Ross Crawford
The email marketing landscape is regarded as one of the most promising marketing channels where you can get noticed, reach out to people, promote products or services and encourage people to take action. We know you’re aware of it and presumably use this method to grow your sales, and revenue and build a relationship with your customers.
But most people’s email boxes are simply overflowing and saturated with bulk spam emails. Bluntly speaking, your email may just get buried in the inbox or worse yet, irritate your potential prospects, by just adding to the pile. So, how do you, as an email marketer, get past these barriers? Well, marketing trends have changed, and so has the email marketing landscape – so you need to develop email campaigns that are interesting as well as informative.
Looking to stay ahead of the email marketing game? Look no further! Here is your ultimate guide for maximising success with email campaigns from our professional email marketing agency.
The good news is getting started with Email marketing is fairly easy. It doesn’t require a huge team or high-end technical expertise to be successful. It’s certainly possible to set up an email campaign with excellent templates, videos, images and logos. Using automation tools, you can send bulk emails that are actually personalised and targeted without a lot of work.
Speaking of automation, with powerful email software programs like MailChimp it’s easy to monitor response rates and measure success over time so you can refine and improve your campaigns accordingly.
Needless to say, brand awareness plays an important role in the success of every business. Luckily, email marketing is an opportunity to reinforce who you are as a brand, making clients trust you. The concept of promoting your product or service will significantly build your brand awareness. It is a great way to make people aware of what you have to offer. The more familiar people are with your brand, the more likely they will purchase your products when making a decision
Creating email campaigns is inexpensive. Unlike paid advertising, where you have to pay per click, emails can present your product or service free of cost. Also, there are no advertising fees, printing or media space costs.
If done right, email marketing campaigns can send users to your website. Relevant landing page links and compelling CTAs included in your email content can direct users to your website. It can lead users to your contact form, sign-up page or download link where users engage and take action.
email marketing provides a direct line between a business and its customer base. You never know when you might need feedback from your customers or their thoughts on a new product launch or service offering--email marketing offers an easy way to obtain that information quickly and efficiently.
Nothing matters more to a business than the return on investment it generates. Email marketing offers a substantial return on a small investment. By creating a well-written email that ends with a compelling CTA button, email marketers can encourage readers to take the next step in their buyer’s journey – thus increasing sales and ROI.
Most marketers are not sure about how to plan and execute their email marketing campaigns successfully. Let’s look at some of the steps you should follow to create a successful email marketing strategy.
The first step to any marketing plan is knowing the ultimate outcome you hope to achieve. Define what you want to achieve at the end of your email marketing campaign.
Some of the most common email marketing goals include:
Setting goals will help you stay focused on the different stages of your campaign.
Top Tips: Apply the widely used SMART marketing goal framework. The SMART goal framework is a great tool for setting goals in any area of marketing, including email. It stands for Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant and Timely.
Example:
No matter what business you are in, it is essential to know who is going to be attracted to your products or services – this means that understanding your audience is crucial. When you know your audience well, you will understand exactly what to say in the email.
If you don’t know your customer, your emails could get delivered to anyone. When your email lands in the hands of the right people, you’re increasing the chances for more leads and ultimately more sales. You can categorise your prospects into different segments based on age, gender, race, income, occupation, location and more.
You want your email content to be opened, read and clicked. It all starts with a catchy subject line. Though it seems like a tiny part of your emails, subject lines are the very first impressions you have on your email recipients. Hence, it’s important to craft subject lines that are attractive enough to get people to click through.
Here are some subject line formulas to improve your open rate:
The Social Proof subject line: It’s no surprise that social proof shapes consumer perception and brand reputation. Users have a natural tendency to follow the crowd. Let your customers do the talking. Potentially the best way to leverage social proof is to highlight ratings and testimonials from existing customers.
Example: "See How Thousands of People Improved Their Results with This One Simple Trick!"
The Urgency subject line: Time is a commodity and people don’t want to miss out on great offers or deals. Make sure to create a sense of urgency with words like “now” and “today” in your subject lines.
Example: "Limited Time Offer - Get 20% Off Now!"
The Benefit-Focused subject line: People need to know what is in it for them. Focus on why they should open your email, how it will benefit them and what they can do with the information that you’re offering.
Example: "Discover How You Can Make More Money From Less Work!"
The Curiosity-Gap subject line: Curiosity occurs when there is a gap between what we know and what we want to know. Generate a strong sense of curiosity in your audience by making a powerful approach in your email subject lines. But make sure not to deceive or cheat your subscribers.
Example: "New: The Secret to Making More Money Without Working More Hours..."
The announcement subject line: Using words like “Introducing”, “Update” and “New” in your email subject line gives the subscribers a feeling that your email contains fresh, breaking information they haven’t heard yet.
The Scarcity subject line: Scarcity is a powerful human driver, and people always want something rare or difficult to get. Be creative enough to evoke a sense of urgency in your customers. Add urgent words and phrases to engage and excite customers.
Example: "Last Chance! Get 30% Off This Limited Offer Before It's Too Late!"
If your emails flood with more text, it is likely to go into the junk or spam folder. Short emails respect your recipient’s time, and they create a more casual, conversational feel than an essay-like reading experience. Nobody wants to wade through all that lengthy content to figure out what you’re asking for. When composing your email, make your content easy to skim instead of showing the entire story in the email message.
Write an abstract on what the reader will get in an attractive way and let them click through to a page on your website for more information. Try to include short sentences, paragraphs, ample white space, and visual cues like bullet points, and bolded text, and some visuals couldn't hurt either.
Having said that, your messages should convey to the prospects why they should reply and how your products or services are worth purchasing. Are you just updating someone, do you need them to do something, or are you looking for a quick answer? – you have to pinpoint why you’re contacting someone in the first place. Everything in your email should foster that central intention, and it should be clear to everyone reading it.
Personalisation is super important! The more personalised your email text, the better your open rates. But we could say that one of the most common mistakes that marketers make: is they neglect to tailor one-to-one messages.
You already know this is an era of personalisation, and email personalisation is more powerful than you might think. Only a few marketers are using personalisation strategies, and most don’t even know about email personalisation. This is all about targeting a specific prospect by leveraging the information you have about them – it could be their name, the last product they purchased, where they live and likewise data.
Customise the content of your emails so that you speak directly to your customer. Before creating your emails, segment your customers based on gender, age, name, location and preference.
Instead of the cliche “Hi”, “Hey there”, or “Hello”, address your customers by their name. Understand what kind of data they need at a particular stage of their customer lifecycle with you. And try to show your appreciation once in a while. Let your subscribers know how much you value them being on your email list.
Call To Action (CTA) is a ‘not-to-miss' term in an email marketer's dictionary as it indicates the clear purpose of your emails. You may want readers to visit your website or subscribe to your newsletter or make a purchase in your online store – an effective CTA can help you with achieving this goal.
More than just a simple button, it can indeed change the face of your email marketing campaign. Compelling CTAs encourage subscribers to click on your messages and take specific actions.
Let’s see some examples of CTAs:
There is no benefit of having a long email list if recipients don’t open your emails. That is a fact. So don’t spend all your energy trying to get more people on your list. Monitor your email list to find people who unsubscribe to your list, report you as spam or even who just don’t open your emails. This will help you refresh and maintain your email list in a healthy way. Remember, quality matters over quantity – so it’s better to add 100 engaged subscribers to your email address list than to add 1000 unengaged subscribers.
Tips for building your ideal email list:
A/B testing is an important part of any email marketing strategy. It allows you to understand what content and calls-to-action resonate with your audience, allowing you to optimise your campaigns for maximum engagement. By running A/B tests on your emails, you can identify the subject lines, design elements, copy, images or offers that work best with your target audience.
This helps ensure that all of your emails are as effective as possible in both generating conversions and maintaining a high level of engagement from subscribers. Additionally, by running A/B tests regularly for different campaigns, you can measure the success of individual emails over time and adjust accordingly. This is key to staying ahead of the competition and ensuring that each email is as engaging and effective as possible.
Continuous monitoring of your email marketing performance will help you fine-tune your marketing campaigns. The success of your email marketing depends on various elements such as:
This will help you see how well your email marketing campaign is working.
Every day, our inbox is flooded with many emails asking for confirmation for newsletters, subscriptions or signups for an account with an email address. But a lot of them are left unopened. This is a common occurrence for most email users. How can you make your emails stand out to encourage your audience to open and read? The solution lies in personalising your emails.
Yes, if you aren’t personalising your email messages, you’re likely missing out on leads and sales. Don’t worry; it’s not too late. You can still create more personalised emails to skyrocket your email marketing campaigns. Here are a few surefire ways to succeed.
As we discussed above, knowing your ideal customer is crucial to tailor your marketing strategy so that you can cater to their needs and problems effectively. A better understanding of your ideal client will let you frame your email copy in a way that will address their concerns effectively.
You have to analyse demographic (age, gender, employment, income, education and more) and psychographics (like attitudes, interests, and values) data when creating a buyer persona profile. By identifying your target audience, you are increasing the chances for more leads and, finally, sales.
Start by addressing your customer by their name. This tip is the first and foremost rule of email personalisation, and we can’t go wrong at any cost. Ignore the cliche “Hi”, “Hey there” or “Hello” and address your recipients by their names.
"Dear John,
Thank you for choosing our service. To help us make your experience better, we request you complete this short survey. This should not take more than two to three minutes of your time….."
Our name is all about self-perception and identity, so hearing it engages us. When a recipient sees their name in the email, they are more likely to listen to what you’ve got to say. Just make sure to avoid the blunder of addressing someone by the wrong name.
The chances of your email getting neglected are quite high unless you have a pretty subject line. Out of hundreds of emails we receive daily, the ones that usually catch our attention are the ones with catchy subject lines.
Your subject line is your first impression on users; it should let readers know that there’s something they’ll find useful in the body content.
This is another example “John! looking for the perfect gift for the Holiday?”. Subject lines like this evoke a sense of urgency, excitement and enthusiasm and will have a high open rate. But make sure it does not exceed seven words or 50 characters so the whole thing is visible in their inbox when they open it up.
Are you about to hit the send button? Why not send your emails at a specific time that would have the most impact?
Sending your emails at scheduled times i.e. your recipient’s time zone is another simple yet powerful way to personalise your emails. If your company is located in Texas, but your clients are in London, you could schedule your emails to reach the client’s inbox at the right time, not in the middle of the night on a Monday!
Your customers might respond quickly if you email them on a Friday afternoon or some might be early morning mobile readers. Sometimes, Monday mornings or Tuesday afternoons are the best time to send emails to your prospects.
You hit the ‘send' button and pat yourself on the back. Unfortunately, you see a low click-through rate, and you did everything you were supposed to. We want to ask you a question – did you remember to include an actionable CTA?
That doesn’t mean a simple “Register Today” or “Buy Now”. You need to take some time to make your CTA stand out. Remember, the ultimate point of email marketing is to drive action. The most effective way to do that is by including compelling CTAs. Without a CTA, your customers or potential prospects have nothing to act on, leaving your emails just a piece of digital information. It’s vital to place your CTA ‘above the fold’ rather than at the end of the message.
So there you have it. Those are the essentials if you want to personalise your email marketing efforts and boost your click-through rates. It can also make you stand out from the competition by developing a more personal bond. Having said that, let's paint a picture of what it would look like if you were to say...wish someone on their Birthday and use that as your "in". It might look something like this:
"Dear John,
We would like to wish you a happy birthday. Here is your special gift from us. To get your birthday gift…."
By offering a birthday gift in the form of a voucher or a 25% discount, you convey that your customers mean something to your brand. Note that this is also applicable during important festivals as well as celebrations.
Side Note: Did you know that 75% of customers are more likely to make a purchase decision based on personalised recommendations?
You might have seen online giants such as Amazon recommending related products that you have already purchased or rated. Showing related products, individualised offers, and other content to your visitors based on users browsing history, previous actions, demographics, and other data is another method of personalisation. Proper suggestions at the right time (like reminding them of items they looked at or sharing suggestions of similar products) make it easy for them to find out what they want.
In essence, email personalisation is all about letting your customers feel valued. Based on your products or services, applying two or three of these tactics in your email personalisation can highly increase your click-through rate, drive engagement and make personal connections with your audience.
To avoid getting your emails immediately deleted, marked spam, or ignored altogether, here are some of the best email marketing tips to keep in mind.
If your emails aren’t mobile-friendly, you could be missing out on the opportunity to engage your subscribers and yield results. Wondering why? From 2010 to 2020, email opens on mobile devices increased to a large extent. According to a study by Statista, it is estimated that in 2023, 73.7% of people worldwide will use mobile phones to check emails. This is an increase from the estimated 67.1% in 2020. Furthermore, it is forecasted that the number of people who check their emails on mobile phones will continue to grow steadily over the next two years.
People like browsing the web, scrolling through pages and checking their emails via their smartphones. According to research conducted by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), there are an estimated 4.6 billion mobile users worldwide in 2020, and this number is expected to grow to 5.2 billion by 2025.
Here are some essential tips for creating mobile-friendly email campaigns:
When you are sending cold emails to unknown prospects, you don’t rush up and start making offers. That would be awkward. An ideal cold email copy won’t praise your product at all. It’s ok if you do mention it, but never try to ‘sell’ it. Focus on the benefits or the outcome of your initial offer. Instead of brainstorming about how to sell your product, tell them about how your product can solve their problem. That’s how you get them on board. When you have conversations around prospects’ needs, naturally, they start trusting your business. Once you’ve convinced them and built trust, you next need to show how you can help them.
Getting people to trust you and buy your product or services can create a lot of stress. You shouldn’t sound salesy, and be careful that you’re approaching each prospect the right way. It’s important not to be pushy or aggressive when you’re trying to sell. In the end, it can cause you to lose more than you win. The more comfortable your customer is, the better your chances of closing the deal. Though this approach can take more time, it’s more effective in the long run. In the end, your prospect will see you as someone who genuinely cares about their concerns and needs.
The concept ‘above the fold’ comes from News publishers and literally means “above the fold”. Even in the email marketing industry, the concept is still relevant though there may not be a literal fold. In email design, subscribers must see this area right after opening any message without scrolling down the screen.
If you want to attract subscribers’ attention and engage them in reading, put the most enticing content at the top of your email. Part of your job is to give them a reason to scroll down to read more. There are many online tools for defining the ‘Above the fold’ placement that can give you an exact idea about the layout.
Images have the power of making a lasting impression on your reader. Having too many large, high-quality images can adversely affect the loading time, which causes the subscribers to just delete the mail instead of waiting around.
Here is a quick checklist:
The timing certainly matters, especially when it comes to getting clients to notice and open your emails. If you want your cold messaging to have a big impact on your sales, you need to change when you’re sending them out. The thing is, the time works based on the nature of your audience. So there is no strict rule for when to send out your emails until you know what time works best for your specific prospect.
It is usually better to send out emails during the daytime when people are awake. Sending emails on Mondays is not recommended as people are trying to get over the weekend hangover. Weekends tend to have low open rates, so most marketers avoid them at any cost.
With regards to a specific window of time, generally, the best time of day to send a cold email is typically during the morning, from 8 am to 11 am. This is when many people are checking their emails and starting their workday.
Though you want your customers to buy from you right away, the prime purpose of a cold email is not to sell something – it’s meant to build a connection. While a compelling subject line boosts your email open rate, an effective CTA increases the reply rate.
And you need to make it as unique as possible:
One of the serious mistakes you could make in your email design is forgetting to provide social sharing buttons. Social media buttons can be called secondary calls to action.
Follow icons lead right to your social media pages – to hit the like button on your Facebook page or follow your Instagram account. The share icon conveys the act of sharing a specific piece of content, including blog posts, articles, photos, videos, etc. When your email subscribers share your content with their social media sites, the likelihood of increasing your brand exposure is high.
Your company is planning to launch a new mobile application they’ve been developing. So you have decided to pitch influencers, industry leaders, and bloggers about your product announcement. You’ve started outreaching your prospects by sending cold emails, and you’re now waiting for them to respond. Of course, your mind is now bombarded with tons of questions.
These kinds of never-ending questions inspired us to share some ideas about email tracking tools. Email tracking software is most beneficial to marketers, executives, recruiters, customer support and sales professionals. Well, you don’t really need to wait to know whether they have opened your email or not. Also, you can be sure that the emails are getting delivered to the inbox and not in the spam folder. Let’s read on to understand some tools that can help you track your email marketing campaigns effectively.
It’s a sales enablement free tool that can track an unlimited number of emails and provides you with email recipient engagement data. Users can track both Gmail and Outlook using SalesHandy email marketing plugins. Apart from free email tracking, the tool has other features such as:
Pricing – The tool provides a 7-day trial period to new users, and after that, they can use the email tracking feature using the free plan.
One of the top email tracking tools, Yesware is the most powerful one, which has awesome email tracking and reporting features. The tool can track the emails when you send them and also schedule your emails for sending them later. It provides real-time notifications when someone opened your emails, clicked on your links and downloaded the attachments. Users can access all the open rates, click rates and reply rates, focusing more on the target audience.
Additional features include:
Yesware can also be easily integrated with any CRM like SugarCRM, Salesforce etc. Pricing – A free plan is available with the provision of basic email open tracking, basic attachment tracking, meeting scheduler, weekly webinar training, and email support.
For paid plans these are the options:
We know HubSpot doesn’t need any special introduction, as you must be familiar with it already. Known mainly for its effective sales and marketing platforms, HubSpot offers many email tracking features customised to the requirements of salespeople and marketers. Its email plugin allows users to track and log emails, receive desktop notifications, and record all email activity in HubSpot’s CRM.
You will get insights about the recipient’s activities such as opens, clicks and responses. You will get a pop-up notification on your desktop when the recipient receives and opens an email. HubSpot Email tracking is available for Gmail as well as for Outlook.
Pricing – the free plan is available with features like Gmail and outlook integration, email scheduling and templates, meetings and canned snippets. They also offer free tools that help you generate and email new leads.
Being an email marketing and marketing automation software, MailChimp takes complete control over your email marketing efforts from the beginning to the end. MailChimp was founded in 2001, and now the software has grown to become an all-in-one marketing platform. Users get email campaign reports which help them to track the performance of email marketing campaigns, click rate, open rate, bounces, social activity and purchases.
Pricing - MailChimp offers a limited Free plan as well as paid options. With the free plan you get 1000 monthly email sends, 1 seat worth of users, free customer email support for the first 30 days, pre-built email templates, 300+ integrations, basic reporting and analytics, forms and landing pages, and a creative assistant.
LeadBoxer empowers you to capture your most promising leads, deepen customer relationships and gain meaningful insight into your sales process. With its Chrome extension integration with Gmail, it's easy to track email opens, link clicks and much more. Furthermore, LeadBoxer helps you recognise the behaviour of prospects from sources like websites, emails or social media.
Therefore, each potential prospect is given a unique lead score based on factors such as their location and industry size campaigns - enabling you to stay ahead of the competition. The tool also uses big data technology which allows you to configure custom filters and use them to segment your audience.
Pricing – A trial account for LeadBoxer is 100% free and allows you to get free Leads and full access to the platform during your trial. Once your trial is over, your account will be limited to 3 results.
Another email tracking tool that operates as a Google Chrome extension that works with Gmail is Mailtrack. This email marketer's tool is completely straightforward and has extensive features. This is mainly useful for small business owners or freelancers who only want to track their emails. Also, it has a clean and sleek user interface. Mailtrack perfectly integrates with Gmail and Google inbox.
The double green tick informs users that recipients have opened the email. It also tells when someone opened your email and from which device.
Pricing plan – A free plan is available with unlimited tracking, real-time desktop notifications, email alerts, and daily reports. However, even the paid versions are quite affordable.
Another Google Chrome extension for Gmail as well as outlook, Bananatag, has since re-branded itself and is now called Staffbase. This tool helps you send compelling and engaging email content. It notifies users whether the emails sent are successfully delivered or not. With the help of the email template feature, Bananatag sends 100 emails in place of 10 and optimises it by tracking the best out of them. Its email analytics feature provides you with detailed reports and performances of your emails with comprehensive data on your open, reply and click-through rates. This data helps you to identify which cold emails are working best and how to set an appropriate time for further follow-ups.
Pricing plan - The newly rebranded tool has three different pricing plans (the Starter Plan, Business Plan, and Enterprise Plan), each with its own set of benefits. Email marketers looking for a pricing plan, need to request a quote on their new website and get an estimate that way.
https://staffbase.com/en/pricing/
Mixmax helps you to get notified when someone opens your message with real-time Google email tracking and alerts. With email tracking, you can track individual opens even from group emails. Plus, this feature is so easy to use that it's set as a default option for every email you send.
You can even schedule the time when your emails will be sent to increase the chances of them being opened. In addition, instant meetings allow users to share their availability and let recipients choose right away. To top it off, all of this data can easily integrate with your CRM system - making life simpler than ever before.
Pricing plans – The tool does have a free plan that allows users to benefit from instant scheduling, unlimited event types, email tracking, email templates, email polls and surveys, as well as industry-leading security. However, it also has paid features with more perks.
As we move further towards 2024 and the future beyond that, as businesses in the online space, we need to be able to adapt to the rapidly shifting environment. And part of that constant evolution is being aware of all the latest trends, tips, and tools that can help one stand out from the competition, which in this case happens to be email marketing. While it may not be the new kid on the block, it certainly holds prominence even today. Some would argue that it holds such significance in online marketing work because it's been around for so long.
That said, every year there are going to be a ton of different email marketing tools and platforms that will try to capture the market. While it's important that we know which ones to use at any given moment, it's also crucial to know how to personalise email marketing for your business's needs, as well as understand the role it has to play in helping your business grow! Now, if you want more hands-on guidance and help to build your email marketing strategy with the latest methods, then get in touch with us! Our email marketing experts at Mr Digital will help you create a strategy that will keep your brand at the front of people's minds, retain clients, and generate the ROI that you want.
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