There are a ton of ways to segment and customize your messaging to your subscribers and emails are a great way to reach them. In fact, it’s still one of the best ways to get a significant ROI for your business. In order to create an effective email marketing campaign, you need to focus on improving your key metrics. These metrics include open rate, clickthrough rate (CTR) and conversion rate. However, there are hidden metrics that will definitely give you more of an edge.
Before you start to send out any emails, you need someone to send them to. Obviously, right? This is why it’s incredibly important to push email signups. The trick is to make it easy and social media is a great way to do that. You can also provide a signup area on your website – one that only requires subscribers to enter their name and email address.
You can host email signup forms on your website using a tool like HotJar. Your social media channels and anywhere else you have an online presence works too! Some retail stores now email receipts in order to grow their email lists. Another tactic is to offer samples or discounts for whoever signs up. You can also take dates of birth and send out birthday emails with special coupons.
This is where it’s important to think about what your subscribers will expect from you. That’s why it’s a good idea to let them know roughly about how much you plan to email them and what the emails will contain. The more they know about the email, the more likely they will open it.
Once you start your venture with email marketing, it’s important to monitor the growth of your list. And the rate at which those emails are actually being delivered. If you don’t know how fast your email list is growing you won’t be able to measure the success of your email marketing efforts.
The key to killer email marketing is to decide exactly what you want to achieve with your email marketing efforts. Or more importantly, what do you want your subscribers to do with the email? Some emails are purely for sales, while others contain surveys for data collection. Whatever you choose, you need to make sure you figure this out ahead of time. It will make your efforts a lot easier. Whenever you create a hyper-focused email, you’re ahead of the curve.
Obviously, there are two halves to the whole email marketing tactic: the open rate, and the click-through rate. But the key is to focus on what you want the customer to do and the rest will fall into place. This is also where you should test as much as possible: different subject lines, marketing messages, or different imagery. Just don’t forget to use your CTAs!
If you want to increase your open rates you need to use a short subject line. One word can be extremely powerful. So you might want to say something unexpected about your brand. For click-through rates, single marketing messages are the best route to take.
What you do with your email actually does matter. Things like image choice and subject line greatly impact what the subscriber does with your email. But why does it matter? Let’s take a look.
1. Image choice: if your image is simple but striking you’re on the right track. The 2014 HubSpot Science of Email report suggests that even though people expect an attractive email, too many images can actually cause the CTR to go down.
2. It Adds Value: Even if an email is opened but not clicked through, your reader should be able to ascertain it’s value. This can be done in a variety of ways. You can show your subscribers a new product, solve a common problem (by using your product) or let them know about a sale or discount.
3. Subject Line: It’s a good idea to make this more about the person and not the product. This type of strategy can encourage more opens. Options for improving your subject lines include:
This might be a no-brainer but it can be a little difficult to actually implement it. When it comes to constructing your email copy, you need to create a hook right from the beginning. If you do this, people are more likely to want to read more. For the best results, you need to keep your copy short and avoid pitching your offer too early.
A few things to consider using are:
In the world of digital marketing, analytics play a huge role and the same thing goes for email marketing. You should study your sent history as a way to determine the best times to send the email in terms of when people engage the most. Once you’ve sent an email, try to follow up and find out what users clicked on.
In fact, a 2015 Hubspot study found that 11 am on a weekday is actually the most successful time to send an email. However, the analytics tool allows you to monitor that for your subscribers. Tools like MailChimp gives you an incredible depth of data in terms of the success of your email campaigns. This is great because it gives you the chance to test different strategies and figure out what works best for your subscribers. The key is to turn opens into clicks and clicks into conversions.
If you’re truly serious about email marketing to drive sales you need to strike a balancing act. One that focuses on a design that aligns with what you’re trying to achieve. Don’t forget that it’s really important to find the sweet spot between adding value and asking for something. A well-structured email campaign will deliver value to the customer as well as ROI for your business.
