As a business owner, you don’t want the emails you send your customers to head straight to their spam or promotions inbox. Your aim is to grab your user’s attention. But if you’re not sure how to make the most of your email marketing efforts, don’t give up hope just yet! Simply assuming email marketing is very costly or time-consuming without testing out the right strategy can prove to be a big mistake.
While some would beg to differ, email marketing is far from dead. In fact, direct email marketing has never been more impactful than it is right now. According to Word Stream 80% of retail professionals indicate that email marketing is their greatest driver of customer retention. Which brings us to our next question, HOW?
How do you create an engaging and exciting email marketing campaign that will make an impact on your customer base? How can you drive up the conversion rates? In this blog post, we will give you 5 quick actionable tips to make your email marketing campaign truly stand out so you can grow your bottom line.
1. Make It Personal
Gone are the days when simply using a customer’s name would be enough to do the trick when it comes to personalizing your emails. While addressing your customer by name can’t hurt, it just doesn’t go all the way to meet your customers where they are. So there are several other tactics that you should use to make your emails more personal.
First and foremost, if they have purchased something from you before, acknowledge that. A thank you email is likely to make a one-time customer a repeat customer. You can ask for a review on the purchase, and you can suggest similar purchases that they can choose from. This will make the customer feel as if they are valued and remembered by you and your company. In addition, personalized recommendations increase your sales numbers.
If that doesn’t work, you can also suggest purchases that align with their demographic stats. It can be easy to compare what users of a certain gender or certain age group are more likely to purchase. Customize your emails and use that personalization to make your users feel acknowledged and appreciated.
We recommend using smart email marketing tools which deliver the right email data analytics to you which allow you to customize your suggestions. Oracle’s Eloqua is an amazing tool for big enterprises with global customers, trying to deliver a custom personalized experience to each customer. MailChimp is another email marketing automation tool which works well for small and medium businesses looking to grow their email marketing efforts.
2. Let People Know You’re There
Another part of not making users feel like a number in your system is giving them the attention they deserve. Personal human interaction can feel like a luxury these days. Sometimes your customer or user just wants someone to sit down with them and talk about the services or goods you provide.
This is where creating an appointment booking calendar can go a long way in terms of customer support. Using a free tool like SuperSaaS, you can allow customers to book phone calls or meetings that work with your availability.
You can use this time to demo your product or market other conversion opportunities to your user base. Make sure to use an online scheduling system that has features like waiting lists and automatic appointment confirmations through SMS and email. These customizable features can reduce no-shows, increase customer engagement and make them feel more connected to you since you’re always just an appointment away.
Once customers know your availability and understand that you’re easily reachable when they seek your help, they will be more likely to trust you. Customer trust is not something that can be bought. It is one of the most valuable assets a company can have. Take the small step of being available to them through appointments, and watch it pay dividends in the future.
3. Remember That Timing Is Everything
There’s no point in sending out an email at a time when nobody is going to read it. It may be no surprise to you that an email that arrives at 3 AM isn’t going to be read. But it may shock you that the same can be said for a mail sent at 9 AM.
Why is that? Well, the simple answer is time zones.
For those businesses that have customers or stakeholders in different timezones, a morning email could arrive in the middle of the night.
A simple way to fix this is to study what times are the most beneficial when it comes to making an impact with customers. There are already many existing studies on this effect. Surprisingly, most of these studies state that the times with the best open rates are between 8 PM and midnight. This means that more people are likely to respond to emails and offers at the end of a long day at work, not during.
On top of that, another surprising addition to this study is that people are also likely to open emails on weekends. The 9-to-5 mentality does not work effectively when it comes to the email marketing game. Take advantage of what other companies are not doing by being the only one that breaks through the mold and sends emails on off-periods. Because of the low-volume of emails, people are more likely to pay attention to.
Tip From The Editor:
[See a related article: The Secret Of Timing In Social Marketing]
4. Mobilize Your Campaign
Mobile users make up nearly half of all email checkers at any given time. This number is expected to expand as mobile use becomes more prevalent globally. That means that while desktop users should never be forgotten, it is important to add in features that are convenient for those who are accessing your email on a cell phone or tablet.
There are a few general rules of thumb that make for mobile-friendly emails.
- The first is making it so that all the content appears in one column. Mobile users find scrolling to the left and right cumbersome, so make sure you have your settings favor a vertical email format.
- Secondly, account for the fact that users have less patience with scrolling then ever before. Make sure all your important action points appear at the top of the email, including a call to action that is easy to see and click from the very beginning.
- Finally, make your text readable and images simple so that mobile users won’t have to parse through language or visuals with difficulty.
5. Measure Your Performance And Make Adjustments
It’s hard to ace anything when it’s your first time. Effective email marketing strategy isn’t any different. Many times, you will have to experiment with a trial-and-error mentality. But this doesn’t mean you have to be completely in the dark when you make changes and adjustments to your emails.
Consider the metrics of your email marketing campaign. Some of the most popular and telling are the open rate, click-through rate, and the opt-out rate. Each of these statistics will tell a different story about where you can improve your emails.
For instance, if your emails don’t have a high open rate, you may need to take a look at your subject lines. Make them more action-driven or try shortening them up using cold email tool. In this case, less is often more. In this case, less is often more. People want to be intrigued enough to actually open the message. If your click-through rate isn’t where you want it to be, try making your call-to-action buttons bigger and more noticeable.
These are all small things that can make the biggest difference when it comes to how well your campaign can work. Don’t be afraid to try something new if what you have been doing isn’t working.
Remember that the power to improve your email strategy belongs in your hands. Email is still one of the most cost-effective and information-rich marketing strategies that can get results. It even holds more power than social media in some cases. Therefore, it isn’t wise at all to give up on or ignore this segment. Through patience and vigilance, you can effectively leverage your sales emails to work for you.
[Main Photo by fauxels from Pexels; Map: TimeZonesBoy, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons]
A passionate marketer, Sneha Mittal works as the chief marketing officer for SuperSaaS Appointment Booking System. Sneha is a digital marketing enthusiast with a commitment to deliver great customer experiences at every touchpoint. Sneha is dedicated to helping businesses grow their revenue by investing in the right marketing channels.