The era of digital marketing is upon us. Thanks to the innovations of email marketing, digital marketers can harness the power of email to target the right audience and automate cross-marketing campaigns.
But if you’re unfamiliar with email marketing or feel like you’re not using the email channel properly, this article is for you. In it, you’ll discover the dimensions you need to consider to develop an effective strategy for using email for marketing.
Open Rates and Click-Through Rates Are Your Gold Standard
Let’s be honest: Nobody likes to get junk email. However, in the world of digital marketing, the term “junk email” has a specific meaning. Generally speaking, email campaigns that conform to certain benchmarks typically fall under the junk email umbrella. These are the metrics that matter.
The first and the most important metric is open rates. An open rate of 50% is considered excellent. Anything below that and you’re typically considered to be in the junk email category.
The second important metric is the click-through rate. This is the percentage of people who click on a link contained in the email. A click-through rate of 10% is also excellent, and anything below that and you’re likely to find yourself in the junk email category. The lower your open rate and the higher your click-through rate, the better.
Personal vs. Company Email
One of the biggest differences between good and bad email marketers is how they approach the task of sending out their marketing emails. Good email marketers send personalized emails to individuals. They take time to build relationships with their contacts and know how to craft an email that will appeal to each specific person. This is the crucial difference between good and bad email marketers.
The downside to this approach is that it takes a lot of time. It’s also difficult to get the perfect personal touch in a mass email. Most people won’t mind receiving an email from the company they signed up for, as opposed to a personal email from a stranger. For that reason, companies generally prefer to use group emails for marketing purposes.
Mobile Users Have Different Needs
Another critical consideration when it comes to choosing the right email dimensions for your marketing campaign is how mobile your target audience is. When designing your strategy, you need to bear in mind that people are likely to receive and read email on smaller devices, such as mobile phones.
If your target audience is mostly made up of mobile users, you need to design your email marketing strategy accordingly. You’ll want to make sure that your emails look good on small screens, and that they don’t obstruct the user’s ability to receive messages from other sources, such as Facebook.
Segmentation Is Key
When you’re designing your email marketing strategy, you need to consider how you’ll segment your email list. To put it simply, you need to decide whether you want to target individuals or groups of people based on certain criteria.
For example, if you’re selling shoes online, you might want to target men between the ages of 18 and 35 who like sneakers. As your email list grows, you’ll be able to tailor your messaging to specific groups of people and create more effective campaigns.
Avoid Free Email Providers
The final piece of advice I have for you when it comes to choosing the right email dimensions for your marketing campaign is to steer clear of free email providers. As the name suggests, these are the types of services that charge you nothing to send email messages. Usually, to qualify for these types of offers, you have to commit to a minimum order, and you’ll find yourself in the junk email category the moment you exceed that minimum order.
The benefit of using a paid service to send out your marketing emails is that you have complete control over your email lists and can choose the types of emails you want to send. With a free service, you’re stuck with whatever others choose for you. This usually means you’ll have to settle for general emails that don’t pertain to your niche.
Choosing The Right Email Marketing Platform
Now that you have an idea of the dimensions you need to consider when choosing the right email marketing platform, you can begin your search for the perfect tool. When you’re in the market for a new email marketing platform, make sure you consider the following aspects:
- Performance
- Features
- User Interface
- Ease of Use
- Cost
To help you make the right decision, we’ll briefly discuss each one of these factors.
Performance
When choosing an email marketing platform, you want to make sure that you’re not wasting your time. To put it simply, you want to ensure that the tool you choose is going to be effective in managing and delivering your email campaigns.
To do this, you need to benchmark the performance of the tool in question against other email marketing platforms you might be familiar with. There are several tools out there that can help you do this:
- SendGrid Review: https://sendgridreview.com/
- Benchmark: https://benchmark.com/email-platforms/ (this is a comparison chart which you can sort by different categories, such as pricing, features, and interface)
- Email Marketing Blogger: https://emilyforgot.com/email-marketing-blogger/
As you can see from the above link, much like SEO, much like web design, and much like content creation, email marketing is constantly changing. Just because one tool works perfectly for you, it doesn’t mean that it’s the best for everyone. It’s essential to remain informed of the latest trends and technologies from the field.
Features
In addition to ensuring that you’re not wasting your time with a sub-par tool, you also want to make sure that the email marketing tool you choose has the features you need. To put it simply, you need to make sure that the software you choose has all the features you need to run your email campaigns effectively.
The best way to find out whether or not a certain software has the features you need is to visit their website and look for a tab or a button that says “Features.” If you don’t see anything, it often means the software is either still in development or has limited features. In either scenario, it’s usually a good idea to find alternative software, as much as possible.
User Interface
Another critical consideration when choosing an email marketing platform is the user interface (UI). Essentially, you want to find a tool that is easy to use.
The best way to find out how easy or hard it is to use a certain tool is by trial and error. While there are a few freely available email marketing tools, most popular ones are going to be proprietary, which means you won’t be able to access all of their features and functionalities without paying. As a general rule of thumb, if you’re unable to navigate the UI easily, it’s usually a good idea to look elsewhere.
Ease of Use
Even if you have the most advanced and flawless tool ever created in the world, it’s still not going to be useful if you can’t figure out how to use it effectively.
To put it simply, you want to find a tool that is going to be as easy to use as possible. Most importantly, you want to make sure that the tool you choose is going to be simple enough for even your most tech-phobic friends and family members to use.
Thankfully, with the exception of a few tools that are still in the early stages of development, the majority of popular email marketing platforms are fairly simple to use. You’ll just have to give them a try and see for yourself.
Cost
Last but not least, we have cost. As much as we’d like to believe otherwise, money is always an issue, especially when it comes to generating revenue. When choosing an email marketing platform, you need to make sure that the cost of using the service is something you’re willing to commit to.
In the end, not every tool is created equal. Some are undoubtedly better than others when it comes to certain criteria, such as performance, but that doesn’t mean that they’re all created equal when it comes to cost. To find the best one possible, you need to look for a tool that is going to be both effective and affordable.