer recorded a 131% increase in email conversion from one year to the next. It makes sense: you send people information that really interests them, instead of making a blanket guess.
The AI can help with customization in many ways. AI tools can help businesses analyze consumer data to create audience segments, allowing marketers to target each group with relevant messages that match their interests and habits. # 39; previous purchase.
Marketers can also use artificial intelligence to tailor specific blocks of content, such as product recommendations, to individual subscribers based on information about their behavior and preferences.
5. Engage the uncommitted
A common challenge for marketers is to wake dormant consumers with targeted e-mails. The solution is simple enough: provide unique and personalized content to consumers to boost engagement. In addition, consider questioning these consumers about their interests or organizing a contest that requires them to indicate their preferences. These tactics can encourage a consumer to interact with your brand and help you glean information to send more personalized messages.
Although patient persistence often pays off, marketers must know when to stop. When consumers have not opened your emails for a long time – how much time is up to you – remove them from your list and focus on those who are engaged. Otherwise, you risk boring people with unwanted messages and making them complain. This could reduce your "transmissibility score", increasing the chances that you would end up in spam folders. Even worse, we've all seen what dissatisfied customers can do on social networks.
6. Always test
Before launching an email campaign against a large number of consumers, you want to make sure your message lands and stays true to the intended audience. This is where the A / B or split test comes in.
Send two different versions of your message to a small part of your audience – say 10% of them each receive. Then deliver the one that gets the most answers to everyone. Test all aspects of your content and design: subject lines, e-mail body, font, layout, color, offers, frequency of messages and more.
Let the test run long enough to collect solid results. Most marketers wait between 12 and 24 hours, but it takes up to 48 hours to gather reliable data that informs smart decisions. The results are worth it once you see the consumers interacting with your content.
Marketing is in a state of evolution driven by consumer expectations for better brand experiences. Because every person expects a personalized interaction with companies, many brands compete solely on the basis of the consumer experience. Today, what makes or breaks a brand, is its way of interacting with consumers on a large scale – and email is no exception to the rule.
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the guest author and not necessarily Marketing Land. The authors of the staff are listed here.
About the author
Joanna Milliken is Senior Vice President of Messaging for Salesforce Marketing Cloud, a leading business and product strategy for its email, mobile, travel, automation, content, and personalization products. . For more than 15 years, Joanna has worked with leading global brands to leverage marketing technologies that deepen customer relationships.