Guest Post
Email marketing is an effective way of staying in touch with targeted market audience. For several years, it has remained one of the best strategies of achieving marketing goals. However, email marketing only works effectively for those who have an idea of what it takes to make the most out of it. Despite being the leading strategy for getting the highest ROI, some brands are yet to reap significant benefits from email marketing. What is it that they aren’t doing right? What should they embrace to ensure maximum gain from such a radical marketing strategy? Check out the killer strategies.
- Your customers have names
One unforgivable mistake that most email marketers do is treating their clients or potential customers like nameless faces. The aspect of uniqueness and recognition is critical when it comes to addressing individual customers. Those who indulge in personalization carry away the day while marketers who insist on generalising emails walk away empty handed.
One essential way of attaining this is using the attained feedback to segment corresponding email list. Unless you stop the habit of sending general emails to everyone, you might never get the most out of email marketing. Addressing individual customers by their names gives the impression of concern and personalization; everyone needs this.
- Customise Sales Promotions Based on the Customer’s Journey
Tracing the customer’s journey is becoming an important aspect of marketing. Before sending any marketing email, ensure you understand the previous moves of the targeted customer. Mapping out the behaviour of individual customers is key in ensuring the right email gets to them. Unless you study the behaviour of individual customers, you might never identify the ideal products they are looking for. The mapping strategy works even better when you combine such information with location information.
Doing so ensures you send the right email containing the perfect promotional products to your target customers. This way, you will be increasing chances of getting positive return on investment for every single email sent.
- Optimisation and Retesting
You know something is wrong when you keep repeating similar marketing strategies every time with the anticipation of attaining different results. When working on email marketing, it is advisable to evaluate your techniques more often than not. What was the response in your last email? What was missing in the previous email? Which possible errors did you make in the last email you sent? Such questions should be used as guidelines in subsequent emails. Whenever possible, work your way through retesting the various email campaigns.
Attaining statistics from previous emails can help you refine the subsequent campaign strategies. Unless you are planning to increase ROI, the nature of subsequent emails should be guided by the response of previous emails.
- Timing is Key
The issue of timing can never be overlooked when it comes to email marketing. It is advisable to test different timings and check the email openings. What was the graph of the opening time when you sent them on Sunday Afternoon? What of Friday evening? How long did the customers take to open the emails you sent on Monday morning? Trying different days and times of the week is the only sure way of capturing the ideal time to send emails. You can learn the response patterns of your recipients and send the emails at designated times that favour your brand.
Since customers are different and the products have wide variations, what works for one brand might not necessarily work for the other. At the end of the day, all that counts is using the information gained from previous emails to ensure appropriate timing of subsequent mails.
Letting Subscribers Manage their Preferences
Some customers do not like being emailed every time or frequently. There are those who would appreciate if you supply them with monthly newsletters or those who would want to be contacted at least once in two weeks. Customers vary and serving them with the option of choosing how often they would like to receive communication from you makes it better. It not only shows freewill but also makes the customer feel respected.
The same freedom of choice should be applicable when it comes to selecting the type of products to be sent. Advisably, the client should have the freewill of selecting particular items they would love to receive promotions on. This way, the clients will segment the marketing and thereby enhance the procedure and make it easier. There is no better way of improving your attrition than letting your subscribers manage their preferences
Go for the Perfect Product
Most people fail to reap significant benefits from email marketing due to poor choices of service providers. Right from the word go, you must ensure you have the right emailing software. What do you need in an emailing system? What are the market preferences? How much have you set aside for this marketing strategy? You must ask yourself such questions before striking a deal with a given service provider. Making a list of what you require will ensure you stick to your initial budget and get the planned emailing features. Don’t be the kind of person who approaches email service providers without the slightest clue of what they need.
The Journey Starts Today
Email marketing is an effective marketing tool. When used appropriately, it can foster brand awareness and increase popularity of a brand. However, email marketing only guarantees viable and lasting outcomes when applied the right way. Embrace practices such as letting customers choose their preferences, addressing them by names and mapping the behaviour of customers among others. This way, you will be certain of getting the most out of email marketing. Otherwise, it might just remain one of those dysfunctional marketing media that have been tried over the years with minimal success rates.
About the Author
Derek Iwasiuk runs national digital search engine optimization firm headquartered in Minneapolis. He also spends a lot of his free time educating the minds of thousands of young SEO’s and top agencies. To gain from his in-depth SEO experience, you can check out his articles at Engage the Crowd
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