Many new forms of communication have surfaced over the years. However, email marketing continues to stand tall and most likely will in the years to come.
333.2 billion emails are expected to be sent and received each day in 2022 alone. Analysts predict the figure to skyrocket to over 375 billion by 2025.
That’s not all. With the widespread popularity and incredible benefits of email marketing comes a massive return on investment. For every dollar spent on email marketing, you can generate an average return of $42.
Insane, huh?
It’s important to note, however, that producing ROI through email takes more than simply sending several emails each month. You’ll need to plan and implement a solid strategy that will make you stand out from the crowd, especially during an era where almost all companies are trying to win consumers over email.
If you’re having trouble improving engagement and revenue, you’ve come to the right place.
This article of ours will walk you through the ins and outs of effective email marketing. You’ll be learning six tactics that have helped digital marketers yield the results they were hoping for, with some seeing even better results than they anticipated.
Ready to discover what these secrets are? how to send emails to multiple people? Let’s get started!
Tactic #1: Use Email Personalization
Marketing experts agree that sending personalized emails is one of the best ways for any email marketing campaign to generate more revenue and gain more profit.
Why? Simply put, when people receive a personalized message, they feel like it was only made for them—thus, becoming more engaged with the brand.
Invesp found that personalized promotional messages have 29% higher open rates and 41% higher click rates than non-personalized ones. Campaign Monitor revealed that recipients are 26% more likely to open emails with personalized subject lines. And, 80% of people would rather buy from a brand that offers a personalized experience, according to research by Epson.
These stats should be enough to have convinced you to get personal with your email subscribers, yes?
So, what does it take to create a personalized email that will instantly capture the attention (and heart) of your target audience? Here’s how:
Segment Your Email Lists
Segmenting means dividing your lists into smaller groups, making it much easier for you to send carefully targeted and personalized email campaigns.
Start by adding relevant questions in your sign-up forms for your subscribers to answer. You can ask about their location, gender, profession, and the type of product or service they’re interested in.
Once you’ve obtained your desired information, you can begin segmenting your contacts based on your goals. Below are some ideas:
- Geography
- Interest in specific products or services
- How often do they prefer to receive your emails?
- Position on the customer’s journey
- Content download
- Pages they visit
- The average amount of money they spend on your products or services
- Participation in your events
- History of purchase
Send emails from a person
In other words, talk to your recipients as real people, not a brand. Doing so humanizes your business, which in turn, can boost the effectiveness of your email marketing strategy.
Numerous studies have shown that people tend to trust and resonate with an email that comes from a fellow human being more than one that comes from a business. A whopping 68% of Americans even say that the “From” name is what usually drives them to open an email.
That said, make sure that you use the name of an actual person in the “From” field and their face instead of your logo or an avatar. Keep your tone as warm and conversational as possible throughout your messages.
Personalize your content
Content is the vehicle for conversions—or at least, in the case of emails. Boosting these conversions can be done by crafting personalized content. Applying these three tips can make a difference:
- Break the ice using humour. Your emails will feel like they’re coming from a friend.
- Avoid jargon at all costs. No one likes reading an email that’s too formal, not even entrepreneurs or B2B owners.
- Deliver relevant content every once in a while. Based on the data you obtained about your customers, email them content they’ll find valuable. That will make them feel valuable, too!
Greet them on special occasions
Another way to add a touch of personalization is by celebrating significant occasions with your target audience. This could be Christmas, Thanksgiving, Valentine’s Day, and of course, their birthdays.
Address subscribers with their names
Last but not least, is the most commonly used form of email personalization: using the names of your audience. Seeing their names in a sea of emails is a surefire way to catch their eyes.
Tactic #2: Keep Your Subject Lines Short and Sweet
Subject lines can either make or break your email campaign.
Many marketers often commit the mistake of writing long subject lines. But, how long is long?
Ideally, you want to limit them to no more than nine words and 50 characters. Emails with subject lines that contain 50 characters or less lead to 12% higher open rates and 75% higher click-through rates (CTR) than those with longer ones.
You should take it easy on the punctuation and emojis as well. While they’re great at engaging your subscribers, using them excessively can make your email appear spammy, which will only hurt your open rates.
Aside from keeping them brief, your subject lines must be unique to the extent that they can quickly pique the interest of your subscribers. Avoid using generic words and cliches, but rather, use a hook to entice them to open your emails.
Tactic #3: Deliver Your Message at the Right Time
When it comes to the success rate of your email campaign, timing is key. Since your goal is to elevate your open and click-through rates, you should know the appropriate times to send your emails.
Bear in mind that there’s no one-fits-all time to hit the “send” button. A major factor to consider is the type of business you have. This table from Alite International is a good source of reference.
Image Source: Alite International
If you’re eager to track the time and date your subscribers have read your messages, an email marketing platform is the way to go. Having these data at hand lets you deliver your emails at the most effective times.
Better yet, you can use marketing automation tools that can help you find the ideal timing for messaging. Not only will this save you plenty of time and resources, but automating your emails will also allow you to focus on the critical aspects of your email marketing strategy.
This brings us to the next tactic……
Tactic #4: Automate, Automate, Automate
Email automation is a powerful tool that lets you deliver the right message to the right people at the right time – and you don’t have to lift a finger at all.
With email automation, you can use trigger-based emails instead of one-time shots, which means you’ll be able to concentrate on the more important tasks on your to-do list. No wonder 51% of companies have been using it to boost their engagement and revenue.
These trigger emails are typically sent to your customers’ inboxes as a result of their behaviours. Here are the four most common scenarios to make the most of automated emails:
- Welcome a new subscriber: Considering that this is the first email they receive from you, you should make an effort to compose a compelling message. Highlight your company’s basics about your companyand explain how you’ll improve their lives. Don’t forget to maintain a conversational tone.
- Offer similar product recommendations: Sending an email after customers buy from your store is always a good idea to keep them engaged. Who knows, they might even make another purchase right there and then!
- Confirm an order: Confirmation orders are pretty much like online receipts. They contain transaction details like the purchased items, the amount paid, and the delivery address. They’re sent to your customers immediately after they’ve completed their orders.
- Remind a customer about their abandoned cart: Cart abandonment is an issue not uncommon to e-commerce owners, and unfortunately for them, it’s quite inevitable. It’s when customers fail to finish their orders despite having their shopping carts at the checkout – either because they had a last-minute change of heart, had trouble loading their credit cards, or were interrupted by someone. Whatever the reason is, it won’t hurt to reach out to them and remind them through email.
Tactic #5: Say “Yes” to Mobile-Friendly Emails
With 85% of people now accessing email using their smartphones, it’s high time to make mobile-friendly emails a priority.
Remember, improving your engagement and revenue isn’t just about getting your emails opened and read; it should also be able to provide a positive experience regardless of the devices used by your subscribers.
To optimize your emails for mobile, follow these best email marketing practices:
- Go for short subject lines: As mentioned earlier, you gotta keep your subject lines short and sweet to make them work for your audience.
- Choose a large font size: Using a 10-pixel font makes it hard to read on a desktop screen, and even harder on smaller screens. Your recipients won’t bother to finish reading your email, and there’s a huge chance that they’ll delete it. Opt for a font size of 13 or 14 (or even bigger) to make your email readable on all screens.
- Set your email under 600 pixels or less: Although most of today’s mobile devices can manage responsive designs well, there are still a couple of exceptions. An email width of 600 pixels or less makes it more convenient for everyone to view your message.
- Use a single-column template: Multiple columns usually look condensed and confusing to navigate on a mobile device. On the other hand, single columns can make your email compatible with all devices. Plus, they can simplify your design and put the spotlight on your top content.
- Post small images: Large images can slow down your load times, leading your recipients to close your email. Shrink your photos by 50% and compress them at a slightly higher compression rate than normal. You’ll get your images to load faster and conserve your user’s bandwidth at the same time.
- Avoid using an image for your call to action: For sure, you have subscribers who have disabled images on their email. So, if your CTA is in the form of an image, they will never see it. There go your efforts and opportunities!
Tactic #6: Don’t Stop Growing Your List
Would you believe that your email marketing database degrades by about 22.5% each year?
Here are two possibilities: Either your subscribers have changed their email addresses or they decided to opt-out of their subscription.
For these reasons, you should always ensure that you’re adding new contacts to your mailing list whenever you can. The surest possible way is by keeping the front and centre of your sign-up form on your website. They should be the first thing your visitors see after entering your site.
Then again, you can also expand your list through email by applying any of these strategies:
- Add an “Email to a Friend” and social sharing buttons in your emails to encourage your subscribers to share and forward your emails to their friends and families. You might also want to add a “Subscribe” call to action as a simple text-based link at the bottom of your emails to make it easier for the recipients of the forwarded emails to subscribe.
- Hyperlink your email signatures so that you can take people to a landing page where they can sign up for your mailing list.
- Produce outstanding content consistently to maintain customer loyalty. Thinking outside the box will give you more subscribers, in the long run, trust us.
Wrapping Up
That’s everything you need to know about increasing audience engagement and revenue through email marketing…… for now.
The thing is, there are many other email strategies out there that can make an impact on your marketing efforts. What we shared are just the most effective ones. You can still experiment to identify which ones work best for your business.
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