How to get the most out of your email marketing.
Is email still a viable marketing method?
As social media become a driving force in paid marketing efforts, more marketers have directed their focus there and channeled it away from email efforts. But email marketing is still a great marketing method for both B2B and B2C efforts. Here are some tips on creating your best email marketing campaign.
Find Quality Leads
One of the most important things you can do when developing your email marketing strategy is to make sure your emails are going to the right people so that they’ll be more likely to be read. That’s why developing a quality list of leads is key setting up successful direct email marketing. Collecting leads through gated content and other lead gen forms on your website is a better method than buying email lists, for instance, when it comes to quality and relevant leads.
Trigger and Automate
Successful email campaigns are often linked to automation. Setting up emails to automatically go out when customers perform – or don’t perform – certain actions can help to increase your email ROI. For instance, email marketers often have emails set to go to their customer base after a sale is completed and closed or after an ecommerce transaction. This kind of “thank you” messaging makes customers feel valued and want to stay in contact with businesses. Some organizations will send out emails to customers at a certain time of year they know customers are more likely to buy – at the end of the fiscal year for instance – or when customers haven’t made a purchase in a set period, like after 90 days. Having automated communications means that you’ll always have some communication with customers and encourage repeat business, and no matter what else is going on in your marketing efforts, email won’t fall by the wayside.
Create Quality Content
Emails need to contain content that’s relevant to your contacts. It’s appropriate to send out an email when you’re having a product launch or sale, but it’s also important to email them with content that can help them see your organization as interested in them holistically, wanting to help them solve a problem, rather than just as a transaction. This could be sharing blog posts, articles, whitepapers, or seminars, but it should be content meant to help your potential customers find a solution and not just self-promotional to make a sale.
Follow Analytics and Find Balance
A key to effective email marketing is to make sure that you’re striking the balance between “too many” and “too few” emails. You don’t want to generate so many communications that people unsubscribe and you lose the connection, but you also don’t want to only reach out sporadically and eventually people may forget about your brand entirely or they’ll miss out on crucial information. That’s why watching your analytics – open rates, click-thru rates, unsubscribe rates – is important. It can help you understand the balance of how much email is relevant to audiences before they start ignoring you and allow you to adjust accordingly.
How do you feel about email marketing? Is it part of your marketing mix? Have you found success with it? Do you think there are additional things businesses should focus on to increase their email campaign success and ROI?
