Email marketing is the act of sending digital emails to users or potential customers for purposes of advertising, has for a long time been one of the easiest and concrete ways to market a business’s services or products — the latter accounts for about 10 percent of the share of all marketing strategies.
Email market has a success rate of 25% and a click-through rate of 92%. To market using emails effectively, it is therefore imperative to understand the working of the human mind.
The aspects involve getting to know how the minds of your clients’ work using data collected from previous purchases or cookie data.
For example, understanding the emotions or actions evoked from a client or user in reaction to specific ads is essential to customize your marketing campaign to best suit and focus your effort on particular advertisements that will get the client to accept and act on the ad accordingly.
A successful email marketing strategy turns prospects into buying customers and existing customers into loyal clients.
Benefits of email marketing
Email marketing has numerous benefits which include;
- Since 91% of consumers check their email accounts on a daily basis. With the vast sea of email owners, it, therefore, becomes easier and more effective to reach to your clients and potential clients using email marketing.
- Email marketing is cost effective as you get to send emails generally without the need to hire a specialist. This assures a return on investment (ROI). According to research, you get $40 return for every dollar spent on email marketing.
- Email marketing is faster as email service providers provide instant notification capabilities for their clients. This means that your customers receive your email the minute you send it out.
- Feedback collection is possible to gauge the effectiveness of the different approaches used during email marketing especially for companies that use email service providers.
Disadvantages of email marketing
- The main obstacle facing email marketing is the fact that the sender is never sure of the feedback to get from the recipient.
- Another drawback is that most people, in fact, according to this research, direct mail competes with email marketing where most people favored direct mail. To learn about direct mail read more here.
Effective Email Marketing Strategies You Can Start Using Right Now
To gain the advantages of email marketing, one has to conclusively know, understand and exploit the human mind for a successful marketing campaign. Understanding the human brain involves identifying the right buttons to push for every category of existing or prospective clients.
A successful email marketing strategy is justified by the results it shows at the end of the day.
- Make a goal
Setting and defining target figures and expected output from an email marketing endeavor should be the first step in making an effective email marketing campaign.
The following questions should be answered to justify the purpose of the campaign;
Purpose
What is the primary goal of the campaign? Is it to gain more clients or bolster the loyalty of existing ones?
Expected output
What will the company learn from these campaigns and is the return worth the whole venture?
Exit strategy
If we are introducing or advertising an offer, how do we inform clients when the offer ends and which is the best approach to do so?
Answering these questions with the customer’s concern in mind will help you set a clear and realistic goal of the email marketing strategy.
- Email lists
Building a self-compiled email list
Some companies today offer the option of buying email lists whereby some email addresses are sold to you to use for email marketing campaigns. These emails, however, are not personalized in that the probability of the recipient turning to be a client is very low. The click-through rates for bought email addresses is meager.
Furthermore, buying the said emails is very costly. Using your resources and website data to collect consumer email lists for future marketing is the best way forward.
This reduces the chances of your ad being labeled as spam or being deleted. It is also known that re-contacting past clients have higher feedback rates rather than sending random ads to random recipients.
Focused email list
Getting an email list has long-term benefits. Grouping your clients under product categories or service categories improves the chances of the ad appealing to them.
Aimless ad sending is costlier and has a lower return on investment.
Asking clients to add you to their contacts
It is a common practice for marketing emails to be automatically labeled as spam and put in the spam folder whenever an email from the sender is received. Communicating with recipients and requesting them to add your email address to their contact list does the trick.
- Designing the email ad poster
Creating an email marketing poster is one of the most crucial tips when building a good email marketing strategy.
A good email poster has the following characteristics;
Best first impressions
A right colour combination and header design make the email have a lasting impact on the recipient’s mind. It becomes an open invitation to see what the email is about altogether.
Select a good template and customise the colours to the point of perfection. If not done well, the clients will scroll through your email.
Selection of words
Using numerous and complex words immediately discourages the recipient from reading the whole thing altogether. This is because most people understand email ads when they are resting, and anything that looks like work to the brain immediately discourages the reader.
It is therefore wise to use simple and fewer words to explain your purpose.
- Feedback analysis and response
Measuring and compiling feedback
Feedback is measured and gathered by data servers in email service providers. Measuring feedback is an excellent way to gauge your traction. It guides you into the mind of the clients.
This analytics consists of compiled data showing the characteristics of the email recipients and their reaction towards the email ad. It shows, for example, the age, gender, location and maybe marital status of those who either deleted or labeled the email as spam.
Analysis
Reflecting and analyzing the measured data informs you on ways to better the strategy or techniques to better the recipient list or even the email’s general outlook. This helps you better and improve the nature of the ad for future successes.
Response to feedback
A lot of customers feel satisfied when the feedback they give is acted upon. It not only offers a sense of belonging to them but also creates an excellent atmosphere for driving sales.
- Resending
Resending the email persistently is a good practice. Customers are more likely to respond to persistent ads if they do not hide or delete them.
Whenever an email is received many times, the average human mind grows more curious and ends up having the person open the email to see what the email contains. Re-enlisting inactive clients is also part of a good marketing strategy.
- Scheduling
Creating a routine
Choosing the perfect time to resend or send an email ad might not be easy since one cannot correctly predict the reaction it will evoke from the recipient or the current mood of the recipient. This is the reason why even the most personal email ads have a touch of official business in them.
It would, therefore, be wise to stick to a specific and regular emailing routine so that it is fixed in the recipient’s mind that a particular email usually comes at a certain time of the month or week or year. The weekends work best as most people are relaxing.
Time of day
Science has proven that the best time to send emails is at 8 p.m. When people are not busy working in their offices.
- Use email marketing not only for marketing ads but also building excellent rapport with your clients
Friends and family use our product; why shouldn’t you? We have all probably seen such a line. The purpose of such phrases especially when used in email marketing is to improve the rapport with the client. It is common knowledge that clients who consider marketing efforts to be friendly grow into loyal customers.
- Respecting your email list
Respecting your recipients is important as offensive ads could ruin the rapport between the client and your firm which may have you lose a client.
- Mobile friendliness
A considerable number of people use a mobile phone today. In fact, mobile phones account for 47 %of many email marketing campaigns. Ensuring that you send out a mobile-friendly email is therefore very important. A good 55% of mobile phone users have purchased an item after receiving a marketing email on their mobile phones.
Email marketing is not dying as the popular belief is. In fact, according to Bloomberg, email marketing played a huge role in Former President Obama’s campaigns.
Having a definite and clear email marketing strategy with the mind of the customer being considered is bound to set you up for success.
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