10 tips for better email marketing performance
Despite many years of predictions that email marketing would be replaced or fade away, that day has yet to arrive. In fact, email marketing remains one of the most effective ways of reaching prospects and existing customers.
Email marketing cannot be ignored when putting together a solid marketing strategy, it ultimately gives you more control and access to your audience. Keep reading to see 10 tips to help you deliver efficient email marketing campaigns and maximize email performance.
Create optimized lead magnets: Your lead magnet should grab visitors’ attention right away. That means making it interesting, unique, and relevant to the business. For example, you can use an incentive like a freebie or discount code to entice people to take action, or you can tell them what to expect if they sign up; it could be weekly personal stories, job opportunities, a curated playlist, or a tutorial. Optimizing your lead magnet with an incentive will encourage your target audience to commit to you faster.
Segment your email lists: You may have subscribers interested in different types of emails, such as coupons, events, or news, but not all three. Segmenting your audience allows you to target them with personalized emails according to their interests and can help build trust and long-term interest.
Make sure your emails are mobile-friendly: Aesthetically pleasing, well-formatted emails generally perform better, so you must consider how your email appears on your audience's devices. Email marketing services like MailChimp allow you to test how your messages look across various devices and in different inboxes and ensure that your designs display correctly wherever they're sent.
Make your subject line compelling and to the point: Subject lines can make or break a campaign, especially in a world where the average user’s attention span is extremely short. They must be compelling enough to persuade contacts to open the emails but friendly enough not to turn them off. 47% of email recipients open an email based on the subject line alone. At the same time, 69% of email recipients report emails as spam based solely on the subject line.
Personalize your email: People receive tons of emails daily, and a way to stand out from other brands is by sharing a message that speaks to them personally. Start with the basics, like adding first names to the subject lines. If you have it, use more advanced data in the body of the email to offer a compelling call to action. Personalization in email marketing is proven to increase click-throughs — emails with personalized subject lines are 26% more likely to be opened.
6. Have a clear call to action (CTA): One of the biggest mistakes in email marketing is not having clearly defined calls to action. It doesn’t matter if you’re driving traffic to a page, getting people to call a number, or asking for form submissions. If the reader can’t determine what they’re expected to do within 5 seconds, chances are they might close your email. So when designing an email for a marketing campaign, test it out by showing it to a friend and give them 5 seconds to look at the email and take action. Each email you send out should have a clear purpose, whether you want your subscribers to purchase, learn more, or sign up.
7. Send emails at varying times: People check their emails at different times, so the goal is to experiment and switch things up. You can also segment your audience into two groups and send one email at one time and the other at another time or day and see which one performs better.
8. Track your analytics: If you put up a number of calls to action, your mailing app should be able to tell you how many people clicked on which link and what action people took from your email. It informs what steps you should take next time and how to get more engagement in the future from your audience.
9. A/B Testing: Email marketers need to test everything, including subject lines, featured content, creative, and send times. A/B testing in the concept of an email is the process of sending one variation of your email to a subset of your subscribers and another to a different subset of subscribers, with the ultimate goal of working out which variation of the campaign garners the best result. Through A/B testing content and send times, a company can find out its customers buy more on Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays, but engage with content most on Sundays. Just remember when conducting A/B testing to keep your variations subtle so that you can determine what any difference in open rates, click-throughs, or conversions is attributed to. Want to boost open rates? Test the same email with two different subject lines. Click-through rates? Use the same email, but change only the button positioning for your CTA. By constantly testing, you put yourself on a path to data-driven, constant improvement in your marketing efforts.
10. Regularly update and cleanse your email list: Remember to keep your recipient list as clean as possible. Well-maintained lists consistently have higher engagement rates than older, neglected lists. Make sure you’re removing addresses that haven’t been engaged in a long time and segment your list by engagement.
And now you’re an email marketing guru! Maybe not yet, but if you consistently try all the steps listed above, you’re well on your way to becoming a pro.
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