Email marketing is a true beast! It is still the most effective form of marketing out there. And although many have promised that the rise of social media will completely decimate its predecessor, it never happened. Quite the contrary, email is stronger than ever before.
However, if you ever tried to launch campaign, you have faced with a whole bunch of problems. From high competition and immense amounts of data to go through to difficult workflow and overall feeling of being lost in a haunted wood of marketing. As a result, many small businesses, which cannot have a separate marketing department simply drop their campaigns and lose all the potential benefits of email marketing software.
So, we’ve decided to dedicate this article to discuss some of the best ways you can keep on track with your email campaign and scale it up to compete in the big league. So without further ado…
1. Email Marketing Automation
If we are talking about optimizing any process – doing more in less time there is no easier solution than automation. The numbers can speak for themselves − automated campaigns have the click-through-rate that is more than double of an old-fashioned broadcast email. And modern technology also boosts conversion rate by as high as 50%.
Although, launching automated email marketing solution might sound intimidating and tough, bear in mind that you should do it once. The second, third and hundredths time will be easy and quick. Maybe you don’t realize it, but we use automation in our everyday lives, so the process will come naturally.
Most automation that you’ll be involved in consist of very intuitive if/else statements. Email marketing automation will allow you to better target your audience.
2. Smart Use of Dynamic Content to Personalize Every Email
Chances are good that your audience is not a homogeneous group, and if it is – you are using the data wrong because it isn’t. With your customer base growing, you’ll quickly find out that it becomes impossible to personalize the content, even for each sub-group.
Dynamic content is a great way to solve this issue and go beyond simply personalizing standard things like first name. Everyone can do it. But you can do better!
The thing here is not going overboard during the first iteration. Construct a single dynamic element, like the name of the company. And then make sure that it works for everyone flawlessly. The last thing you’d want is an entire campaign that messes up personal information of your recipients.
Then you can go further and add more elements, like subject lines. And when you’ll get really good at it, you can do something more sophisticated, along the line of personalizing products displayed in the email, based on the customer’s shopping history.
3. Create Email Marketing Workflow with Mobile First in Mind
Today’s marketing is all about mobile first, email is no exception! Therefore, a mobile design should be at the top of your priority list, when constructing a campaign. It goes further than you realize. Way over half of users will not recommend a company with a poor mobile design. Mobile first isn’t just a best practice, it’s a prescription for your business’s credibility.
Always remember that there is a great variety of mobile devices out there. It’s no longer just iPhone and Android. Today, companies need to consider tablets, smartwatches and keep up with all the emerging devices.
4. Create a Customer Journey
Now, let’s talk about something more creative – customer journey. One of the largest mistakes that many businesses make, when launching an email campaign, is simply stopping. A simple email letter is not very engaging in any way imaginable (unless it’s a VERY good letter). And customer engagement is the name of the game, along with personalization.
There are two simple email marketing workflows that you can use to achieve a memorable customer journey.
- Viral contest. This is great for B2C companies, you can send out a letter that invites your buyers to take part in simple contests, such as: Like us on Facebook and get 5% discount → then like us on Twitter and increase it to 10% →write your honest review of our store and get 15% discount coupon. Not only can you return customers and rapidly increase sales, but you’ve just also boosted your social media accounts.
- Email-to-LP. This is a relatively new niche that is more suitable for B2B-type organizations. The idea is to send out an email that will introduce some service of yours and capture an attention. However, you cannot write too much in a single letter and you cannot make it to visual in the email. So you invite people to a dedicated landing page, where you can go all-in on the design and text-content.
There are many different ways you can create a journey with email marketing strategy, here you have a playing field to experiment and get better over time.
5. Use Data to the Best of Your Ability
The vast amount of data that can be collected from a single email marketing campaign can be intimidating. But it’s a gateway to real efficiency. Many marketers spend hours upon hours pulling out decentralized data and create reports that lead nowhere.
First of all, you need to identify, what is the goal of the campaign? Then, what are shared data points for a group of customers? And then you need to get information relevant to these points. This gets us back to having a constructed and clear customer journey. If you know the roadmap – you know what stages you need to track. Soon, you’ll be able to see what part of campaign doesn’t perform well and where customers drop off.
Being able to scale your data with a growth of your campaign is also essential. Your team needs to have access to automatically updated data and being able to easily upload it.
Take the next step towards building a winning campaign today!