What is the first thing that pops up in your mind when you hear the word ‘marketing’? Most likely, you thought of something to do with sales or selling. While generating sales is the end goal of any business, the main priority in marketing should be building a relationship with your customers. Building a base of loyal customers can help your business in the long term and lead to continuous sales over time. Nothing does it quite like email marketing. You would expect that emailing would take the back seat in marketing with the rise of social media. However, according to consumers, email is the preferred method of communication by businesses. Yes, email marketing also has a huge pay-off. You can expect an average return of $42 for every $1 spent.
It needs to be successful. Your email marketing strategy must be planned and designed well to communicate effectively. Digital marketing courses can help you understand these strategies and help to grow your brand. We’d like to offer you a few influential email marketing strategies to generate more sales.
Short subject lines
Subject lines may make or break your email marketing strategy. 47% of your email subscribers will open your email based on your subject line alone. That is why it is essential to plan out what your subject line will contain carefully. The best way to do this is to tell your subscribers as much as possible using the fewest possible words, keeping it to 6-10 words at the most.
Give something away
Giveaways can be in the form of a discount code, a sale, a gift, or exclusive content. Everyone likes freebies and sales, giving consumers an additional excuse to buy your products. You can link the sale to an upcoming holiday or a certain theme. You should make sure that the sale is announced in the subject line and is short and clear.
Another influential marketing tactic used by many businesses is exclusivity. You could do this by creating exclusive content available only to your subscribers, which makes your subscribers feel special and deepens brand loyalty and connection.
Personalize your emails
You are bound to engage better with your subscribers if you personalize your email campaigns. Using your subscriber’s name is one way of doing this, but many more. Birthday emails are found to have a higher click rate than regular promotional emails, so you might want to consider sending those out. Remember, the priority is to build a long-term relationship with your subscribers.
Segment your email lists
Nobody wants to receive irrelevant emails, and segmenting your subscriber lists can help you not make that mistake. How and why does it work?
Categorize or divide your subscribers according to what they’ve shown interest in. This can help keep your emails personalized and for your campaigns to target the right audience.
Segmenting can also help you give personalized product recommendations. Giving your customers relevant product recommendations makes them most likely to trust you more as they feel understood. For example, if a customer has purchased paint from your store, you could send them a follow-up email recommending brushes, palettes, or other supplies that they would most likely need. While this could be building the need for the products in your art section, it could also be educational for someone just starting. Customers appreciate informative content as long as it’s valuable and relevant to them. Also, make sure it includes a link to your website to smooth sailing for your customer to buy your product.
While you can’t always make sure every subscriber gets relevant content, segmenting your email lists can keep most of them satisfied.
Re-engage inactive subscribers
As mentioned earlier, you can’t please everyone, and you will most likely lose a few subscribers every year if you don’t make an effort to keep them engaged. Even though this is normal, it is easier and less expensive to make inactive subscribers active rather than gain new subscribers as your current subscribers already know about your brand. The first step is to consider the timeframe that would classify a subscriber as inactive. Inactivity for three to six months is considered a good lapse of time. Now that you know this, it’s time to start winning them back.
One tactic is sending them a quick survey to fill out, promising a discount code, which will help you learn more about them. You could also send them “we-miss-you” emails with a freebie as gifts are not easily ignored.
These re-engagement campaigns might not be easy, but they are still more cost-effective than getting new subscribers. However, for those subscribers who don’t re-engage, you might want to consider giving them the preference to unsubscribe, and this will enable you to spend your resources on the right subscribers.
Mobile-friendly emails
Nowadays, people use their mobile phones or tablets more often than their PCs. Don’t get me wrong. People still use their laptops. It’s just that they use their mobile phones a lot more frequently, even if it’s for a glance to know what the email is about. With that being said, if your emails are not suitable for mobile use, you will most probably lose your chance of making a subscriber into a customer. A helpful tip is creating one-column emails, using larger font size, and having an easy-to-access call-to-action button.
While there are many more email marketing strategies out there, the way for you to find out what suits your brand is to have your campaigns tested and evaluated. You can plan to have variations of the same email sent to help you understand what makes your subscribers engage more. You will create better email campaigns when you know what works best for your business. This process, however, has its challenges. If you are serious about understanding the nooks and crannies of digital marketing, you might want to consider doing the strategic digital marketing course provided by Great Learning. If your email marketing strategy is executed well, this is your chance for your business to create a loyal customer base that will push you ahead of your competition.