Improve your email marketing with our 7 tips – and don’t forget interactivity!
Since the inception of email marketing, a whopping $13 million in sales have been generated thanks to this channel, that has firmly established itself as one of the most effective direct marketing channels. Despite many years of predictions that email marketing wouldn’t last, that it would be replaced or disappear, that day still isn’t on the horizon. In fact, email marketing remains one of the most effective ways of reaching potential and existing customers.
Even today, email campaigns still have an astounding return on investment, which means they are still as effective as ever. The only thing that is constantly evolving in the field are marketing strategies themselves. This means that whatever worked well five years ago will probably no longer work today.
Have you been doing email marketing for a while now? Have you noticed that as time goes on, it has become increasingly difficult to maintain a high engagement rate? Consumers are dazzled by the hundreds of emails they receive per day, often generic and not very personal.
In this article we will try to answer the question: how to conquer email marketing and improve your email campaigns in 2021? We will explore 7 components that can be implemented to improve your email campaigns by engaging subscribers, improving your CTR (click-through-rate) and creating more engaging content.
1 – Behavioural segmentation
Segmentation has become a key element of e-mail marketing, as e-mail campaigns become more audience-specific. After all, your subscribers are not all looking for the same thing.
A survey conducted by Salesforce showed that 57% of consumers are willing to share personal information if it means they will receive personalised content and offers in return, this is zero party data. This means that if you’re not already segmenting your database, you may be missing out on this valuable information. Especially since third-party cookies will soon disappear, leaving a void of data behind. This gap can be filled with zero- and first-party data.
Brands looking to improve audience engagement should also segment their lists based on how they have interacted with your website in the past. Second, understand how you want them to progress through the customer journey.
By gaining this type of information, you are able to send highly targeted emails and offers to your audience, increasing your chances of getting higher open and click-through rates. For example:
- ? A person who visited your website but didn’t make a purchase could receive emails informing them about the different products and services you offer, special offers, etc.
- ? A prospect who bounced from the order or services page could receive emails with customer testimonials to build up their trust.
- ? Customers who ordered on their first visit could receive a feature overview email or welcome offer.
Want to learn more about segmentation? Read Qualifio’s e-book featuring 11 success stories from leading European brands or watch this webinar that examines the topic at length.
2- Use convincing and relevant subject lineS and pre-headers
The subject line of an email is the first point of interaction with the reader. It can save or destroy an email campaign. If you can’t get the recipient’s attention with your subject line, all your efforts will have been wasted.
Email marketers have long advised using a cryptic subject line to entice subscribers to open their emails, but this tactic is having less and less impact as audiences receive too many such emails. Nowadays, a good subject line should explain what the subscriber can expect from the email. Create a sense of urgency, but don’t be too pushy.
Consider the length of a subject line carefully when writing it. Two thirds of emails are opened on a mobile device, and they can only display between 35 and 38 characters in portrait mode – so plan for a 17-24 character subject line. And try not to exceed 3 to 5 words.
The pre-header is a small snippet of email text that is displayed in conjunction with your subject line in most email programs like Apple Mail, and web-based applications like Gmail, AOL and Yahoo! When you can’t get your whole message across with the subject line alone, fill in the gaps with the header text to maximise your email’s open rate.
3 – Personalise your messages
Personalisation has become the driving force behind email marketing. It’s an essential element in retaining and engaging your customers. According to some studies, personalised emails improve click-through rates by 14% and increase conversion rates by 10%.
Here are some tips on how to better personalize your emails:
- ? First of all, your emails should not start with “Dear Customer”. If you’re currently doing this, it’s high time to start addressing all your customers by name. Using the names of your readers when you send them an email will greatly improve the quality and results of your email campaigns. Check out these excellent examples of personalisation, created by the Dogofriends agency.
- ? When a consumer feels listened to and sees that you are attentive to their needs, they are more likely to engage with your email and will be more inclined to follow up on your CTA. Don’t be afraid to use a real signature and address, as a do-not-reply address will take away from the authenticity of your message.
- ? Email personalisation is not limited to simply using the names of your recipients, but can also be done with dynamic content blocks that change the content of a specific section of the email upon opening. In this way, the design of your e-mails can remain the same and you just need to specify the content that needs to be changed according to the segmentation.
4 – Add videos to your emails
Video is one of the most underrated tools in email marketing – and yet, it has enormous potential.
First of all, it should be noted that video is currently one of the most popular pieces of content on the web. On average, 78% of people watch online videos weekly and 55% watch them daily. But what’s impressive is that 50% of consumers want to see videos made by the brands they are interested in. This shows the potential that a combination of video and email can bring to your marketing campaigns.
By including this form of content that is highly popular with online audiences in your emails, you can potentially increase your conversion rates.
So where do you start? Don’t worry, adding videos to your email campaigns is pretty simple to do. If you know your audience well, it’s a breeze.
A key question when considering including video content in an email campaign is whether or not your subscribers use email platforms that allow for embedded video content. Below is an overview of email providers that offer video playback capabilities.
The next step is to select the best types of videos to create for your audience. Here are some examples of the different kinds of videos you can alternate throughout your campaign:
- ? Product demos
- ? Educational video guides
- ?? Visual stories
Your videos will be great for grabbing attention, but how do you get your readers to take action afterwards? You can do this by including a CTA (call-to-action) towards the end of your video (make it clickable) or by placing social media sharing buttons at the bottom of the video.
And remember, no autoplay! Most internet users don’t like a video to be played right away without having asked for it. So be patient and give your audience the opportunity to launch the video by themselves.
5 – Send your email at the right time
When it comes to email campaigns, assuming that everyone opens their emails at a certain time is a big mistake. The crystal ball that determines the best time to send out your email unfortunately doesn’t exist, so it can be hit and miss deciding at what time to send an email to your subscribers.
As we lack a universal one-size fits all solution for this, it will take some experimentation to determine the ideal time to send your emails. When trying to find the ideal timing for your emails, don’t forget to take into account the different time zones your audience are in.
6 – Make sure your emails are mobile responsive
Avoid your emails going straight to your readers’ spam or junk folders by making sure you’re creating content that is optimised for mobile devices. Your emails should be as eye-catching and appealing on a smartphone as they are on a laptop.
To that end, we recommend opting for a single-column design that works well with vertical scrolling. And don’t hesitate to leave plenty of blank spaces, as this will make your email easier to read. Also, make sure your CTA buttons are large enough to be easily clicked on on a smartphone screen – they should be at least 44 pixels square.
7 – Follow up on your email’s performance
Tracking the results of your emails once they’ve gone out is crucial. Firstly, check if your audience has opened your e-mails. By analysing the open rate of your emails, you will be able to judge whether your subject lines are attractive enough for your subscribers to actually open your messages.
Understanding your click-through rate is necessary to determine the quality of the copy of the body of your email. If your content isn’t interesting, relevant, useful and action-oriented, your subscribers will not feel compelled to take action. A 4% CTR (click through rate) is the average across most industries. Remember that your click-through rate depends largely on your open rate.
Don’t forget to use UTM codes to track visitor engagement after they click. Setting up consistent UTM codes will allow you to know if your subscribers are converting, which pages they are visiting or if they are giving up and leaving immediately.
And last but not least – use interactivity
Once you’ve taken these 7 tips into account, don’t forget to use interactivity to create even more engaging campaigns that deliver results. With Qualifio, you can create over 50 different types of interactive campaign formats – whether it’s quizzes, questionnaires, personality tests, surveys or games, you’ll find the right format to interact with and get to know your audience better.
Conclusion
Email marketing has tremendous potential to generate additional revenue for your business, and with our tips, you’re already well on your way to making the most of your email campaign strategy.
Use these email marketing tips to create compelling messages, increase your conversion rates and build customer loyalty. Follow our 7 tips and you’ll have everything you need to achieve your marketing goals with great email campaigns.
Note: The visuals in this article were created by Renderforest‘s graphic design tool.
This article was written by Sona Malintsyan from Renderforest, an all-in-one branding platform with over 6 years of experience, 3 million projects created and 10 million active users. Their mission is to make high-performance branding affordable and accessible to everyone. They provide the most advanced marketing tools to effortlessly create professional quality videos and animations, original logos and professional websites. The site is available in 9 languages.
