Email Marketing – Your Online Staple Ingredient

When I wake up in the morning one of the first things I do is check my email. First, I check my personal email. Second, I check my work email to see if there is anything I particularly need to prepare myself for that day. I bet for some of you as well that the last thing you do before you go to sleep in the evening is you check your email. It may not be our favourite application to use, but email is not here to gain popularity votes. Email is designed to be efficient and direct. Therein lays the key to making the most of email marketing. It doesn’t just boil down to the use of an email inbox either. I recently read an article I found in ClickZ and there was a sentence which caught my attention, “Leading marketers now understand the value of an email address is not just in opening up a line of communication with a customer; it’s also as an effective means for targeting and attribution across alternate digital channels” (Myers, 2015). The potential opportunities in simply having an email database are huge and can be utilised in ways you might not have thought of yet.

Opt-in Options

If you regularly use an email database for your email marketing, give your subscribers an option to choose which emails they can opt-in, or out for. Not only will it reduce your bounce rate, but your customers will thank you for thinking of them and their inbox. If you only send information the customer has deemed to be relevant to them, both parties win.

 

Continuity

Email marketing = Continual performance. No matter the current buzzword in marketing trends, we still use email. One’s email address provides the foundation upon which marketing via means such as social media is even possible in the first place. You can’t set-up a profile on any platform without handing over your email address first. Throughout all the ups and downs of online platforms and applications which have come and gone, name one constant which we still use today. Yep, email.

Personalise

Get personal! An email can be so much more than a status update or a tweet. You can tailor your content to suit the customer. People like recognition as well. If you run an ecommerce business, the potential to customise and personalise your email marketing content is endless. You could, for example, based on past purchases or items which have been left abandoned in a shopping cart, automate a ‘personal’ email gently reminding the customer of their forgotten items. In a digitised age, a personal touch will be appreciated.

Read All About It!

Treat your email campaigns like a newspaper. You need to have a headlining story, which must have an attention grabbing headline and useful information and content. Even ask yourself if the content will be considered newsworthy to your customers.

Sometimes Looks Do Matter

What do your emails look like? In a great piece posted on HubSpot, author Kolowich lists a bunch of aesthetically pleasing email marketing campaigns we could all learn a little bit from. Check it out here.

Call-To-Action

Always make sure you include a Call-To-Action (CTA) in your email campaigns. If you don’t provide guidance and direction for your customers, there is essentially no point in even clicking send. Think about your desired end result and goal which you would like to achieve through your email campaign. Then tailor this to turn it into an actionable and interesting CTA.

Mobile responsiveness

We’ve written about this quite a lot recently here, here and here. I’m not quite done and I’m going to mention it again. Logic would suggest that if everything else is being optimised for mobile viewing, shouldn’t your email campaigns be too?! If you only format your emails to look dazzling on the screen of a PC you’re sorely missing out. The majority of internet browsing is now used via mobile devices. The moment you send an email not optimised for mobile viewing, it will be opened, dismissed and quickly put in the trash bin. It also means ensuring your email marketing is not overloaded with images and other high data draining layouts. It’ll take longer to load and your customer will be annoyed that their data is being chewed up.

Subscribe/unsubscribe

A relatively straightforward tip, but one which seems to be overlooked quite often; the subscribe/unsubscribe button. Sure, you don’t want your subscribers to unsubscribe, but you always have the potential to lure them back because you still have their email. If you make it difficult for them to do so, you only have yourself to blame if they don’t come back.

Safety net

Your email database is your business’s safety net. “An email address is the most personal, permanent, and portable means of identifying someone online” (Myers, 2015).  With Google’s algorithm updates happening left, right and centre and other social media organic reach rapidly declining, you can rely on your trusty email database.

If you’re interested in learning more about efficient and effective email marketing, get in touch with our Digital Strategy team here at SponsoredLinX on 1300 859 600 or, visit our website. It can also be a great tool which you can use on your own!

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