Everyone knows about email marketing, a marketing tactic that has been around since the dawn of the internet. In fact, the first mass email campaign was sent out in 1978 by Gary Thuerk, the Marketing Manager of Digital Equipment Corp. Thuerk sent out a mass mailer promoting DEC machines to 400 users that resulted in an astounding $13 million in sales. This was a monumental moment in marketing, and from its inception, email marketing was known as one of the most effective channels for direct marketing.
Fast forward to the late 90s and early 2000s when email marketing became somewhat repetitive and “spammy”. Many email recipients became tired of receiving sales related emails from faceless corporations that just wanted to “sell sell sell” and email marketing started to lose its edge. Marketers desperately needed to try a new approach to email marketing, and in 2010 segmented, personalised and targeted email marketing campaigns were introduced.
With the introduction of Customer Relationship Management software such as HubSpot, email automation, personalisation and segmentation has become even easier to implement, and through CRM platforms businesses are now able to measure and track the success of each campaign – all of which allows for greater lead generation, conversion and customer retention.
This kind of email communication and marketing forms part of today’s Inbound Marketing strategy. Inbound marketing is a process of communicating with high quality leads by providing them with information that they actually want to be informed about as opposed to the spammy email marketing of the past.
In this article we provide tips for email marketing that will help you improve open rates, click through rates and lead generation potential.
1. Email Workflows
Contact Leads at the right time with the right message
Whatever tactic you use for lead generation, be it social media lead generation campaigns, website lead forms or newsletter sign ups, you need to take advantage of the window of opportunity when you are at the top of a prospects mind. This is why it is important to always send an email to a prospect within 24 hours of receiving their information.
2. Get Personal
Send emails from a person, not a faceless brand
Your email open rate will increase substantially if you send out emails that come from a real person. This is because recipients are more likely to believe in and trust an email from an individual’s personal work address as opposed to an email sent out from a generic work address.
3. Send Out Mobile-Friendly Emails
As much as 60% of all marketing emails are opened on mobile devices. Most people check their phones for messages, calls, and emails as soon as they wake up, and when your emails are not responsive, you’ll be missing out. Your customers will either delete or unsubscribe.
Even if they don’t, you can be sure they won’t open or read them, which beats the purpose of sending them. The most important thing to do here is to ensure you implement a responsive email design. Also, use short subject lines and pre-headers, and make your CTAs large and noticeable, regardless of the screen size.
4. Invest in the Right Email Marketing Tools
As email marketing strategies evolve, so do the marketing tools, and you need to ensure you’re using the right ones. For instance, you can use an email list provider to automate lead generation, segmentation, and onboarding processes, making things easier for your campaign.
Top Email Marketing Platforms for 2021
5. Keep Your Email List Clean
Your email list declines by about 22% every year, even if you email them regularly. This means that every single year, nearly a quarter of your list doesn’t actually want to hear from you anymore. That’s going to tank your open rates along with everything else. Fortunately, there are ways to grow your email list so you can replenish it with subscribers that are interested in what you have to say. The other end of that, though, is removing the subscribers who are no longer interested.
But when you’ve defined that segment, don’t just delete them right away.
First, you’ll want to send a winback email campaign in an attempt to re-engage them and bring them back into the fold. Many brands will send a last email or email series to their inactive subscribers in hopes of getting those subscribers once again engaged with the brand.
6. Build an Organic Email List
We understand the temptation to purchase email addresses, especially when you’re trying to grow your list fast. However, this tactic is sure to backfire, leaving you with dud addresses, uninterested recipients, and a strong chance of getting flagged by your email provider.
A better approach: build a strong and sustainable list of opt-in contacts, complete with people who actually want to hear from, and engage with your brand.
7. Make your Images Clickable
The goal of any email marketing campaign is to drive the recipient to take a specific action, and the action usually requires a click through to a specific page (be this a lead form or website page). One way to increase your click through rate without overdoing your text or copy is by hyperlinking your images through to your chosen landing page.
For example, if the goal of your campaign is to get recipients to download an ebook, you can include an image of your ebook cover in the body of your mail. Instead of just adding a hyperlinked text with the copy “click her to download” you can also make the image itself clickable. People in general are more drawn to images as it is, and you can capitalize on this by making the image itself clickable as well.
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