Email Marketing: 9 Do’s and Don’ts
Internet users are frequently assaulted with advertising information, including social network adverts, pop-ups, and unwelcome messages. People are becoming more careful about whom and what they pay attention to as a result. They like to interact with certain brands while ignoring others.
If you’re doing email marketing correctly, you would already have explicit authorization to market to people. This permission indicates that the user want interaction with yourbrand. As a result, email marketing provides a personal, cost-effective, and efficient method of communicating with your audience. However, it is not devoid of rules.
How does email marketing function?
Email marketing is the process of promoting your business via email correspondence with your audience.
The objective of email marketing is to promote your business, but that does not mean that all of your content must be sales-related. You wish to create a relationship with your leads and reciprocate their trust by sending you their email addresses.
Consequently, your messaging should provide value. Transmit useful information. Inform your audience of what is happening with your brand or amuse them. Simply simply, perform helpful and consistent actions.
The key to asuccessfulemail marketing strategy is striking a balance between promoting sales and providing good content.
What is the purpose of email marketing?
Email is the most profitable marketing channel.
That is correct. According to a survey by Litmus, the average return oninvestmentfor every dollar spent on email marketing is $38. That is more than other marketing channels can produce. With such a return on investment, no professional brand would neglect email marketing for long.
It has a Greater Impact
A larger reach doesn’t equal more sales. But think if you could connect with more appropriate individuals. This can be accomplished by carefully designing your communications and targeting your audience.
Globally, there were approximately 3,9 billion email accounts as of 2019, and this number will continue to rise. Your customers will always be among these users, and email allows you to engage them on an additional channel.
It Provides Control
Depending on the platform you employ, factors beyond your control may influence your interactions with the audience. Possibly none of these mediums provides as much access to customers as email.
You can schedule your material and rest assured that it will arrive in your readers’ inboxes at the desired time. There is also the option to experiment with various content formats and even combine them within a single email for optimal results.
Extremely Versatile
Various Useful Email Marketing Statistics
Email is four times more effective than Facebook and Twitter combined for customer acquisition.
Over 90% of consumers check their email every day.
60% of marketing professionals believe that email marketing is profitable.
Email influences the purchase decisions of 59% of B2C clients, per SalesCycle.
On weekdays, B2C consumers read their personal email for approximately 2.5 hours while at work.
85 percent of B2B marketers utilise email marketing tools. This makes it the second-most utilised marketing tool, only behind analytics software.
Email newsletters are the most utilised method of content marketing for 81% of B2B marketers.
Three times more likely to share your material on social media are email subscribers.
Consumers who receive marketing emails spend 13.8 percent more than those who do not.
Email Marketing Dos
The majority of marketers report that their email efforts are ordinary or subpar. Clearly, this is due to the fact that they have not been achieving the anticipated results. It is irrelevant whether you belong to that group or not. The following strategies can help you maximise your email marketing efforts.
Set Objectives for Your Campaign.
All the hoopla surrounding email marketing may tempt you to get in without a plan. However, it is usually advisable to begin by identifying your campaign objectives. This can help you explain other crucial issues, such as the type of material you produce, your target audience, and what constitutessuccess.
Ideally, you should align your email campaign objectives with broader business goals. These could consist of:
Bringing more visitors to your website.
Developing leads
Keeping customers and subscribers informed of business-related issues
Strengthening connections via increasing engagement and communication
Collecting information via questionnaires
You must also establish sub-goals to track your progress towards reaching yourlargerobjectives. Typically, these minor milestones are email-specific. They consist of measures such as the average number of opens and click-through rates. You can utilise data from your industry to inform your projections.
With your large and minor objectives in mind, it’s time to add statistics and a timeline. For instance, the overall objective could be to increase email-based sales by 5% by the end of the third quarter. To attain this business aim, you may establish that you must increase your click-through rates by at least 20 percent within the given time frame.
Consider Your Audience
You can’t accomplish anything in marketing without understanding your target demographic. Also applicable to email marketing. To achieve meaningful outcomes, you will need to gather all the information you have on the people you wish to engage with.
On certain levels, members of your audience are similar, while on many others, they are dissimilar. If you treat them the same or send everyone similar messages, they may get hostile.
Nevertheless, you can segment your audience based on their unique characteristics and stage of the buyer’s journey. This wouldboostyour outcomes because individuals would receive relevant messages.
In fact, data indicates that segmented email marketing increased revenue by 76% for marketers.
Use the following labels to segment your audience:
Various phases of the buyer’s journey
Demographics
Previous actions Geographic position
Product and content-related pursuits
Using these labels to segment your audience would need continual data analysis and the construction of structures such as distinct sign-up lists.
Create Valuable Content
Content is the backbone of effective email marketing campaigns. Creating well prepared email content will undoubtedly help you reach your goals and keep your readers interested.
Create compelling subject lines
Many individuals disregard the subject line of an email andhurriedlyprepare something unattractive. That is an error. Your subject line is the first thing recipients of your email see. If it is not intriguing enough, they will probably not open it. And what is the purpose of sending emails that no one will read?
Here are some guidelines for developing subject lines that will attract the attention of your readers:
Include the name of the reader if possible.
Provide a hint as to the content of the email (be clear and descriptive)
Keep it brief so that it is readable on all devices (preferably between 35–40 characters)
When appropriate, use a question to engage your readers and stimulate their attention.
When delivering email offers, the subject line should convey scarcity.
Do not make extravagant claims or use an excessive number of exclamation marks or currency symbols.
Try emojis, but only if they align with your brand (statistics suggest that putting emoticons in email subject lines increases open rates by 56% compared to text-only subject lines).
Provide Value
The last thing you want to do is to focus all of your email marketing material on selling. Don’t forget that one of the objectives of email marketing is connection building.
For this to occur, you must provide your readers with something to anticipate in your emails. A common rule of thumb is to allocate 20% of your messages to promotional content and 80% to helpful information.
If you’re wondering what other interesting subjects you can discuss in your emails than offers,consider the following:
Company tales — help people get to know you by sharing content such as interviews with team members, company history, and news such as recent awards or achievements, business reports, open positions, event details, company photographs, and customer stories.
Product updates and guides — Create information on product news, how-tos, recommendations for achieving optimal outcomes, case studies of your product in action, and intriguing facts about your product and its applications.
Trivia may generate tremendous engagement, but be sure to stay on brand! Share stuff such as intriguing industry facts or happenings, data-driven stories, surveys and polls, social media updates that individuals may have missed, infographics, quotes, and humorous messages.
Content for Customer Support: Distribute links to no-cost, useful resources and answers to frequently asked topics (FAQs).
Utilize Enticing Calls-to-Action (CTA)
Your email’s call-to-action is equally as important as its subject line and body. Each email should be designed to evoke a reaction since you want to engage your readers.
In addition to encouraging them to click on a link leading to a product landing page, you may request that they read related resources (blogs or guides), respond to your email, or participate in a poll.
One of the first tips you should follow when writing calls to action is to use action verbs. They are direct and motivate individuals to take action. Included are “create, enter, find, join, now, new, start, save, try, and get.”
These verbs are excellent, but they can’t achieve much by themselves. They require the email’s body to amplify their impact.
This implies that you cannot expect your CTA to miraculously convert recipients if the body of your email is fragmented. There must be a cohesive force that pulls all of your ideas together and concludes with a call to action that conveys the heart of your message. Also, keep the CTA concise and direct.
It is also recommended to integrate your email CTA within a button. Using a call-to-action button instead of a hyperlink increases click-through rates by 28%, according to a study.
To make your CTA button stand out, utilise vibrant colours that contrast with the email’s body. The buttons that perform the best are put at the end of the email and to the right of the full message.
Email Design for Excellent User Experience
Designing your email so that readers can simply interact with it can raise your click-through rate and decrease your number of unsubscribes. Emails can be made more accessible by optimising them for several platforms, especially mobile. In 2020, 81 percent of emails were opened on mobile devices.
Utilizing photos wisely is a further design advice. They can make your material more compelling. However, verify that they are optimised for all devices and avoid using too many. HubSpot has discovered that emails with more photos have lower click-through rates.
Monitor Results
Maintain a finger on the pulse of your email marketing initiatives. This will allow you toassessyour performance and determine what types of solutions you may need to improve results.
Typically, email service providers give you with reports containing precise indicators to help you comprehend the performance of your campaign.
You do not want to irritate your readers by sending too many emails in a short period of time. According to statistics, it will likely cause your email to be reported as spam or cost you some subscribers.
78% of customers have unsubscribed from the mailing lists of brands who sent them excessive amounts of emails. 59% of consumers cite “too many emails” as the primary reason they unsubscribe from email newsletters.
Avoid purchasing a list for email marketing
Buying an email list appears convenient and inexpensive in comparison to constructing one from scratch. However, it is a horrible idea for numerous reasons.
First, it provides you with the contact information of random individuals who may not even be interested in your goods. You might be fortunate enough to identify people who desire things similar to yours, but since there is no established relationship, they will have no compelling reasons to purchase from you. In reality, your odds of converting them are low due to the fact that they would likely be annoyed by your unwanted emails.
Rather than limiting your email marketing outcomes by purchasing a list, engage in content marketing. Use it in conjunction with search engine optimization to direct quality visitors to your website. And when they arrive, ensure that you have an appealing lead magnet that they will want in return for their contact information.
Do not disregard customer protection laws.
Unfortunately, in their haste to promote products, certainmarketerscan easily violate the private rights of individuals. As a result, numerous consumer protection regulations pertaining to advertising messaging have been enacted.
For instance, Canada has anti-spam legislation (CASL). Although it is a Canadian legislation, it applies to all companies that send marketing messages toCanadiancitizens. The Canadian Anti-Spam Legislation (CASL), for instance, requires businesses to obtain specific agreement from individuals before sending them electronic advertising messages.
Businesses that disobey these laws will face severe punishments, including hefty fines and criminal charges. To avoid such setbacks, you must investigate the regulations governing online marketing in your region and abroad. Then, include them into your email marketing efforts.
Conclusion
Email marketing can be a highly effective tool, but you must adhere to best standards. If you want to besuccessfulwith email marketing, you cannot ignore the dos and don’ts we’ve discussed. You may be asking how to condense all of these rules into a single sentence. The answer is to act in the best interest of your customers.
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9 Simple ways to avoid shopping cart abandonment
1. Need for speed!
24% of customers cite “Website Crashed” and 15% cite “Website Timed Out” as reasons that they didn’t complete a purchase.
– Shopify
In this fast-paced era with an element of impatience, where people exit a website if it takes more than a few seconds to load, the key to reducing shopping cart abandonment is to ensure that the website or app interface provides an experience as seamless and painless as possible. This means, using techniques like lazy loading to keep load times as low as possible. Keep testing the speed of the website after each update. This is especially important because shoppers remember the sites that give them a bad experience very well.
2. Go Mobile
Approximately 4 billion people own a mobile phone. Of that number, 25 percent of them use it as their sole method of accessing the Internet.
–Retail Dive
Since younger shoppers are increasingly using their mobile phones to shop, a streamlined, attractive mobile interface of the website is vital to getting more online sales traction. If the interface is haphazard and not user-friendly, then this, combined with the usual distractions (calls, messages, social media..etc) will lead to increased shopping cart abandonment.
Mobile-friendly websites were great but it is time to upgrade to a mobile-optimized or a responsive website. In fact, the best way to capture the millennial market would be to have a native mobile app developed for both Android and iOS as no website compares to a native app in terms of ease of use and navigation. This has been proven time and again by some of the world’s biggest retailers like Amazon, eBay, Groupon, H&M, etc.
3. Keep the checkout short and sweet
More than a third (35%) are turned off of a brand by just one bad experience, so getting the user experience right is of paramount importance.
– Biz Report
With an abundance of eCommerce websites providing shoppers with more choices than ever before, shoppers tend to lean towards the ones with easier checkout flows. The minute they encounter a lot of pop-up windows or multiple confirmations for the same action, they are going to exit to find a website with an easier interface. Same way, if they find a website with an enhanced UX, that brand is going to earn their loyalty.
87% of online shoppers said they would abandon their shopping carts during checkout if the process was too difficult. And on top of that, 55% admitted they would abandon their carts and never return to the retailer’s site.
– Retail Dive
Shoppers don’t like filling up registration forms, verifying email IDs and phone numbers, and entering their billing and payment details but this is necessary for every eCommerce website. A simpler way to do this would be to allow shoppers to register with their social media accounts. Simple steps like this can go a long way in avoiding shopping cart abandonment
The cart page must appear uncluttered and present a clear picture of the chosen products. Prominent details on the page must include a breakdown of the price in terms of cost, shipping, and taxes, information on the return/exchange policy, and delivery.
A well-designed checkout process and – crucially – one which works well on mobile as well as desktop is vital.
– SalesCycle
Traditional eCommerce websites can take a leaf out of Amazon’s handbook by facilitating a one-click order process. The social media app, Instagram recently launched a new feature that allows potential shoppers to click on a picture with the outfit they like and purchase it directly through the app without visiting the actual website. This says a lot about how much modern shoppers value a quick, efficient shopping experience.
4. Eliminate uncertainty:
One of the major complaints of online shopping is the difference between the real product and its online description or product images. This can be reduced by realistic product photography, incorporating more detailed, catchy product descriptions, and by including videos of the product that show a more realistic image of the product and its attributes. The importance of keeping all descriptions honest and as real as possible cannot be stressed enough. Heavily-edited photos are a big no in an age where shoppers value credibility over everything else.
In the eyes of the digital consumer, a product is only as good as the information associated with it.
– RetailDIVE
Fashion websites need to stop using flat lay images and ghost mannequins. On-model fashion imagery can improve conversion rates considerably. And it is not enough to have a model of just one body type and skin colour. Shoppers today want to know how the dress will look on their skin tone and body type. But photoshoots with multiple models are bound to cost a lot of money. This is where AI can help. An on-model fashion imagery generator can save costs, increase the number of conversions and save a lot of time.
5. Keep all prices transparent
63% of abandoned carts are due to unexpected costs such as shipping at checkout.
–Statista
Most websites show one cost in advertisements or even on the PDP (Product Description Page) and then increase costs in the cart. This makes shoppers wary of the sudden increase in price. The easiest way to avoid shopping cart abandonment is to make sure all costs (including shipping and taxes) are clearly indicated in the product description page. This ensures that people don’t bounce from the checkout page seeing a jump in the total cost. One thing websites can do is to build the tax in within the product cost, and mention the cut-off rate for free shipping and delivery (if it exists) at the home page or the product pages. This will ensure transparency and credibility.
The good news is that 58% of shoppers say they’d add items to their cart to qualify for free delivery
–Retail Dive
6. Peer Pressure
The best person to convince a shopper is another shopper. A simple message like “3000 shoppers bought the same product this month” can go a long way to reassure shoppers that they have made the right decision. When shoppers feel that they’ve got the best deal for their price, they are positively inclined to go through with the purchase. A website can also assure them of this by including information about savings, shopper ratings, and reviews for each product page which is a great way to foster trust.
Social proof is another way to improve credibility and boost checkout rates, There are several tools that allow companies to display social media posts on the website. This shows shoppers what other people think of the website and the product, providing social proof to nudge the shopper to checkout.
7. Returns
One of the greatest advantages of eCommerce is their ability to offer doorstep return/exchange facility. An efficient policy supporting this needs to be clearly placed on the checkout page to offer reassurance to the shopper. Free returns allow shoppers to buy items without any worry and doubt.
– SalesCycle
8. Style it up!
Another effective element to include in the shopping cart abandonment page is styling recommendations based on the products in the cart. When a shopper sees accessories to complete the look, it inspires her to visualize the outfit and encourages her to add those accessories to her cart or at the very least, purchase the clothes to be styled with similar accessories she already owns. This increases the size of the cart and provides a great experience
9. Multiple Payment Options:
With the abundance of payment options available, retailers need to offer multiple payment gateways including region-specific payment options, and the option to remember their payment details. New payment partners may also offer special deals and cashback schemes enticing the shoppers to complete their purchase.
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