Email Marketing Still Effective:
Email marketing Still Effective has been around for a while now. and there is lots of new things that have on the scene in this last decade, for example, social media marketing, which has perhaps distracted some of our attention away to the importance of email marketing.
But it is not going away. research actually shows that there are over one billion active email users on Gmail now, and it is anticipated that it will grow to around three billion users by 2021. this is something we just can’t ignore. it is more around the ways that we use email marketing to become more effective, and it has actually been proven to be really cost effective. so for every pound spend on email marketing is roughly around 30$ that you should get in return.
so, sure, it may be a more timely investment for you as a business, but certainly the benefits are worth it. so I am going to share with you a few top tips that will be useful for you in your small business, as we know that you need to prioritize, and things that hopefully will help you improve your email marketing overall. building a good database is key.
- Build a Database
- Segment your Database
- Personalization
- Test Email
Build a Database:
so it could be you are starting with your existing customer base, so those people that previously purchased with you, or it could be those people that returned to your website. for example, you could provide them with a popup and task them to sign up for your newsletter, and tease them in that way.
or it could even be new potential customers, so new people onto the site. you could offer them an exclusive deal or offer in return for them giving you their email address. there’s just a few things but definitely the best place to start.
Segment your Database:
To ensure your email marketing remains effective, once you have created your database, you need to start thinking about segmenting your database.
so essentially, this could mean combining the data from your existing customers, so it could be on previous orders they have placed with you, and also their email address, to make sure you send them the most targeted communications about the products, maybe areas they are interested, in or the products they have previously bought, if there is a similar product that you want to sell them in the future.
and then it is really about using those analytics. so if you are using an email tool, one of the free providers perhaps, or even if you have paid to use an email providers, then it is worth just having a look in your analytics, and what are these people clicking on, because there are a lot of information you can get from those analytics.
for example, you could find out that they are actually interested in another area of your business that you have not thought about sending them communications of before. and make sure you use that data to retarget in the future.
Personalization:
You must make sure people receive emails they expect to receive. for example, if they have asked and requested to sign up for your newsletter, make sure that you actually send them the newsletter. if they have requested exclusive access to offers, promotions, discount, make sure you send them those.
many businesses are often worried that people would unsubscribe from their emails, but actually 61% of people are quite receptive to emails, and they welcome emails as long they are not spam.
so actually making sure that you use your segmentation, as I mentioned previously, you think about why somebody has subscribed to you in the first place and you send them those targeted emails, shouldn’t encourage people to unsubscribe. but unsubscribing is normal, so don’t worry about that it could just genuinely mean that somebody is no longer interested in your product or service.
And actually that is a good thing for you as a company because you don’t want to be emailing people that are no longer interested either. so don’t worry about the unsubscribes and think more around why you should be emailing the people at the right time and making sure you send them the right content that they want.
Test Email:
Email marketing is still hugely effective, but it is very competitive. and so we need to make sure that we can cut through those noise. we all receive so many emails in one day.
so actually what is the best time and date to send your email to your customers or to your contacts? if you are using an emailing tool you should be able to get that data back from it, but if not, why not test out by sending a code or sending a link and seeing a what time people are actually clicking on that link.
And lots of different ways you can test that, but definitely something you should look into. but it is not just time and date that is important, it is also important or think about how somebody will view your email. you must make sure it is mobile optimized.
That is just a given now a days. we all use our mobile devices everyday and it is important to make sure that wherever the customer or contact is, they can access your email, and it would still be displayed in exactly the way that you want it to be displayed.
There are a number of tools out there that do provide it as part of your package perhaps or it might be an add-on, but if you don’t have it as part of your email tool, then maybe just look online and just have a quick search, you will definitely find a few results come up straightway. as I have mentioned, email marketing is not going to go away.
It is certainly something that is not going to disappear. if anything, it’s just going to get more competitive. and we need to think about ways that we could be more effective and it is really about serving the right content to the right people at the right time.
And as long as you get those three things right, that you will still get good, huge benefits and success from using email marketing.
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