Despite all of the recent hype about new marketing techniques that use SMS or social media, “classic” email marketing is by no means a thing of the past.
In fact, email marketing still has an extremely high ROI of over $32 for every dollar spent, with the average now being around $42. Of course, such success rates hold true when a company takes advantage of email marketing to the best of their abilities, using data about their customer base and smart email optimization techniques.
If you are already using email marketing and not seeing these sorts of results, make sure you are following the best email marketing strategies available.
Use some of these tips to take your email marketing campaign to the next level:
Make Your Readers Want to Open Your Email
One of the biggest hurdles in email marketing is getting your customers to actually read your message. This is because other common marketing problems, like knowing that your message has been delivered properly, are minor concerns when it comes to emails, which send you a response when your message hasn’t sent properly or other technical difficulties arise. Similarly, people have been found to check their email on average 34 times a day—largely thanks to the popularity of smart phones—meaning your email can be read dozens of times throughout the day. In light of this knowledge, your challenge is actually getting your customers to open your email and not send it directly into the trash.
You should consider the subject of your email very carefully. If you think this might be what is inhibiting your email campaign’s success, you can contact an email marketing agency or digital strategy agency to find out what messages your clients will best respond to. Research like this could increase the rate of opening by over 25% at times.
Perhaps most importantly, you must ensure that your website landing pages are optimized for mobile devices. If a potential client accesses your site via mobile device and it takes forever to load, or is difficult to navigate, you will have shot your entire marketing campaign in the foot. Responsive email design is a crucial party of your campaign—so don’t overlook it in this era of mobile phone mania.
Pay Attention to Alt Tags
Estimates find that over 80% of users have images disabled on their email accounts, probably to avoid downloading malware and to speed up processing. If one of your readers with this feature opens your email and only sees a bunch of empty frames, they will obviously ignore your message and odds are they will unsubscribe from your list. Add alt tags to all of your images. These should be concise, but still contain your SEO keyword and the basic message you want to get across to your customers.
Make the Email Interesting and Interactive
There’s nothing worse than getting a form email that simply tells you to buy a product because, well, your company thinks they should. You have to make your email applicable to the clients that are receiving it and actually interesting for them to read. Don’t send out generic form emails to all of your customers – make groups based on whatever characteristics are applicable to your company’s product or message. An even better way to engage with your audience is to place a “call to action” in the email. Ask them to leave their opinion, vote for their favorite item, enter into a contest, complain to their local officials, or whatever makes sense given your organization’s goals. The point is to give your customers a way to really interact with your business or at least the cause that it is based on. Asking your customers to actively participate can be the difference between a successful email marketing campaign and a dud.
Take your company to the next level with an email marketing campaign tailored to your specific customer base and company needs, and use these tips to make sure you see the ROI you have been looking for!
