When we first shared this stat in 2017, 72% of people said emails were their favorite way of communication from a brand. Today, that number sits at 61%. Despite the drop, it’s safe to say that email is still a critical tool for brands to leverage regularly. With that reality in mind, we’re re-sharing a few best practices for email marketing to keep in mind.
Our Three Best Tips For Healthy Email Marketing
List Building
Growing your email list organically takes time and patience, but is exponentially more valuable than a purchased database. By earning your customers’ email addresses through your marketing efforts, you avoid building (and paying for) a large list of low-quality, non-qualified contacts. Need some inspiration for the types of content that will earn you a new email address? Try these ideas:
List Segmentation
Once you gain a high-quality email list, the information you gather about them will help you define some segmentation criteria – so think carefully about the form fields that you ask them to complete. Segmentation leads to higher open and click rates, lower unsubscribe rates, a better experience for your customers, and essentially moves them closer to a purchase. In fact, segmented campaigns drive a 760% increase in revenue. These four categories of segmentation present a variety of ways to tackle your content strategy:
- Demographic
- Psychographic
- Geographic
- Behavioral
Content
Once you’ve identified groups of people to engage with based on criteria relevant to them, now comes the hard task of content development. Maintaining a healthy email calendar is not for the faint of heart – especially for marketers juggling all the tradeshow tasks, social media posts, trade ad submissions, and more. Here are a few tips for the getting the most out of your hard work:
- Get Personal – Capture the attention of your reader by using personalization at the first glance of them opening your email.
- Be Short and Sweet – Make your emails easy to scan and read. This allows your reader to get the important information they need to know so they can make a decision about your brand much easier. It also means your email is less likely to end up in the trash or worse, earn a high unsubscribe rate.
- Include Call-To-Actions – Work to keep your call-to-action remain above the fold in your email content. If you put it below the fold, almost as many as 70% of recipients of the email will not see it.
- Design Your Emails for Mobile – 85% of users use smartphones to access email. That percent is even higher for those aged 25-34. The argument for mobile-friendly layouts becomes even more compelling when you consider that 70% of mobile email users delete badly formatted messages in under three seconds.
Email is still and will likely continue to be one of the best ways to communicate with an engaged audience who wants the latest, relevant news from your brand. Apply these golden rules to your email strategy and boost your brand’s overall communication. Want to talk about this in more detail? We can help!
