A couple of decades ago, email marketing was the most useful marketing tactic for product or service providers on the internet. However, with the advent of social media pages like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, emails became less important than posts and tweets. New businesses and established corporations have now added links to their social media websites where customers can look for recent updates. An interesting fact is that online social media platforms have become more crowded than an individual’s inbox. This makes us come back to square one where email marketing regains its worth for new customer acquisition and existing customers retention.
An effective marketing email would be personalized to the recipient, have a mix of text and vibrant pictures, and conclude with a well-thought call to action statement. Just like a post box, email inboxes are filled with messages from around the world. People receive emails from friends, family, potential employers, potential buyers, and potential sellers. Running an effective email marketing campaign is the key to standing out in a crowded inbox.
Useful tips for email marketing
When businesses send complementary posts to their customers, it lands in the mailbox which is usually outside the house. On their way back, potential clients decide which mails they want to take inside and which ones to throw in the trash bin. Emails, on the other hand, go directly into a buyer’s house while they are cooking food, watching TV or doing research on the internet. Hence, it is important that email marketing is done in the most professional way possible. Here are some useful tips to generate a high response rate through email marketing:
Put yourself in your client’s shoes
To ensure that the target audience will open their email, businesses should ask themselves a couple of useful questions when designing their introductory email. These questions may include:
- What benefits will the client get after reading the email?
- Will they have enough time to go through the whole content?
- Does the product or service being marketed make a strong use case for the audience?
Focus on the content
Email marketing is only effective when potential clients are able to follow the call to action. Unless and until they do not see something that is useful for them, they would not be interested in receiving more information about that. Therefore, every word that you write in the email should make sense for your target audience. The message should be clear, well organized and have some useful information for the reader. Even if people read your email, they might not be willing to subscribe to your future emails unless they get something in return. Offering some kind of reward can be quite helpful in this scenario.
Manage client expectations
It is important that you live up to your client’s expectations in order to be on their priority list. If your introduction email mentioned that there will be weekly newsletters, and your subscribers get the letter once a month then you are bound to be moved to the spam folder. On the other hand, if you promised your target audience that you will share a monthly update about the business and start bombarding them with emails every week, then they will opt out from your subscription list.
Examples of successful email marketing campaigns
Boutique gift shop
An online boutique shop built its e-subscribers list by adding a sense of urgency to their email marketing campaign. The company distributed newsletters with large cover page photo of an upcoming event like Mother’s Day or Christmas break. The newsletters have strong marketing content about how urgent it is for potential clients to buy a gift for their loved ones so that it reaches them on time. The response is rate on their email marketing is quite high and has resulted in high revenue numbers for the business.
Buzzfeed
Buzzfeed is a relatively new entrant to the digital publishing industry. However, it has made an effective use of email marketing to develop a strong customer base in a very short amount of time. The company uses a customer segmentation strategy to maximize the return on investment on its promotional emails. Emails that are sent out to potential clients have a vibrant look with catchy headlines, colorful pictures, and well-organized content.
Recipients of Buzzfeed emails can subscribe to a variety of newsletters based on their preferences and interests. The topics can vary from entertainment to politics, and the users know exactly how many letters they will receive in a week or a month. This builds customer expectations which are met by the company with timely delivery of well researched and useful digital content.
Last Minute
There are certain companies that use email marketing to notify customers about the latest deals on various products and services in the market. These firms are also known as coupon companies. Their newsletters are primarily made up of a strong headline followed by promotional coupons. Last minute is one such company that collects coupons from different providers and uses it on its newsletter to attract the target audience to its website.
Some readers would be surprised to see this name on the list of email marketers. The truth of the matter is that Twitter has realized the importance of email marketing for promoting its social media content. Twitter collects useful stories that are trending on its social media page and relays it in the form of a newsletter to potential clients. This helps in creating awareness about how twitter works and why people should subscribe to this service.
Warby Parker
Email marketing is not always about creating awareness or acquiring new customers. Many firms use email marketing to check up on their old clients who have been out of touch for quite a long time. Warby parker is one such supplier of pharmaceutical drugs. The company sends email to a list of its existing clients whose prescriptions are about to expire in the near future. This helps the company to ensure the loyalty of their existing clients.
Email marketing is one of the most cost-effective ways to acquire new customers and retain the current ones. It helps providers to design creative and personalized messages for their clients. If run effectively, email marketing can help businesses build a loyal customer base in no time.
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