One might think that email marketing has his best days behind. You might be overwhelmed by new technology and insist your email marketing game will soon crush down to rubble due to the popularity of different communication channels. Why would you stick to the old-fashioned emails while you have so much to choose from? Web Push Notifications, Live Chat, mobile apps, the list goes on… Let me give you a few reasons why you should give emails a chance and don’t neglect the channel.
Facts
While broadening communication horizons with different channels, email marketing is still primary to use.
86% of professionals prefer to use email when communicating for business purposes (Hubspot) and to 80% of professionals, email marketing drives customer acquisition and retention. (eMarketer)
You would think that this applies only to the group of older recipients. Nothing further from the truth! Millennials, guys who are nearly as familiar with today’s technology as Z generation, choose to take advantage of email marketing for that purpose. Majority of them claimed to prefer that way of business communication.
Email marketing is suitable not only for tackling your business challenges.
Email will be used by 3 billion people by 2020. (Radicati’s 2016 report)
Sending emails is beneficial for your income. You can sell way more using this form of communication.
According to a recent a VB Insight study, email has an average ROI of $38 for each $1 spent.
60 percent of consumers say that email marketing influences them to make a purchase. (Mapp Consumer Views 2016)
Consumers who purchase products through email spend 138% more than those that don’t receive email offers.
Refresh your email marketing
Personalize your emails
Email Marketing isn’t dead yet and surprisingly, it is doing pretty well. However, it doesn’t mean that you can stick to your old-fashioned ways and invariably deliver the same kind of content in the same dull manner.
First off, personalize. Take advantage of the fact that nowadays you don’t need to spend hours preparing personalized emails for your audience. Use a tool that will help you do that in seconds. It can be as easy as that.
Emails with personalized subject lines are 26% more likely to be opened. (Campaign Monitor)
74% of marketers say targeted personalization increases customer engagement. (eConsultancy)
Personalize the subject! Refer to your customers by their names. You can also add an emoji to the subject to spice things up a bit. 😉 According to a report by Experian, brands are experiencing an increase in OR due to such small change.
56 percent of brands using emoji in their email subject lines had a higher open rate. (Experian)
An email can be personalized not only with the name or basic details as contact’s email, their company name or address. The possibilities are broad and they vary depending on a tool you are using for your email marketing. You can personalize the message with a discount coupon, details of the external event such as cart or purchase but also many more.
Personalized emails deliver 6x higher transaction rates. (Experian)
Abandoned Cart
How to recover an abandoned cart? You’re right! Send an email.
Of course, you don’t want your customers to change their mind right before the purchase and leave your shop with bare hands. Alas, such scenario takes place very often online. Your customer might have been distracted by a message they received or low battery level. Remind them about their aborted purchase. If you’re taking advantage of an XML file you can easily implement the items from the abandoned cart and deliver personalized content which will encourage them to change their mind.
Recently Viewed
Don’t use new technology as a replacement for email marketing rather to take it to a whole new level. Emails may help you with turning the visitors on your website into full-time customers. Here comes the XML file! Imagine: one of the visitors on your website spent half an hour browsing through your products but ultimately, haven’t purchased. Send them a personalized email containing viewed items. Furthermore, take the advantage of web beacons. This way you will gain an access also to the products that the user has seen without clicking on it. Genius, right? All that will allow you to provide your contacts with personalized content that they long for.
Winback Campaign
Marketing Automation leaders provide a wide range of options when it comes to dynamic emails. Now you can easily create a win-back campaign and deliver product recommendations including items bought together and matched with the purchased product but also products added to a cart with the purchased product, products from the same category as recently viewed product or for example products viewed with a recently viewed product. Give them a go and increase your sales.
Birthday Emails
According to Experian birthday emails:
- have a 481% higher transaction rate
- generate 342% higher revenue per email
- have 179% higher unique click rates
than promotional emails
Who doesn’t like to receive birthday wishes or a gift? If you’ve managed to gather your customers’ date of birth, take advantage of that fact. You’ll not only send best wishes but also provide them with a small birthday surprise. Personalize a birthday email with a discount coupon and watch how your customers’ satisfaction increases proportionally to your income.
Welcome Emails
74.4% of consumers expect a welcome email when they subscribe. (Slideshare)
The average open rate for welcome emails is 50% — 86% more effective than email newsletters. (Emma Email Marketing)
Walking into the shop you expect to hear “Welcome”, “Hello”. Isn’t it nicer when the cashier or a shop assistant greets you with a cheerful smile? How many times you’ve bought things you didn’t plan just because the service was nice? It happens to us all the time. Why would it be different online? Engage with your customers and prove them you’re worth their time. They will appreciate you and you’ll notice an increase in the number of purchases.
What’s more, welcome emails are not just the ones sent after a contact subscribes. You can send a welcome email after a first purchase or after a contact creates an account.
Social Media
If you wanted to interact with your customers you would probably choose Social Media to do so. But what if there is no traffic there? Let your contacts know about your Facebook fanpage or Linkedin profile! Add a widget containing links to all you social media to your email template and remind them each time you deliver a message, with basically no effort. You won’t bother them that way but you’ll notice a difference.
Few Tips
Best time to send emails
According to Omnisend:
- the best day for open rates is Wedneseday
- the best day for good click rates is Sunday
- Thursday seems to be a good day for overall improved metrics – best for both open rates and good clicks.
Many other studies point that Thursday indeed is the best day to send emails.
- for open rates the best day of the month is the 1st
- the last of the month performs worse, with some of the worst metrics
- the 4th of the month seems to do very good overall
Adjust send time automatically from contact activity
Some of the tools that enable you to monitor contacts and their activity, give you the possibility to deliver emails at the best time, adjusted to each of the contacts individually, based on the hour, day of highest activity or even both.
Be responsible and responsive
56% of email is now opened on a mobile device. This means that more email is read on mobile devices than on desktop.
Mobile devices are slowly becoming the number one device to be used when it comes to searching through the internet thereby checking emails. Hence why you should not forget about your emails being responsive. If you make the experience more convenient to the recipient you’ll increase the OR and by that CTR.
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