Email marketing has always been one of the most effective ways to engage with your audience and drive conversions. But with the ever-increasing competition in the digital space, it’s crucial to level up your email marketing game and create impactful campaigns that stand out from the crowd. In this article, we will share some proven email marketing tips that will help you captivate your audience and achieve better results.
From crafting compelling subject lines to designing visually appealing templates, we will cover all the essential elements that make a successful email campaign. We will also delve into the importance of personalization and segmentation, as well as the use of analytics to track and optimize your email performance. Whether you are a seasoned email marketer or just getting started, these tips will provide valuable insights and actionable strategies to enhance your email marketing efforts. So, get ready to take your email campaigns to the next level and create a lasting impact on your audience. Stay tuned for our expert advice on how to unlock the true potential of email marketing and drive meaningful engagement with your target audience.
The benefits of email marketing
Emails play a vital role in any company’s growth and management, given that you always need to send newsletters and order confirmations. Even with the emergence of social media as a way for businesses to market their brand or products, email marketing is far from irrelevant. Let us look briefly into the benefits of email marketing.
1) Conversions (selling products & services)
If you plan to launch a sale or promotion, you can send an email marketing campaign to your subscribers to drive sales. Additional email marketing strategies that have been shown to boost conversion rates include emailing a discount or special offer in a birthday/anniversary email, welcome email, re-engagement email, and an abandoned cart email that is triggered when a visitor abandons their cart on the company’s online store.
2) Brand awareness
Businesses can communicate with individuals in a direct and personal manner. Your brand’s ability to appear in someone’s email inbox will help you stay top of mind. A personalized marketing email has a more significant impact than a social media post because with a personalized email you can make sure your message has been seen by your intended audience. Scalability is one of the advantages of email marketing.
3) Ownership of email list
There is a possibility that your company’s social media account could disappear or be hacked, taking all your followers along with it. This could leave you with nothing, which is why email lists are essential. Even if you lose everything else, you will still have a direct line of contact with people interested in your brand. Along with that, the intimacy of email as a one-to-one communication channel brings you closer to your audience.
Email marketing can help you build relationships with your customers while driving traffic to your website, social media pages, and other places you want people to visit. You can even segment your emails and target users based on demographics, ensuring that only the messages they want to see are sent to them.
Tips for creating a successful email marketing campaign
1) Compile an email list
You should also remember that email marketing won’t work unless you have the right people on your mailing list. Ultimately, you can’t send out email marketing campaigns if you don’t have anyone to send them to. As a result, you must capture leads to expand your email list with your target audience.
Whether it is focused on your company’s target audience or media professionals, it is essential to have an email list of some form. If you’re wondering where to find the contacts for this email list, you should check out Pressfarm‘s media database of 1 million+ journalists, bloggers and influencers across different industries. With this database, you can build your own mailing list of contacts who you can reach out to for help promoting your brand. If the idea of building your own media list doesn’t excite you, then our account executive can build custom contact lists containing the best media contacts in your niche. These personalized lists free you up to focus on other areas of your business.
In addition to providing these media contacts, Pressfarm can also provide you with quality content that will capture media attention. With a professional press release, some custom guest posts and a media kit that portrays your brand personality, you can spark a journalist’s curiosity and get them to feature you in a story.
Beyond providing this content for you, Pressfarm can also help you to distribute it to all the right places and put it right in front of your target audience. By submitting this content to the right startup directories, media outlets and professional networks, Pressfarm can boost your online visibility. Thanks to this distribution strategy, your target audience will have an easier time connecting with your brand through organic searches.
If you need to generate publicity for your brand, a PR package from Pressfarm could be exactly what you need.
2) Add an email service provider
You can use an email service provider (ESP) to segment your audiences, organize your lists, and send email campaigns. With a good ESP, you can also keep track of the results and use that information to improve future campaigns. An effective email deliverability tool should integrate with the rest of your marketing tools, allowing you to run everything on autopilot as your leads grow. To make sure your email domain is well-secured run a DMARC report analyzer before starting your campaign.
3) Put the audience first
Some companies think that adding a customer’s name to the email subject line is all the personalization they need. However, that is not the case. In order to build an effective personalized email that your recipient is sure to read, you should consider specific data while conducting your research. Examples of the kind of data you need include demographic information such as occupation, gender, interests, general purchasing behavior and browsing history of the target. You must inquire about your subscribers’ preferences, collect the information, and segment your mailing lists accordingly. The core of effective B2C communication is sending highly relevant content.
4) Personalize the email
It can be difficult and time-consuming to personalize each email and then send it out manually. However, personalization works in the long run. By sending the right message at the right time, you can minimize the risk of annoying the people you are targeting in your email marketing campaign. After all, if you talk to someone about things that matter to them in a tone they can relate with, they’re less likely to ignore your email.
5) Measure, test, & iterate
Once your email has gone out, it is also imperative to evaluate all your email marketing efforts. Some ways to do so include:
- Open Rate – How many people have opened the email. This depends significantly on the subject line, relevance, and sending time.
- Click-Through Rate – How many people have clicked the links provided in the email. This depends on content relevance, number of links, and CTAs.
- Conversion Rate – Shows how many people completed a purchase or performed any other action that a company wants them to achieve. All of the above metrics and product-market fit (whether a company’s product solves the problem and has a reasonable price) go into determining CR.
- Return On Investment – Shows how much a company earns versus how much it spent on its email campaign.
6) Experiment with different types of emails
Although there is no official classification for the types of emails, the following two categories are frequently used: triggered emails and business as usual emails.
Triggered messages, such as transactional emails, are triggered in response to a specific event or action. They provide information about this action, assisting the customer in completing a particular action and facilitating the transaction. Since brands see them as a helpful tool for converting leads, these emails are normally automated and have a higher open rate than regular emails. Your business emails should be manually curated and sent to recipients to inform them about your products, sell to them, or promote the brand. If triggered emails help a customer complete a journey, then promotional emails encourage them to begin it.
Let us further detail the different types of emails you can use in your email marketing strategy.
Types of emails for your email marketing strategy
1) Personalized emails
As mentioned previously, the main goal of personalized emails is to engage your audience, build loyalty, and potentially upsell your products.
Over the last few years, personalized emails have become increasingly popular in B2C communications. Many brands go above and beyond simply including the customer’s name in their messages. More specifically, the brands with the most successful email marketing strategies analyze audience behavior, collect data, and use it to create highly relevant and engaging emails. Examples of these use cases include:
- Wellness apps that encourage recipients to keep exercising.
- Banks that offer money-saving tips.
- Online shops that provide look-alike items.
2) Single-topic or dedicated emails
The secret behind a single-topic email is that it has only one call to action and thus converts better. As a result, B2C marketing strategies frequently employ dedicated emails, particularly in promotional campaigns and onboarding.
Here are two types of single-topic emails that you should use:
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Welcome emails
This email helps to build a positive first impression and is part of the onboarding process. It not only reveals a brand’s personality but also sets the tone for future emails, whether playful or neutral, straight-to-the-point, or educational. A buyer journey is incomplete without a welcome email. While drafting your welcome email, you must remember to motivate people to take action by including a relevant call to action.
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Special offer emails
This type of email is what we see in our inboxes every day. Since the primary goal of a B2C marketing strategy is to attract potential new customers and sell to them, you should work on your subject line and tailor your offer to the customer’s profile so that you can attract their attention in an effective way. A tailored approach will help you to stand out from the other email clutter.
Pressfarm’s PR professionals can help you in this way by offering advise or creating an eye-catching subject line that will set you apart from your competition.
3) Multiple-topic emails or newsletters
This type of email is designed to grow engagement and loyalty by providing helpful information and news.
These emails are usually sent regularly and contain a list of useful links or items. Everyone sends out newsletters, but it’s important to avoid falling into the trap of turning them into an automated routine. If you just send these emails en masse, you risk driving your customers to unsubscribe. It’s important to use previous consumer data to identify what kind of consumer will appreciate specific news categories in your newsletter. For example, data about what your consumers have purchased in the past will help you to curate a list of specific newsletter topics that they would be interested in. Some ways to leverage this information include sending guides on different ways to use the products they’ve purchased or suggestions for other products that work well with their previous purchases.
For example, Fiverr used a newsletter format to help freelancers during COVID. They provided a survival guide and an announcement of the Freelancer Fund that Fiverr launched in collaboration with its main competitor, Upwork. Customers are more likely to be engaged and loyal to your brand when they receive personalized communication like this. This is an excellent example of authentic and timely B2C communication that maintains momentum.
4) Lead nurturing emails
These personalized and automated emails are designed to convert leads into customers. You should use them to guide customers through your sales funnel, providing valuable and reliable information about your service or product. You need data collection and automation strategies to design a high-performing lead nurturing email campaign. Make sure you include these strategies in your B2C email marketing from the start.
Conclusion
Email marketing leverages one of the most popular communication platforms to promote your company’s products and services connect you with your customers. When done well, it can be an effective sales driver. On the other hand, if done incorrectly, it can come across as spam. In order to implement email marketing effectively, you need to respect your customers’ needs then use these needs to create content that will draw them in and retain their attention.