With bigger reach comes greater responsibility.
Digital marketing has become ubiquitous in today’s age of smartphones and smart gadgets; marketing teams are not only working on their promotions but also changing their ways in terms of targeting their audience.
Today, digital marketing houses several different options, including:
- Digital advertising
- Email marketing
- Social media
Of all the different marketing tactics that has evolved in the last few decades, and despite recent interests in social media marketing and it’s vast possibilities, email marketing is still the first choice for marketing teams to entice new clients and keep loyal customers.
How has e-mail marketing changed over the years?
What started as a simple way to send messages between colleagues and friends in the 1970s has since become one of the top methods for marketing as a way to reach the customers.
But in recent years, we have noticed that e-mail marketing has changed and moved away from being a simple tool for advertising. Now the customers expect more from companies than just promotional content.
Customers expect a decrease in promotional content and an increase in content that provides information and value. If you don’t change, then you risk losing valuable members from your email campaign list. Marketing trend has been changing rapidly, and if you want to succeed, you must lean in and pay attention to them.
Strategies to get the best from your email marketing 2.0 campaigns
Here are some strategies which you can use to make email marketing as your most important channel for marketing in 2021:
Personalization is important
Companies often underestimate the value a personalized email can provide. Even just addressing the subscriber by their name in an email can do wonders.
For example, Amazon sends great personalized emails.
Instead of ‘dear valued customer’, Amazon uses ‘Dear Stephen’.
And, instead of showing a randomly generated list of items for you to purchase, it shows you the relevant items and based on your purchase history. Even Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos understands the value of e-mails and goes through most customer complaints that he could manage to. This is the reason why 35% of all the product sales of Amazon comes from recommendations.
Even a study by Experian states that personalized emails get up to 6 times higher rates in transactions.
Therefore if you are generating $0.08 in revenue per mail and sending out an email campaign to around 500,000 subscribers, you could be generating up to $40,000 in revenue.
The sad part is that around 70% of plants don’t use any personalization in their email marketing strategy. This means that they are losing a lot while their competition is gaining an edge over your business by adding names in their customer email campaign. An estimated 47% of all emails are opened just because the customer finds the subject line attractive and what is a better way to attract customers than including their names in the subject line.
Besides using customer name, there are few more ways which you can use to personalize the emails
Use real replies for email addresses: Instead of using donotreply@example.com; you can use a more appropriate email address related to your brand. Using predefined email addresses like this takes away the authenticity from the message, and readers automatically refrain from clicking the email.
Use your real email signature: Like the reply to an email address, you want to use real-in-the-mail information that looks real within the email, and the best way to do this is to include your contact details in the signature. Giving your subscribers a way to contact you or connect with you online is a better way to build a more personal and loyal relationship with them
Ask for the information upfront: A great way to get your customers’ data is to ask them upfront about the information in the sign-up form. Because if you don’t have data like name, location, or contact information, which means you have minimal data to send personalized emails. So remember to ask for the information when you are designing a website for your business.
AI, Machine learning, and cloud-based technology will change e-mail marketing
Machine learning and Artificial intelligence are now an important part of all industries. Even email marketing for that matter has adopted these futurist technologies to drive engagement rates. Advancement in both fields of technology has made marketing automation effortless as we can send messages intended for the targeted audience. Now using good email marketing software you can manage a list of thousands subscribers easily.
Artificial intelligence is capable of bringing new and improved capabilities to e-mail marketing. It ensures that the campaigns comply with privacy regulations like GDPR and are even budget-friendly for small business owners’ major e-mail campaigns.
Stacy Caprio, the owner of herCEO, mentioned that cloud-based computing technologies would significantly impact email marketing in the coming years. Service providers like Amazon’s simple email service and Zoho campaigns are introducing changes in the industry, which will result in lower costs for everyone as high volume email lists tend to get more expensive for small businesses ‘ needs.
Segmentation will be essential
When you are planning your email marketing strategy, segmentation should be at the top of your list. It’s because when you segment your database, you are making your email campaigns much more targeted towards your audience.
Suppose you are hosting a networking event where your targeted audience is small business owners located within 20 miles radius. In order to get the most out of your event, segmentation is the way to go.
To get small business owners at your event, you need to create a list of people who are small business owners and live within 20 miles of your event and then send them any mail inviting them to the event. The segmentation part is very simple and can be done quickly through your CRM software.
When you send one email to your entire subscriber database, it spreads across the country, or even a continent, which could be very annoying.
If you are still not convinced on how important segmenting is for your database, check out a study by HubSpot which found that all e-mail marketing KPIs perform at their best when you segment your email list.
Here are a few ways on how you can get started with segmentation:
Segment by industry: Knowing the industry where your target subscribers are is a great way to segment your email campaigns. For example, a business that sells IT software would enjoy a higher rate of engagement if there email campaigns target IT companies than a business that sells cars.
Segment by the size of business: This type of strategy is also known as account-based marketing; segmenting email campaigns by the size of a company is a great way to increase response rates. A small business employing 5 people is not likely to read any e-mail for the most significant industry conference of the year. In contrast, a company that employs 1,000 people might be a better fit.
Captivating storytelling is essential
Everybody loves a good and engaging story, and if your brand has one, your email marketing plan should reflect that. Even when you send the newsletter to your customers about the company culture and plans for the future, they should feel like they are on a journey alongside the company. A personalized email not only allows people to connect with your business but also is a low-cost way to create a personal bond with your customers.
You don’t even need to make the email exclusive about your company. You can also mention all the latest developments happening in your industry. This will show your clients that your company keeps up to speed with the latest innovations and know tech well. This will add to creating strong expertise in your industry and makes it easy for new prospects to stay in touch with your site.
Mobile friendly emails are essential
As per research in 2012, 27% of all emails were opened on mobile devices. Later in 2014, that number jumped to 42%, and now it is almost 80%. This growth is highly exponential and will increase moving forward.
Most of us check our phone first thing as soon as we wake up; it is next to our bed even when we are asleep. So when a subscriber checks their email on their mobile device but the mail is not optimized for that device, what do you think the first thing they’ll do?
Most probably, they’ll unsubscribe or delete it.
Around 50% of all emails sent are not optimized for mobiles, but a study suggests that 55% of smartphone users made at least one purchase because they saw it in a promotional email. Also, a survey from Flexmail has revealed that brands that optimize their emails for mobile devices saw an overall improvement in the conversion rates.
You know you have to optimize your emails for mobile devices, but how do you do it?
Make the CTA big and bold: Mobile devices may vary in size, but the text will work on every screen. Your emails might not show the call to action properly because the screen is too big, and the text is small in size comparatively. So make the CTA big and bold so readers won’t miss it.
Keep the subject line clear and short: The subject line is a vital part of any email; it is essential to keep it clear so the reader knows what the email is about. It is also vital that the subject is short as you would not want to waste the space by writing it too big. If the subject line is too big, it won’t show properly on mobile devices and instead will display a message like “Click to see the full email in your browser.” So summarize your subject line in two or three words and grab your reader’s attention.
Conclusion
Top marketing gurus in the industry looked into the crystal balls and made some bold predictions about what marketers should expect in 2020. The menu of those predictions from 2020 is still so relevant as we move into 2021. For instance:
- Machine learning is becoming more essential for getting the right information to your subscribers at the right time.
- Those days are gone when you would send one email to all your subscribers spread across the continent; it is time to get more personalized and build a relationship with every individual subscriber.
- Optimizing your e-mails is a must now as users with mobile devices are increasing in number day by day; it is crucial how your emails look when they are opened on a smartphone.
Author Bio: I am Greg Wilson, a Content Writer working with GoodFirms, a research and review platform for service and software companies. I am passionate about blogging, creative writing, social media, and content marketing. I write blog posts for GoodFirms about eCommerce softwares, Cloud computing, IoT development, and many more such categories.
