Despite what many bloggers may say, we can confirm here at Corrao Group that email marketing, in fact, is not dead- it’s actually growing. According to the The Radicati Group, worldwide will top 3 billion users by 2020. Not only is email marketing growing, but also it delivers the highest ROI over SEO, SEM, and content marketing (Econsultancy)
This just means it is going to get harder and harder to grab ahold of your audience’s attention. This means your email marketing strategy is going to become a critical key in how you run build your marketing campaigns. Let’s take a look at what email strategies you can start implementing today:
Tips to Improve Your Email Marketing
- Segment your list
Segmenting your lists allows you to send emails that are more targeted to your audience. Not only does it allow you to be more target, but segmented and targeted emails generate 58% of all revenue. (The Direct Marketing Association, 2015)
Here are some ways to segment your lists:
By Sales/Marketing Funnel – New Leads need to receive different content then a contact that is about to make a purchase. Segmenting by what stage they are in your journey will allow you to help them move through the journey
By Location – This allows you to send content for events or store locations to people who actually live in that area
By Industry: Different industries have different needs and wants. You also can tailor different customer stories to people in those industries
- Personalize your emails
Personalizing your emails is proven to work. The open rate for e-mails with a personalized message was 18.8%, as compared to 13.1% without any personalization in 2016. (Source: Statista 2016)
Here are some way to personalize your emails:
Gather accurate data from your audience: The only way to personalize emails is by having the correct data. Some data fields to get:
- First Name
- Interest
- Source
- Location
Dynamic Content: Sending the right content to your consumer based on the data you have acquired on this. This allows you to create one email that dynamically displays the content your audience wants to see
Merge Tags – Bring information you have on your client into the email like first name, company name,etc
- Test when to send your email
Do not send your email at the same time every week. Test to see when your audience is opening your emails and engaging with them. You want your message to get your target at the optimal time that they will read it. According to SeoPressor, the best day to send your email is on tuesday and the best time during the day is from 9-11am.
- A/B Testing
At the end of the day opens and click throughs are what you looking for with your email strategy. A little tweak to a subject line or a call to action could make a difference to your bottom line. When A/B testing remember to only make one little change at a time so you can quantify what is actually making that change. Here are some parts on your email you can A/B:
- Subject Line
- Call to actions
- Personalizations (Hi There vs. Hi John)
- Sender ( Marketing@company.com vs. John@company.com)
- Images
- Offers ( Free Trial vs. 10% off)
- Automations
Setting up automations can save a whole lot of time for you while increasing your customer lifetime value and increasing conversions. By setting up lead nurturing campaigns and other marketing campaigns, you could have personalized email on autopilot with different stages and/or events triggering them. Marketing automation drives a 14.5% increase in sales productivity and a 12.2% reduction in marketing overhead. (CMO.com) and Businesses that use marketing automation to nurture prospects see a 451% increase in qualified leads (The Annuitas Group). If you would like to learn more about marketing automation, please visit our Salesforce page.
Here are some ideas for marketing automation campaigns you can be running:
- Welcome Series triggered from a blog subscriptions or account creations
- Abandoned Cart Series triggered when customer leaves the shopping cart without buying
- Gated Content download triggered email
