Many businesses undervalue the use of email marketing but it should be considered as an essential part of your marketing activities. Email marketing has always been a powerful tool. Perhaps one of the oldest forms of digital communication, emails allow you to connect with your audience in a way other platforms simply do not. While it can be incredibly beneficial when it goes right getting it wrong can also seriously damage your reputation as a brand. In this guide, we’ll walk you through the 5 vital email marketing campaign components.
Why is email marketing beneficial?
Email marketing has been around for what seems like forever, and with good reason. It’s used by thousands of business across the globe and it’s the most direct and effective method of connecting with leads. With the power of email marketing, you’ll be able to nurture your leads into clients and one-off buyers into loyal customers. Your return on investment is guaranteed to grow alongside your subscriber list. When it comes to emails there are several ways to see your success, those who may not be familiar, look no further the solution to a better return on your investment is email marketing.
With email marketing, you’re able to reach highly targeted audiences, on a global scale at such a low cost it is not worth the comparison to Facebook ads or pay per click ads (PPC). While this may seem like a dream you cannot forget the 5 vital email marketing components.
1.Build a strong Mailing list
The key to your success is a strong mailing list, not only in terms of volume but also content, who is on your list. There is no point building a list of 18-year-old males if you’re selling barbie dolls. Your list needs to represent your target audience. To build a strong list you can use a variety of methods, using social media ads can be an option to generate leads quickly although there is an upfront cost to using social media ads once you’re list has grown a significant amount your ROI is sure to increase. Social media isn’t the only way to build your list, a mix of strategies would be most effective, consider using your website’s blog to also promote your newsletter.
Offline methods can also be effective, business cards are an affordable way to spread your message. Consider adding “Subscribe to our newsletter” on your business cards. If it doesn’t fit on your current design consider having business cards dedicated to promoting your newsletter, the same can be applied to encouraging people to follow you on social media. Business cards are a cost-effect way to share your message.
2.Powerful subject lines
The importance of a strong subject line cannot be understated. It’s the first thing the audience will read and potentially their first impression of your brand. You should aim for subject lines, that spark interest and build curiosity. From our experience, the shorter the subject line the better, subject lines under 4 words have received the best open rates. Although this may heavily depend on your industry, it’s best to test the length of your subject lines through a series of emails.
While it may be tempting to use clickbait to get better open rates, it the long run it installs poor trust in your audience who frequently open emails from you only yo be disappointed with the content. Your users won’t take the desired action should you deceive them into opening the email. The goal of a subject line is to lure recipients to open the e-mail and to click through to wherever you are directing traffic. Hot tip – Utilise A/B testing when optimising your subject lines.
3.Copy and images
An image is worth a thousand words, or so the saying goes. While this can apply to your email you cannot ignore the copy that goes with your image. You want your audience to be able to glace at your email and understand the central message. In addition to the core message, your call to action must also stand out to the users. It should be a specific call to action whether you want to the user to purchase or to visit your website the next step to them should be clear. Personalization is also key, including details such as their name can have huge benefits to your clickthrough rate.
Perhaps most importantly is using a responsive design, and testing on multiple browsers and devices. You want your entire network to receive the same email. There should be no vast differences in the visual element of your email from device to device as this may affect your ability to measure and optimize your results.
4.Measuring results
A vital component to perhaps any marketing campaign is how and what you should record. There are different ways to measure your results when for your email marketing campaign, firstly is to see the performance of your email and secondly is looking at the analytics of where you are driving traffic too. From your email, you should be looking at the delivery rates, open rates and click-through rates. These numbers will vary from industry to industry it up to you to improve after each email. On your website or landing page, you need to look for the bounce rate, conversion rate and revenue.
5.Optimizing
Although it is mostly low maintenance, an email marketing campaign is not something that you should create one day and then completely forget about the next. To get the best results, monitor the performance of your emails as mentioned. But with the results, you measure you need to also identify areas that need improvement. Then, through A/B test some changes to make those improvements.
One of the most effective ways to streamline your messaging with an audience is email. For any industry or whether a company is a business to business or business to consumer, a well thought out marketing approach can generate impressive results for brands if utilised correctly.
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