Use Email To Grow And Develop Your Marketing Campaigns

Marketers are all over the place. There are ads everywhere: TV, radio, Internet, on the street, in our e-mail inbox, and in many other environments and spaces we interact with. With the current digital space and technology growth, creating marketing campaigns is more accessible than ever.

As an entrepreneur, it is essential that you take care of the marketing side of your business. You can choose to create promotion strategies that can leverage your efforts and drive more brand awareness and sales.

There’s also a huge competition out there, and many business owners are trying to get as much as they can from the current market conditions and demands.

If you want to keep up the pace and stay on the top compared to your competition, you need to conduct and apply few efficient marketing strategies. Promoting your business through the right marketing campaigns and making your ROI (return of investment) profitable is the key to success.

Now let’s talk about an interesting marketing trend that became extremely popular few years ago and continues to be so. We’re talking about e-mail marketing.

 During this article we’ll explore some profitable ways in which we can exploit the e-mail for better connections and ultimately profits.

1)   Permission – The First Required Process

Our e-mail inbox is private. We get to choose who we e-mail, who e-mails us, what e-mails we read, and so on. As marketers, you need to understand that just like any other business e-mail marketing is all about expectations and delivery.

In order to start e-mailing your potential customers, you must first establish the terms between you two. Your e-mail reader must first give you his permission to send extra content through new e-mails.

Most businesses that approach e-mail marketing strategies are focusing on providing enough value. If the content is good, the prospect will see the benefit of joining the company’s newsletter.

You can offer value through various forms: discounts, exclusive content, news, tips & tricks, free downloads, and so many other variants. It’s usually you who has to make the first step towards a client-customer connection.

2)   Avoid the Spam Folder by Getting White-Listed

There are a lot of spammers who use special software just to send thousands and millions of e-mails each day. Unfortunately, almost any e-mail address gets intrusions like these.

When people provide their personal e-mails, some businesses may collect it and sell it back to companies who are buying e-mails in bulk format. They will soon receive unrelated e-mails from ghost companies that are using deceptive techniques in order to reach customers.

In order not to be catalogued as a spammy company, you need to make sure that your recipients white-list your e-mails. That means adding your sender address to their recipient address book.

As a company, you can choose to outsource some amazing e-mail marketing software. These will help you create “confirming” e-mails that automatically lets people decide whether they want to keep receiving e-mails from you or not.

Some of these services are: Aweber, MailChimp, Constant Contact & more.

3)   Personalize Your E-mails When It’s the Case

Many marketers attempt to get closer to their followers by calling them by their names. This strategy started working a while back, but it starts to fade as the majority of spammers can quickly find out and use your personal information.

Because a lot of spammy e-mails start with our names, we learn to ignore them and perceive them as something fake or as an irrelevant ad.

A good advice would be not to try to force the familiarity between you and your potential customer. It’s often unproductive and can cause harm to your marketing campaign.

He first needs to know who you are, recognize your existence, understand the benefits of having a relationship with you, and only then we’re talking about getting more personal.

Perceive him as a normal human being that has the ability to choose whether to spend more time with you or not. Time is money nowadays, and attention is very precious.

Of course, you can choose to personalize e-mails. If you plan to do it right, you should first get some basic information that could individualize each subscriber.

It’s basically letting him or her know that she’s being treated as a unique person, and not as a number in your e-mail list.

4)   Subject Lines: Short or Long?

Usually, subject lines are really important in many aspects. First of all, an email’s subject line is what makes the readers make the decision to open the e-mail or not.

It is the first step towards attracting the attention you want. According to a recent study which tracked down around 900 million e-mails for the research, there seems to be a “dead zone” in the e-mail marketing campaigns.

This study suggests that the subject lines that are made of 60-to-70 characters have lower open rates and clickthrough rates.

On the other side, 70 characters and above subject lines are proved to be the most beneficial to engage your subscribers in following a link found in your e-mail. This is called clickthrough rate, and it’s a very important factor in e-mail marketing campaigns.

Alternatively, subject lines with characters fewer than 49 had better open rates. The open rates are a percentage made up of the report between the total send e-mails and the times someone actually opened the e-mail.

According to your business needs, decide which approach works best for you. If you want to improve the brand’s awareness, go for shorter lines and have people open your e-mails more often.

If you’re looking for more engagement and ultimately sales, try going for more characters in your subject lines. But no matter what you choose, try to stay away from that deadly 60-to-70 characters range.

5)   Send E-mails From 8pm to 12am

Did you know that sending e-mails during the 9 to 5 timeframe is actually unproductive compared to other timeframes? Common sense would say that people read more e-mails while their working hours, but research proves otherwise.

According to a late 2012 report, e-mail open rates are influenced by the hour people receive the e-mails. The above report suggests that the most efficient open-rate time was between 8pm to midnight.

Of course, depending on your target audience the hours may vary. The key to choosing a productive time to send your e-mails is approaching a trial & error process. That means that you’re going to use analytics in order to find out during what hours your e-mails are opened the most.

Send E-mails in Weekend

8pm to midnight is the best timeframe to organize your marketing campaigns around. Another good time to send your e-mails towards your e-mail subscribers is during weekends.

Another Experian study shows us that weekend days outperforms the weekly days. Whatever you choose, don’t forget that these e-mails are still supposed to be helpful to the reader, so there are more factors that will guarantee the clickthrough response rate of your e-mail.

6)   FREE Content is King

Bluewire Media has taken an interesting action and analyzed its subscriber’s list. According to their report, free content such as templates and unique software are powerful incentives and freebies that customers usually enjoy having.

Let me explain how this works: as a marketer or entrepreneur, you have to provide as much value as you can. Some of value will be packaged and sold at different prices; but before reaching the sale point, you need to “warm up” the relationship.

Offering free content proves that you are not in only for the money. It makes the subscriber notice you and your services, therefore he’ll become more engaged and trust you better.

The word free has a powerful impact over customer’s minds. It also steals their attention and makes them want to see what’s in it for them.

The moment you choose to offer free, useful content, the moment your relationship with the prospect gets to a new level. Ever heard of the rule of reciprocity?

If you want to persuade someone to do something for you, you should make the first step and create a rapport by offering something first.

7)   Optimize for Mobile

We live in a digital world. Smart devices such as phones, tablets, desktop PCs, and laptops are taking over people’s lives. The current technology has a substantial influence over how people spend their time.

Most of the times, you will see a person walk around you holding a phone in his hand. They usually check for social media updates, respond to messages, and look for information online.

Let’s get back to e-mail marketing. Of course, there are a lot of e-mail applications designed for mobile devices. In fact, a company named Litmus has gathered some statistics concerning the open rate which comes from mobile devices.

It turns out that 47% of their subscribers opened the e-mail using their phones. That’s why it is extremely important not to forget this aspect.

So you will have to visually optimize your e-mails in order to be accessible from any form of smart device. Here are some quick tips on how to do that:

Your font text should be very readable, so make sure it’s a little bit larger than usual.

• Try to use a one column template in order to fit most of the mobile’s screen.
• Include a strong call-to-action, and make it visible at first sight.
• Make sure you have tappable space across your e-mails. Many users scroll down using their thumbs.

8)   Bring Back to Live Your Inactive Subscribers

Once a person agrees to become one of your subscribers, there’s a big chance that he or she will eventually stop reading your e-mails. An inactive subscriber can either be an asset or a liability to your e-mail marketing campaign.

Most email marketing software work like this: whenever you overstep a certain amount of subscribers, your monthly price for using the service will raise.

This is when inactive subscribers can bring you down. According to a report, an average of 63% of your e-mail subscribers will become uninterested and will stop following your e-mails sequence.

You don’t want to fill all the space with individuals who no longer present an interest for your or your business goals. Therefore, you’ll have to initiate a re-engagement campaign that is supposed to bring them back.

You can create such a campaign by preparing a special e-mail that will hit everyone’s inbox. During this e-mail, you will have to entice them and show them the benefits of coming back.

This can be done either by offering extra value through free resources, reminders that they’re missing stuff, or some interesting article’s headlines.

You will probably have to test some variants and see which of the tactics is the most beneficial for your e-mail list. It all comes down to figuring out which way works best, and scale it as much as you can.

Conclusion

E-mail is an exponential tool for lots of businesses and big companies. In a few words, taking advantage of an e-mail list full of engaged subscribers is just like having loyal customers to your local store.

The difference is, you can instantly communicate with them and help them make good decisions. It’s a very productive marketing tactic which proves to work since the invention of the internet.

Many marketing experts say that doing online promotion without taking advantage of e-mail marketing promotion is a waste of traffic.

When asked about the biggest mistakes from their marketing careers, most of these individuals respond with “Not creating a dedicated list of e-mail subscribers earlier”.

Let’s learn from their mistakes and start taking advantage of all the marketing tools we have at our disposal. Start taking action and begin creating your e-mail marketing strategy now; no delays!