Have you ever received an email you weren’t interested in – maybe it was from a company you had no connection with, or it was an email you found suspicious?
You might have gotten tired of receiving those unwanted emails, or maybe you just didn’t have the time to deal with them. Either way, you may have reacted like this:
- Closed the email.
- Ignored it.
- Deleted it without reading it.
- Told yourself you wouldn’t deal with it, because it was just junk mail.
- No big deal.
When you ignore or delete an email, you are giving the sender the ‘binary choice’ to either stop trying to reach you or keep trying. Senders can’t tell whether or not you read their email, so for the sake of continuing the conversation, they are forced to try and engage with you. However, if the email is spam, you are merely doing your part in the fight against fake emails.
What if there was a way to keep getting those helpful, engaging emails – without ever feeling like you had to defend yourself or jump through any hoops?
Well, you might be interested in trying out ‘email marketing’, also known as ‘email advertising’ or ‘promotional email marketing’.
Instead of getting bombarded with emails you don’t care about from companies you don’t follow or buy from, you can choose to see only the messages you want to get from the brands you do follow or buy from.
What is Email Marketing?
Put simply, email marketing is the practice of sending email messages to people to promote products or services.
Why would you want to do this?
Let’s say you are selling fashion accessories or clothing. You might want to send out a mailing list of all your customers to promote an accessory you thought they would like or use. When they open your email, you will have the opportunity to direct them to shop your clothing line.
What makes email marketing so effective is that you are able to target the right audience and engage them based on what you know about them. You are not forced to broadcast your offer to the whole world, like in a regular old marketing email.
Aside from being interesting, is there anything else you should consider doing to make your emails more effective?
Here are some best practices you can follow to ensure that your email marketing campaigns are as effective as possible.
Personalise
As we mentioned above, one of the great things about email marketing is the ability to target the right audience and engage them based on what you know about them. With that in mind, why wouldn’t you want to personalise each email you send?
This means taking the time to find out what each recipient’s interests are and catering the email to them. You can do this via a few different methods, but one of the simplest is to take advantage of the fact that most people now use email clients that allow them to fill out forms. On the form, you can ask the user some questions about themselves or their interests so you can direct the email more effectively.
The example above is a fairly standard email marketing template, but with a few tweaks, you can make a significant difference in the way recipients interact with your emails. Imagine receiving an email like this:
- From: Jane Marketing (Your email) (Your Company)
- Subject: Fashion Tips For Men
- Body: Dear Sir/Madam,
-
Your email address marks the first milestone in a wonderful journey. As you read this, you are probably wondering what this strange message is about. Let me enlighten you.
- Men’s Style Tips: What are the most stylish men’s fashion trends this year?
- How can I make my men’s style stand out?
Upon receipt of this email, the first thing you might do is to open your inbox to see what the fuss is about. Upon opening your inbox, you will see the sender’s name and the subject line of the email, which in this case is ‘Fashion Tips For Men’. This is standard practice and allows the recipient to determine quickly and easily if they are interested in reading the email.
If you are still reading, you are probably wondering what a ‘Jane Marketing’ is and whether or not you are interested in reading more. To find out, the email client (in this case, Outlook) will ask you to fill out a form called a ‘profile field’. This is a pre-populated form with your name, email address, and other details. In the profile field, you will see a section titled ‘How would you like to be contacted?’.
If you’ve ever been on social media, you might have noticed that many brands and businesses now use this form of communication to engage with their customers. LinkedIn is the favourite social media site of nearly all professionals. It is a giant repository of jobs, career opportunities, and business connections. If you have a LinkedIn account, you can take advantage of this platform to expand your business’ reach to the masses. Simply follow the tips below to get amazing results.
Engagement
As we mentioned above, once you have your targeted audience, you can engage them based on what you know about them. One of the best things about email marketing is the fact that you can do this through a variety of methods.
Aside from the targeted and personalised content, you can also use funnels, quizzes, and other interactive content to engage your audience. One of the best things about email marketing is that you are not limited to just text messages. Due to the form factor of emails themselves, you can also use images, videos, and other media to engage your audience.
Measurement
How does your engagement rate, conversion rates, and other similar performance metrics affect how you approach email marketing?
One of the best things about email marketing is that you are able to track the success of your campaigns easily. With that in mind, why wouldn’t you want to set up automated email alerts or dashboards that notify you of certain metrics such as engagement, conversion, and others.
Thanks to tools like Google Analytics, you can easily measure the success of your email marketing campaigns. For example, you can use the ‘Custom report’ to track the performance of each individual email in your list.
Communication
Many businesses operate in silos, where each department or group works completely separately from one another. When you are trying to effectively market and communicate with your audience, why wouldn’t you want to have a single source of information?
With that in mind, you might want to look into integrating your email marketing with other platforms and systems to gain a better view of your entire customer base. For example, if you use MailChimp, you can connect that account with your Google Analytics account so you can see all the engagement and conversion data in one place. This way, you can approach your email marketing with a 360-degree view of your customer base and continue to evolve and tweak your strategy based on what you learn.
Why wouldn’t you want to have a single source of information for your email marketing? With that in mind, you might want to look into connecting your email marketing with other platforms and systems to gain a better view of your entire customer base. For example, if you use MailChimp, you can connect that account with your Google Analytics account so you can see all the engagement and conversion data in one place. This way, you can approach your email marketing with a 360-degree view of your customer base and continue to evolve and tweak your strategy based on what you learn.
Aside from getting all the above right, you can also use a CRM system to gain a better understanding of your customer base and find more effective ways to approach them. With a CRM system, you are able to store all sorts of information about your contacts, including what they have said to you in the past, what products they have purchased, their addresses, and phone numbers. This way, you can easily follow up with them and keep track of all your interactions.