Many people have the impression that email marketing is dead. It is only understandable if you consider the number of emails that you ignore, delete, and mark as spam. Yet, there are still many emails that you are happy to engage with on a regular basis.
With that in mind, it begins to make sense that email marketing in 2022 is still very effective if done with a strategy that correctly matches your products and services to your audience. What you need to learn are the tools that can help recipients view your email as an important email and prompt them to engage with it.
Creating engaging experiences
It is likely when you are using email marketing, you have a call to action on your website. Something like, “Subscribe to our weekly newsletter” or “visit our online store”. However, have you taken the time to think about the type of experience your website visitors get when they click on your call to action?
Let’s look at this in the context of buying a product. We must always try and win back a customer who went through the buying process but did not participate by presenting your offer again in an effort to have them re-engage. The exception to this are those who abandoned the cart at checkout. With those who abandoned the cart you will need to focus on sending out a sequenced set of triggered emails in order to prompt them to revisit the website, overcome any objection they may have been faced with which prompted the abandonment and entice them to complete their purchase. One thing to keep in mind is that while new and prospective customers are always a good thing, it is returning customers that will have the greatest impact on your bottom line!
Focus on customer relations
Optimising and personalising your email marketing campaigns should be a priority.
Personalising your emails allows your business to engage with customers in a far more meaningful way. Keeping in mind that your email marketing is included in a relationship building marketing strategy. A tool to educate your prospective customer on why they should purchase your product or service while helping them recognize the value it will add to their life, the problem it will solve or the amount of work it can remove from their plate. A straightforward way to drive this point home is through the use of a personlized greeting instead of a spammed generic greeting such as “hey”, “hi” or “good day”!
A/B testing – the importance
We cannot overemphasise the importance of A/B testing when it comes to email marketing campaigns. Through analysing previous customer data, you will know precisely what your customers respond to and use this information as the basis for your next campaign.
Did you know that as soon as you receive an email, your habits are being evaluated and analysed through your reaction to it?
Some of the information that you can find out is:
- Does the subject line affect your email response, or are you better off with emojis
- What happens when you increase the number of images?
- Do you get more responses or fewer responses?
- What time of the day do you get the most emails?
With A/B testing, you may find that your hypothesis fails. However, there is a downside to looking at it that way. Instead you should try to view this as an opportunity to learn something about your audience. Let’s say the majority of your customers read their emails on their mobile phones. You may start to realise that if you increase copy that there is a direct impact on the click-through rates as they start to drop.
Now taking that learning into account you know what you should avoid next time.
Speaking of mobile phones
Over 70% of people would rather read their emails via their mobile apps than on the desktop. Therefore it makes sense to ensure that your email marketing campaigns are optimised for mobile first. People now decide on whether or not to proceed with a purchase within seconds. This means that you can quickly lose a customer if they don’t like what they see on their emails or if it takes too long to load.
The Final Word
While it is easy to think that email marketing is dead, the truth is that it is still alive and well in 2022… If you use it right!
The fact that many businesses are overlooking the power of email marketing means that your business can leverage this way of marketing for your brand.
Done the right way this will help to improve your company’s bottom line, so definitely, don’t take email marketing off the table for your brand marketing plans!