Have you taken a look at your email inbox? It is chaotic, right? You gave your email as a requirement for a purchase and suddenly you start getting hundreds of emails every month from the company. Though email marketing can be used as a very good tool to convert potential customers, many companies don’t know how to use Email marketing for their benefit.
How to use Email Marketing
Most companies think that sending numerous emails will make a person their customer, but the story is quite different. When you start doing email marketing you need to prepare for a battle plan.
In 2020 alone, approximately 4 billion people used email. Now just imagine how your business could grow if you used the right strategies. In the year 2024, there are a lot of opportunities for email marketing. We have tried to list some down for you.
Create a Good Email List
The first and most important step for creating a good email strategy is to build a strong and healthy email list. Don't buy an email list as it will be of no use. These people have no interest in your product or service and probably haven’t even heard of it.
Sending Emails without consent will only decrease your brand value. Not only will your reputation be hampered but it will also create low opening rates which harm the IP reputation. This can cause your future email to be marked as spam.
You need to be innovative with your campaigns. You can use offers like gift vouchers that attract the audience and they are compelled to share the email with you. You can gamify the process by acquiring emails via a lucky-draw or spin-the-wheel.
Periodically Refresh Your Email Lists
The most common mistake made by email marketers is that they send promotional emails to as many people as possible to maximize conversions. What they fail to understand is that this can sabotage the IP reputation.
Ok so just imagine you are a consumer, and you receive an email from an organization that is totally unknown and irrelevant to you. Will you open that mail? No, right?
The same goes for everybody because any and all irrelevant emails go unopened. This decreases open rates and is critical to IP reputation. Open rates can be maintained only when you are selective with your email list. Send emails to only those people who you know are interested in your product and will definitely open the Email.
To stay relevant, you must refresh the email list every 6-12 months. Email list scrubbing allows you to retain only the customers who show good open rates and discard the rest. This helps in keeping the engagement at an all-time high.
Write Simple and Contextual Emails
On average people receive 100- 120 emails every day. With so many emails looking to grab people’s attention, your email can easily get lost in the crowd. The easiest way to be relevant is by keeping your email contextual. For example, if someone bought a mattress from you, then they are more likely to respond to an email that mentions mattress covers. They will not feel the same temptation for an email about a chair or a dining table.
Be it a follow-up email or cold emails, just make sure that it is relevant to people’s needs and interests. You must segment your users into different groups based on their actions.
Personalize Your Emails through Segmentation
Email personalization has a high conversion rate. A focused email marketing campaign can do wonders for your business. Create segments that capture user preferences and send personalized emails that address their greatest needs or issues.
Let’s take a look at some of the email segmentation strategies.
- Segmentation by age, sex and location
- Use quizzes and surveys to understand where their interests lie.
- Analyze customer purchase history
- Map usage frequency
- Check customer behavior on your app or website
- Combine Email Marketing with Other Channels
The best marketing strategies are the ones that combine the digital and the physical worlds. “Phygital“, is a new term that has evolved for this process. It means combining the physical customer experiences with digital communication strategies.
For example, you can create a geo-targeted email campaign that is sent to your customers when they walk past your shop, offering them their favorite products at a discount.
Follow this up with a push notification or an SMS with the discount coupon and you have made a customer follow through with a purchase. This method of marketing is called omnichannel marketing. It is very crucial for brands if they want to stay relevant to their customers.
Using different channels to connect with customers can help you create a good brand presence in their minds.
Improves Email Deliverability
Email Deliverability has been a challenging task for marketers. However, its impact has increased even more. Increasing Email deliverability is a subject of segmentation and contextualization. You should send these emails to only those groups who are most likely to open them.
It stops your emails from going into spam.
Email deliverability is also impacted by other unconnected factors like content and creativity. The logic here is emails that do not look great or read great go straight to the trash. This impacts future deliverability.
It is also important to choose a good email marketing platform or email marketing service that provides good deliverability rates overall.
Track the Right Metrics for Your Email Strategy
Open rates and Click rates are the most significant and popular metrics to track. However, there are a few that cannot be ignored.
- Deliverability and delivery rate
- IP Reputation
- Conversion rate and ROI
- Subscriber health
- Keep Unsubscribing Easy but Sad
Building an email list takes a lot of effort. It gets very disheartening when the unsubscribe rates increase. However, it is important to give your readers an option to opt out. If you make the process difficult it will leave a bad impression on the users.
You will lose the chance of getting recommended to other potential customers. The most easiest way to keep your spot in the customer's mind is by making it sad. Use terms like “You are leaving us? We already miss you” OR “You are welcome anytime you need us”, leaves a good impression in the customer’s mind.
Giving uninterested people the option to opt out makes sure that you have a healthy email list.
An Effective Email Marketing Strategy
An effective email marketing strategy is one that helps you build lasting relationships with your target audience by delivering continuous personalized and value-packed content straight to their inbox. This includes understanding your audience’s needs, preferences, and behavior. Craft emails according to the research so that the message resonates with consumers.
It also means segmenting your mailing list to ensure that your message reaches the right individual at the right time. When your message directly conveys a solution to the needs of your audience, it establishes trust and credibility. It increases the chances of click-throughs, and conversions while earning customer loyalty.
Why is Email Marketing the Best Practice?
Email marketing is like the oldest kid in the digital marketing realm. This makes it the most trusted and reliable marketing channel. One might think that there is nothing new to learn in email marketing, but you might be wrong.
Markets are continuously changing and so are the marketing techniques. You need to have a professional digital marketer working with you to scale up your marketing game.
Unify Wizards is one such company that can take care of all the marketing requirements for you while you focus on your business. We can help you nurture potential customers, convert leads, and reward loyal customers.
We have shared the best email marketing practices that will help you maximize output. In the end, we would like to give you one additional tip that we have experienced personally. “Focus on quality, not quantity. “