As you may know, email marketing can be an incredible sales and promotion resource for businesses of all sizes. Our company handles all facets of email marketing, specifically for small businesses. While browsing trade publications and through our own internal research, I've discovered some cool tricks we use to help market this vertical.
Designing an effective email campaign can be one of the great mysteries of marketing, and while many of us currently run some sort of email marketing campaign, are you really seeing results?
If your efforts are not elevating your business, what is the point of even spending time on an email campaign? It is not only a waste of money but valuable time as well. If your email campaigns are not performing, or are generally neglected, now is the perfect time to reconfigure your campaign. Here are some key tips to consider when building your email strategy.
1. Do Your Research
When crafting content for your emails, skip the same old dry marketing correspondence that often seems like it was written by a robot. Make sure you have an engaging title, a solid value statement, and relevant information. Understand the customer journey so that the email content being delivered can be well received. For a frame of reference, your emails should be generating at least a 20-30% opening rate. Play with different subject lines while tailoring your content for the most effective results.
2. Identify Your Audience
Consumers are constantly being inundated with emails, so yours has to stand out. It is important that your audiences are segmented properly. You want to avoid the "spray and pray" method. I would rather send emails to a tight group of consumers I know are interested in my services than just blast emails aimlessly to a bunch of unknowns. Not to mention, a much more intentional approach will help bring more brand credibility to your content.
3. Personalize Your Content
One way to get more clients to open emails is to ensure they pertain to their interests. Find a way to connect. That could be through sharing a blog that highlights industry-specific tips, a video of tactics, or an infographic, all optimized for quick consumption.
4. A/B Test Your Emails
Starting a new email campaign is never an easy task. Sometimes your carefully crafted emails just do not work for various reasons. The best way to narrow the field is by sending out two unique emails for each campaign and evaluating which one performs better. You should also automate your journeys so that it streamlines your content delivery.
5. Improve Functionality And Build Trust
Make sure that your email campaign is connected to your reputation management platform. Depending on the software you use, this can open the door to a wide range of email marketing tracks for engagement and build consumer trust around your brand.
Another integration for your email campaign is with your CRM. This integration is powerful for automation, building audiences, and is essential for understanding your reach. A properly set-up CRM can help increase the ROI of your email campaigns by identifying a wide range of factors. Conversion rates, open rates and click-through rates are all accessible through the CRM system, allowing you to fine-tune your emails for maximum efficiency.
Getting responses from email marketing campaigns is a challenge no matter which vertical you are representing. Be honest, how many times have you just rounded up a bunch of emails and clicked the little trash can logo? If you are like me, that can be a pretty common occurrence.
So, how do you get more engagement with your emails after redesigning your campaign?
Experts will say it hinges on the time of day or day of the week your email is delivered, and while that certainly has an effect on your success, what matters most is the content of your emails. Too many times we have seen fantastic product or service email campaigns fail because of poorly planned content.
Contact forms can be utilized to glean all sorts of information and help you build more engaging content.
When creating content, think about the intent of your audience. Who are they? What are they looking for? And what is the motivation behind searching for your service or product?
Everyone looking for a service has a motivation or a problem that needs to be solved, even if they do not know it yet. It is important that you tell them why they need to choose your business to solve their problem.
Make it something that your clients will want to open, not dump into the trash.
While the contractor vertical can be successful, these email campaign tips can work for any vertical, e-commerce store or nonprofit. (Keep in mind, if you are a nonprofit, your open rate can be incredibly high with the right tactics.)
As with any content, your email campaign should be supported by a solid webpage or asset. We like to drive traffic back to a YouTube video or blog — anything to add more value to the email.
In the end, that is what you want to provide your potential or current customers with in your email campaign: value. Ultimately providing value in the form of emails should be the goal of any campaign.
There is nothing more powerful than providing a solution.
