Have you ever used email marketing as part of your business strategy? If you don’t then you are losing out. Many marketers say email marketing is dying or dead. Don’t believe them. Email marketing is still basking in glory.
If you still don’t believe then see the stats, On an average, in a day people are sending or receiving around 246.5 billion emails around the globe, which includes 129 billion business emails. The numbers are steadily increasing and are expected to go up by 3%. Brands send email to their prospects, clients or customers to promote their products and cultivating a relationship with their customers.
What is email marketing?
Email marketing is one of the segments of the internet marketing. It is similar to direct mail the only difference is that the clients don’t receive the mail from postal services, they receive it electronically. Email marketing allows brands to improve their communication with their customers and keep them in the loop on their latest achievements, updated and informed about their brand.
Email marketing is not new, it has been around since the birth of the internet and has proved its potential from time-to-time. Earlier brands used to send their customers cards on their important days. It is just their way of reminding the customer they care about them. But now people have become too busy to stop and check their mailbox every single day. But that doesn’t mean that brands should stop sending their wishes, they have changed their approach and are still sending caring about their customers but now electronically i.e., emails.
Why is it important?
Despite the rise in people’s fascination with social media platforms, more than half of the world’s population is still using emails to communicate. Early 2019, Radicati released a report with updated figures, it shows that there are around 3.9 billion active email users. Brands are using Email marketing to improve communication with their customers. People open their emails frequently and 90% of Internet users use email for communication and over 70% said they prefer email marketing over other marketing methods.
So, this is the best way to engage with your customers and constantly update them with promotions, new sales etc. It has the strength to reach a wider audience base and becomes easy to track your ROI. Email marketing is pocket-friendly when putting up ads both online and offline can cost too much for brands. But sending an email doesn’t cost much, right? You don’t have to worry about your message reaching the right targeted audience as you’re only sending messages to people who are interested in your products and are elated to listen from you.
When people subscribe to your newsletters it proves that they are planning to regularly do business with you. But for your email marketing strategy to work, you must know the dos and don’ts of it properly. If you’re new to this then it becomes mandatory to get off on the right foot.
Here are 10 Do’s and Don’ts of email marketing
Email Marketing Do’s
Conduct A/B Testing
It is important to test your strategy to understand how you’re doing now? Where and what can you improve? All this applies for email marketing too. To understand it you must pay attention to your previous campaigns. A/B testing will help you answer all these questions and improve your upcoming email marketing campaigns. You can test emails against each other and see which one is performing better. This tactic can help you in determining which format or content is working best for your campaign. You can play around with colours, fonts, message, images, CTA’s etc.
You can try this A/B testing on your email list too. One set of the email list will receive the formatted version and others a different version. This testing will help you in understanding your audience preferences better.
Segment your email list
You can’t send the same email to all the people in your database. In such a case, you would have to send a generic email to all your customers which will do no good for your campaign. It is important to segment your email list to make your email marketing campaign work. You can segment it based on customer demographics, likes, dislikes, etc.
Segmenting your email list will make your work easy and you will not be sending the same message to all your customers. If you have a large diverse group of audience base then it is important to speak with each targeted group in a tone that appeals to them. People will appreciate a brands effort of brands who take their time to understand and speak their language.
Easy opt-out
You must always offer an easy opt-out for your audience. It is legally necessary too. Even if it was not the case it is your prime responsibility to offer them the opt-out options to stop receiving your emails. This simple practice will help you in keeping customers happy and maintaining a good brand image. Make sure the opt-out process is simple and easy.
Place the opt-out option in such a place where it can be easily visible and remember to make the process as easy as possible. You can also offer them selective opt-out options too. In which they will still be included in some email lists and exit the others. This way your opt-out rate will reduce and your customers will also be happy.
Track metrics
For any improvement to be possible you must first understand your shortcomings. Then work on them to improve. There is always room for improvement and when you understand your mistakes it will help you in making your next campaign perfect.
Check how your campaigns are performing and monitor them regularly. You must monitor your bounce rate, open rate, click-through rate, inbox placement rate, unsubscribe rate. All this data can help you in analyzing and understanding your user behaviour better and create strategy or campaigns that will work.
Creative Content
It is mandatory to come up with unique content. Your email content plays a major in your email marketing campaign. Most of the times you will be so focused on segmenting your email list and preparing an email marketing campaign strategy that content may take a backseat. Content is as important as any other work. It reduces the bounce rate and has the power to improve your opening rate.
Wondering how?
When you have a great headline that supports the content in your email and piques and interest in your audience it is given that your audience will open and read your email. Use different fonts and colours to make it lively. Leave lots of whitespaces and don’t crowd your email with too much information. Creating a secondary page with all the information you want your audience to know and just add the link of that particular page with a short message.
Don’ts of Email Marketing
Avoid Spam filters
Emails with over promotional language can easily fall into a customers spam emails pile. Which you surely don’t want. To avoid spam filters stop using words such as free, cash, sale etc. If you use such words in your carefully curated email, this will land in your customer’s spam folder. Your targeted audience will not even get a chance to read your email.
Avoid sending emails from an unauthorised or generic email address, since they look fishy there are high chances of them registering as spam. Use a branded email address as it gives your customers an idea that they are dealing with a legitimate brand that offers real products or services. There are many strict rules and regulations and severe punishments attached to the spam-laws. So make sure you don’t overstep any of the laws.
Rent or Buying email list
If you are planning to buy or rent an email list. Stop that thought right now if you don’t want to be marked as a spammer. Many think buying an email list will save their time but in the long run, it can bring some serious trouble. Better reach people and ask them to sign up for your services or subscribe to your newsletter.
You can even put a form on your website through which you can get a genuine list of people who are interested in your brand and are looking forward to your emails or information about your products.
People from purchased email list may not be your targeted audience and they may not even open your email too. There is a high chance of your domain getting blacklisted. If you’re using a reputed email marketing services to run your campaign then you are not allowed to use the rented or bought email lists.
Forget mobile users
Businesses spent most of their time in optimising the emails for desktops and laptops but they forget about the mobiles. If you don’t optimise your emails for mobile then you’re missing out on large audience base. Stats show that only one-third of marketers use desktops or laptops to read emails and more than 50% of the population is using mobile to read emails.
If you don’t optimise your emails for them then your emails will lose your effectiveness and your customer may not show interest in your emails. As a business, you must be flexible and competent with all devices to provide the best experience to your customers. If your emails are not optimised it may even affect your brand image.
Fail to test
Don’t forget to test your emails before clicking the send button. It is important to have a preview of how your messages will look in your customer’s inbox. Why? It is always better to double-check and correct any mistakes. Once you click the send button there is no turning back. So why not check from headline to regards.
Check spellings, name, first name as you know people can be very particular about such things. Make sure there are no grammatical errors and ask your colleagues opinion as taking a second opinion will never hurt. Lastly, don’t forget to check the email address. Check all minute details such as link of website in the email, images etc to make sure everything is under control.
Schedule your email list
You can schedule your emails and you can set up the time and they will automatically be sent to your customers. If you’re having customers across the globe. Sending emails to your entire email list may not get you desired results. Make sure you schedule emails based on their time zones.
Since your customers stay in different time zones schedule the emails based on their time zones. Your morning may be their afternoon and your night can be their early morning. What is the point of sending an email when your prospect is sleeping? So, it is important to consider the timezone and schedule your emails making it easy to send.
Conclusion
Email marketing becomes successful when you understand your customer behaviour. It may take time to build a genuine email list but don’t lose your patience. In the long run, you will reap the benefits of all your hard work. Adapt to their behaviour and offer them what they’re looking for and provide them with the best possible experience while engaging with your content or brand.