Email marketing is one of the most effective marketing channels available to business owners. That being said, email marketing success is not guaranteed.
There are a number of key factors that contribute to email marketing results. This includes everything from the content of your email to the way you format it.
In this article, we will explore some email marketing tips that can help you boost your email marketing results.
1. Segment Your List to Personalize Content
Today’s consumers want a personalized experience.
58% of people are willing to provide personal information in exchange for a better shopping experience, under the right circumstances. You’ll need to build trust and a clear value exchange before they will hand it over.
Does it make sense to send the exact same content to people who haven’t made their first purchase and people who are longtime loyal customers? No! Doing so is a major missed opportunity.
Many of today’s email marketing platforms make it easy to segment your list based on a number of parameters, including:
When choosing the email marketing platform you want to use for your company, pay attention to the available integrations. Find something that integrates with programs and platforms you’re already using to not only make your segmentation and personalization efforts easier but to streamline your overall workflow.
You can also use APIs to combine as many of your databases as possible to give you the largest amount of data to work with for personalization purposes.
2. Make Use of Animated GIFs
Animated GIFs have been popular on social media for a while now, and we see lots of brands including them in their email marketing strategy, too. They are a wonderful way to further illustrate your point, add a bit of humor or add some visual flair to the content. After all, visual content increases the desire to read by 80%, and though Google Trends shows animated GIFs piqued in December 2018, the graph below indicates they are still popular.
3. Add Images and Video
Images and video provide a break from standard text, and have been known to help boost engagement rates. If you take the time to make your content shareable on social media, your images and video are much more likely to be shared with others, which can help grow your subscriber base.
4. Adjust Send Frequency
You’re just getting started with email marketing, you may think that you should only send a message when you have news to share, specials or sales, or announcements about your company. This approach isn’t the best one because your e-mail newsletter should be considered a way to build relationships with your followers. Every time you send one, you have the chance for them to go from a satisfied customer to a dedicated fan. If you consider your newsletter some things that may annoy or distract them, then you will be less likely to send quality newsletters more often.
Consider your newsletter as something that adds value to your subscribers’ lives and something that they should look forward to. Send it on a regular basis, even every weekday, perform surprisingly well because subscribers learned to know when they can expect it and add it to their daily reading.
If on the other hand, you are sending your newsletter once or twice a month and suddenly start sending it 5 days a week, it’s easy to get carried away. And it’s also easy to fall into a trap that backfires.
People would like to get regular content, but they don’t want to be inundated when they are trying to spend time with their families or take time to relax. Limit your newsletters to weekdays or late on Sunday nights, and no more than once a day, unless you have a real reason to send more often. This approach prevents the newsletter from being so scarce that people forget about it while also keeping it from being so available that no one feels compelled to open it at all.
Related: How to Create a Digital Content Strategy that Drives Results
5. Keep the Layout Simple and Clean
Following the KISS rule ensures that your readers can focus on the content. If your formatting clutters your newsletter, it may stop the readers from seeing the value it offers. If you feel like your formatting may be causing your engagement to drop, try to limit your newsletters to one or two photos or animated GIFs within simple HTML.
6. Split-Test Until You See What Works Best
Split testing isn’t just for your website. You can use it to test your subject line, layout, content, and even your send dates and times.
Like with your website, you’ll want to run one split test at a time so you can get a better idea of how each tested element influenced your results.
After a series of tests, you can, in theory, develop the perfect recipe for your audience. While you can follow general guidelines based on available research, it’s important to remember that what works for one business or industry may not work for another.
Improving your email marketing results may be as simple as changing the time of day or the day of the week you send your email. It may mean resending the message to the people who didn’t open it first, using a different subject line. A quality subscriber list doesn’t happen overnight, and it can take a while to find the balance between your content, sending times, and all the other elements that influence engagement. Aim for improvement with each issue, and you’ll get to where you need to be.
Conclusion
Email marketing can be a highly effective way to reach out to customers and prospects. However, in order for email marketing to be successful, business owners need to focus on the results and experiment.
The more you experiment with your email marketing strategy, the more success your business will enjoy.
If you need help with your digital marketing strategy, reach out to Sachs Marketing Group for a consultation.
