Ever wondered how many emails are sent on a daily basis? What would you guess the number to be? Millions? Billions? Try 196 billion emails. That’s a lot of information flying around cyberspace, isn’t it? Emails have become an integral part of our day-to-day lives and the way we do business.
Is it any surprise, then, that email marketing has become a mainstay for many marketers? What’s not to love about an email campaign?
You get to reach a wide audience for next to no cost at all. And if one person isn’t interested, they can simply delete it—no harm, no foul. Email campaigns can be highly effective. And other marketers think so too. According to the infographic by 99 Firms, 70% of digital marketers consider this medium the one with the most bang for your buck.
Why then, are you not getting the kind of results that you want? We understand that no campaign is likely to get a 100% positive response, but if you’re finding that the majority of people don’t even open your email, then something needs to change.
In this post, we will go through some of the main areas to look at when it comes to improving your results.
Personalization
This is a biggie—you need to start by addressing the person you are emailing by name. Addressing an email with something along the lines of “Dear Subscriber” is about as effective as those “Occupant” mailers that companies send by snail mail, and it’s just as likely to end up in the trash unopened.
But do take things further when it comes to personalization. The stat we mentioned earlier about 44% of people having bought something thanks to a marketing email had a key qualifier in it—they were targeted emails.
Profile-Based Targeting
It’s so easy to dash off a generic email and send it to everyone on your subscriber list. Easy, but not all that effective as a sales strategy. Like any other marketing campaign, you’ll get better results if you craft a message that’s geared towards one particular target segment.
You’ll need to find a logical way to segment your subscriber list. Start with the offer that you want to make. Then work out who the ideal target market for the offer is. From there, you can select the right people from your subscriber list and create a marketing message especially for them.
It might mean sending out twenty emails rather than a hundred, but if you do it properly, you could end up with more positive responses. More than that, though, you haven’t bugged the other people on your list with yet another offer that they have no interest in.
Email Automation
Once you have the segmentation sorted out, it’s time to start using automation to your advantage. Using automation, you can set up the email way ahead of time and schedule it to be sent at the optimal moment. There’s no need to worry about deadlines not being met, forgetting to send an email, or missing the right moment.
Automation takes the pressure off you—and most CRM programs that help you with this offer valuable analytics as well. You’ll be able to see who opened the email, clicked on the link, etc.
Time It Perfectly
Timing can make or break an email campaign. Think about when your target market is most likely to read your email and react to it. If you have this function automated, you can set it to go off on a Sunday night at 7pm if you like. You don’t have to stick to normal business hours.
This is also where understanding your target market is of great benefit. Let’s say that you sell office supplies. You would want to send out your email when your audience is at work, at a time when there is a bit of a lull in activity.
Responsive Email Design
What is possibly most important, is considering what type of devices your audience might be using. There are so many devices on the market, that it pays to consider responsive email design. This means that the email will display properly on an iPad or an iPhone.
If your target audience has to scroll across to read the full message, or are unable to read it because of the size of the font, you’ve lost out. If your mail isn’t easy to read, most people aren’t going to bother.
The Most Important Thing of All
What’s the most important thing when it comes to your email, though? The subject line. Get creative here, because that might be as far as anyone gets. Get the subject line wrong, and your email is bound to be ignored. Again, find something that would get the attention of your target market and work with that.
Conclusion
At the end of the day, an email campaign can bring in some nice business if approached correctly. Target your messages carefully and create a killer subject line, and you are ahead of the game. Bring it home by timing it perfectly through automation, and watch the dollars start rolling in.
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