According to this report,
- Approximately 306 billion emails were sent and received every day in 2020 across the globe. The number is likely to increase to 376 billion emails daily by 2025.
- In 2020, there were four billion email users, and by 2025, the number is likely to be 4.6 billion.
With such a massive reach, no seasoned marketer can afford to overlook the importance of email marketing. Let’s look at some tips to utilize email marketing in favour of your brand properly.
- Keep Updating the Subscriber List
While you may already have a long list of clients with their email ids, it pays to keep adding to your subscriber list.
- Sign-up Form
Ensure that your subscriber list keeps growing at a steady pace with the help of a sign-up form. Ensure that your sign-up form has the following characteristics.
- It should be minimalistic in design. It should not ask the subscriber for too much personal data. The name, email-id and profession are often enough.
- You can make it funny depending upon your products and services. You can use witty one-liners as well. For example, an “Age” field can be renamed as “Mind telling your age? We will keep that a secret.” However, make sure that the overall tone blends well with your website content. You won’t like to sound funny or informal if you are selling security systems.
- It should be on your home page, blog page and social media. However, ensure that it does not infringe upon your content. The idea is to get subscribers using your overall online visibility.
- Provide Valuable Information
Try to provide information that adds value to your potential customer. For example, a company selling retirement plans may put in a retirement fund calculator to generate curiosity in the visitors. It may further ask for an email address if visitors want to know the plan best suited for them.
- Apply the Basics
Some basic marketing exercises can work across industries. It is time for a quick revision.
- Define Aim and Objective
Set realistic goals and determine the purpose of your email marketing campaign. You may want to achieve single or multiple purposes. Some common purposes can be
- Attracting new customers.
- Retaining or strengthening bonds with existing customers.
- Informing customers about special offers.
- Raising brand awareness.
- Proper E-mail Marketing Plan
Once you are clear about your target customers and the purpose of your email communications, create a mailing plan. For example, you can create plans regarding the timing of the emails and their frequency.
- Design the Content
Content is the heart and soul of any email marketing plan. Here are few tips that can help you push out content that strikes the right chord with your subscribers.
- Try to ‘KISS’ (Keep It Short & Simple)
Your content should be engaging. It should draw the potential visitor toward your website or make him want to know more about your products.
- Keep it short, simple, and crisp.
- The subject lime should invoke curiosity.
- Try to keep the subject line limited to 5 to 6 words.
- Use Personal Names as the Sender
Researches suggest that the recipient is more likely to open the mail if the sender is a person rather than an organization. So, use personal names in sending mails whenever possible.
- Request to Add to the Contact List
Request the recipients to add your email address to their contacts so that your emails do not invariably land in the spam folder.
- Track Performance
The following three measures are widely used by email marketers to track the performance of their email marketing campaigns.
- Email Open Rate
This is the percentage of people who have opened your email and looked into the content. As the name suggests, the subject line is the most crucial factor to increase this rate. However, there can be other factors such as time and day of the week that can affect this rate.
- Click-through Rate
This is the percentage of people who find your email content interesting enough to proceed ahead and click on the link provided in the mail to visit the website.
- Unsubscribe Rate
There are always unwilling persons who will invariably unsubscribe from your mailers—no need to panic for every unsubscribed person. However, keep a tab on the unsubscribe rate. If it suddenly becomes higher, it may be time to look closely into your strategy and content.
In the world of instant chat messages and emojis, emails have their aura and dignity. They will continue to be an important part of communication for many more years to come. And hence, marketers need to refrain from undermining the importance of email. Good old emails can still work wonders for your brand with proper content, strategy, and smartly integrated call-to-actions.
