It’s not difficult to define email marketing, at least at the most basic level. A means of direct marketing that communicates a brand’s intended message to its audience. This message could be a commercial, a fundraiser or information on offers such as discounts.
In this age where the internet is king, email marketing is one of the smartest marketing strategies any brand can build.
Email Marketing Optimization Hacks Infographic by 99firms.com
By developing and nurturing a brand-customer relationship through email newsletters, businesses build more than just awareness. They also build loyalty and trust, which are two vital ingredients for the success of any brand, especially in terms of conversions and revisits.
Research by 99firms.com shows that there are many benefits email marketing can bring to a brand. Right now, email marketing comes second only to search marketing when we talk of effective online marketing strategies. And with more than 50% of internet users actively emailing daily, advertisers have large numbers of potential subscribers within easy reach.
Moreover, emailing also gives businesses the opportunity to attend to potential business “spoilers” on time. For instance, shopping cart abandonment is a massive headache for many online retailers. A simple reminder email could attend to that matter pronto.
Once in a while though, there’s the occasional rejection or spamming of mails which rains on email marketers’ parade. But, in a pragmatic move, email service providers have come up with the “opt-in” option which gives consumers the power to select who can email them. It’s practically a win-win situation.
Consumers now feel less spammed and more in charge, while brands can be sure that their painstakingly crafted mails are getting to the ideal customer.
Why Does Email Marketing Work?
First things first, everyone needs to accept the fact that email marketing isn’t going anywhere. Existing data show that, globally, the average amount of emails we send per year exceeds 74 trillion. And this number will definitely increase in 2018, as the daily amount already stands at around 200 billion.
These numbers only hint of the potential of email marketing. The following should bring us up to speed on its effectiveness in actual practice.
85% of US retailers have revealed that they consider email marketing one of their most effective tactics for customer acquisition. And they are not bluffing too. 77% of consumers say they actually prefer brands to communicate with them via email.
Now, with the fanfare that goes on on social media, it’s easy to think that everyone lives there. Naturally, brands might also want to shift efforts to social media in a bid to get more customers. Apparently, you really shouldn’t judge a book by its cover because the numbers bust this myth.
While 74% of people check Facebook daily, 91% check their emails at least once daily. Also, 44% of customers will buy at least one item due to a promotional message in a targeted email. Plus, emails convert three times better than social media.
Moreover, the ROI on email marketing is tremendous. According to Mckinsey, email ROI is about 3 times more than what social media can deliver.
And to drive the final nail on the coffin, let’s consider this data from Custora. According to their stats, the biggest driver for Black Friday trading is, hands down, email marketing. Up to 25.1% of the total sales from marketing channels come from this strategy alone.
Implementing Email Marketing
Understanding the Psychology of Email Recipients
A little psychology will take you far in nearly any field, including the world of business. And so, to effectively implement email marketing, businesses need to understand the psychology of their clients. This will help the marketer understand what technique to use for what segment of its customer base.
Content is king, as they say in copywriting (which includes email marketing). But how many know that even the subject line of an email impacts significantly on the entire content? Perhaps even more significant than the rest of your content.
Many companies have been able to boost their email open rates simply by optimizing their subject line. Using fewer words and including music lyrics and movie titles, for instance, are proven tactics.
In emails with subject lines of between 3 to 4 words, email open rate was 48%. And in emails with subject lines containing movie titles or song lyrics, email open rate increases by 26.2%.
Still, the main prize remains conversion which is what all competing brands jostle for. Campaign Monitor advises businesses to choose their call to action format wisely as it can affect conversion rates.
From their findings, a call to action button is far more profitable for a business than a text link. In fact, businesses can improve their conversion rates by up to 28% simply by choosing the button over the text link.
Understanding Various Email Marketing Techniques
There are all kinds of email marketing techniques that businesses use to reach their target customers. Three of these email techniques include: personalization, segmentation, and incentives and offers.
Personalization and segmentation are somewhat alike as they both seek to achieve similar goals. In segmentation, businesses divide their customers into categories based on set criteria. This they do in order to ensure that customers get emails relevant to their individual situations.
Campaign Monitor calls segmentation a personalization tactic. And although personalization is a bit more specific than segmentation, both techniques achieve nearly the same objective. That is, to make emails highly personalized so as to drive sales. Segmentation achieves this goal by dividing email recipients in specific categories based on predefined criteria, essentially segmenting the mailing list. Personalization adds a personal touch to every email sent; typically, this is the first name of the recipient.
The segmentation technique brings about roughly 15% more opens and 60% more clicks than non-segmented emails. But even more importantly, this technique has helped marketers generate 18 times more revenue than when they used broadcast emails.
Lastly and perhaps the most powerful aspect of email marketing are the incentives and offer. They are almost irresistible for customers.
Statistics have it that the average email reader will open any email at all from a brand. Why? FOMO (fear of missing out) is the very real, albeit intangible key. No one wants to miss out on any potential deal, coupon, or discount.
The promise of a discount is the most irresistible, it turns out. Businesses that include an offer of a price decrease in their promotional emails generate a click-to-conversion rate of nearly 10%.
Conclusion
So many have questioned the relevance of email marketing in today’s marketplace, probably due to its unassuming nature. But with all the stats and figures presented in this article, we hope you’ve been able to see that email marketing is going to remain here for a while.
Whether this technique will work for your business or not is entirely up to you.
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