As more businesses and startups turn around to recognize the value of a quality email marketing campaign, several questions will arise. Why is it important? How can you compose the best campaign that turns subscribers into customers? Is email marketing still effective? In this article, we will go over two things. First, a brief refresher on the basics of email marketing. Second, we will cover tips for boosting your reach and click-through rates and tools to help you grow your business (including digital catalogs). Keep reading to learn more.
Basics of Email Marketing
Let’s review some quick basics of email marketing. What is email marketing? Put in simple terms, email marketing is sending promotions of products or services in an email format to a large number of people. These are anything from welcome emails to lead and customer nurturing emails.
Your strategy should lead to updating your customers on your business. Other types of marketing campaigns are the types that build client relationships or work on generating conversations and interest. How can you use email marketing? Email marketing is used for three main reasons: getting conversions, building brand awareness, and gaining customer loyalty. You will use email marketing to welcome new customers, provide updates, generate conversations, and tell your brand’s story.
How Effective is Email Marketing?
Well-segmented email campaigns leverage sales for your business. The average open rate, across industries, is 21.33%. If you have open rates falling somewhere around this average, that means that your customers are opening your emails. They are doing that because you have a clear subject line that grabs their attention.
The average click rate is 2.62%. Click rates tell you if the content within your campaign is helpful to your readers. These rates will tell you how effective your email marketing is and pinpoint where to improve. Email marketing translates to increased revenue and ROI. The second portion of this article goes over some tips to improve your email marketing strategy and a few tools you can also use.
Tips for Effective Open Rates
- Build a solid subscriber base through effective email list building. Start with a relevant subscriber list. In its initial stage, you will curate this list from people who have bought your product or service. However, you must build a list of people keen to hear from your business. These are potential customers and current subscribers who appreciate offers, discounts, and news or updates that are keyed into them. Additionally, ensure your email authentication is set up correctly with an SPF record checker so your emails are trustworthy when reaching email subscribers.
- Start with a great subject line. You want your readers to be pulled in because they are interested or spot something valuable in the subject line. Keep your subject line descriptive, short, and personalized when you compose it. Personalized subject lines with descriptive hooks appeal to your audience and tell them what to expect.
- Segment your campaign. Segmentation will narrow each email campaign into specific targeted audiences. You do not want to send available content to everyone; that will feel impersonal and irritate potential leads or clients. Instead, try to segment your campaign. Choose campaign topics and content by subject, location, product, or activity to create personalized emails to help close sales.
Tools for Effective Click Rates – Digital Catalogs Included
Getting your subscribers to open the emails you send is half of the battle. The second half, which will guide these users to your site and help to increase sales, is the click rate. It’s easy nowadays to “set it and forget it” by plugging information into templates and schedule when they are sent. However, keep in mind that you want your copy to sound warm and inviting (like there IS a human behind the screen).
To further capture the interest of your subscribers, there are a few practical tools you can use to inspire clicks. Here are a few of them.
- Use gimmicks that aren’t gimmicky. Within your email campaign, choose from an extensive list of incentives that encourage users to shop. Send updates about new products or additional services. Everyone likes to be included, so utilize FOMO (fear of missing out) when it comes to sales and deals.
- Create visual interest in your email. Images take precedence over words. Disguise the link as an image and motivate your subscribers to click on it. One way to do this is to utilize digital catalogs to create visual interest. Incorporate a GIF-flipping image of the digital lookbook or digital catalogs and add it to your email signature, inspiring readers to click on it and be directed to your website.
- Add video clips in the body of your email. Video clips are made to highlight a product or service, act as a welcome message, or give a behind-the-scenes tour. Videos are engaging and encourage more sales because many consumers and buyers are more amenable to interacting with videos. At least 77% of consumers are moved to purchase products after watching a video about it.
- Make engaging calls to action. All of the enticing and engaging emails are useful, but they could all be for nothing without a clear direction. Be sure to use CTA (Call To Action) buttons to influence click rates. Design clear and engaging CTA boxes that direct shoppers to perform the desired actions. Inspire your readers to convert!
Don’t Overdo It
There are many ways to engage and re-engage your customers. It’s essential to develop a strategy to convert subscribers to sales and not repel them. Don’t overload your subscribers with marketing emails. Welcome, encourage, and reward your customers. Try different tactics a little at a time. A/B testing is very helpful for sending small batches of emails to your target audience. Think outside the box when it comes to composing your email copy. Set specific goals and send out your email batches. Then, analyze the data to see what works and where you can improve.
Follow the tips above, and in no time, you will see an increase in sales from your marketing emails. Make your content visually appealing, easy to read and understand, and don’t overwhelm your subscribers. This will help you get the most out of your email marketing strategy.