7 email marketing lessons to improve your email strategy

Doing email marketing effectively is not a walk in the park. You need to learn many things like IP warming, choose the right email marketing software for your needs, and attract paying customers for your mailing list.
email marketing strategyThere’s also one more important thing: You need to learn how to improve your email marketing strategies for driving engagement, sales, and getting the edge over your competitors. It’s not advisable to learn as you go because that would cost you a lot of money, time, and effort.

So what should you do instead? You take inspiration from those who have done email marketing right like big brands. Here are the lessons you can learn from them.

#1 Ask for feedback (survey) and offer a discount in return

Most customers won’t participate in surveys because they feel like it’s a waste of their time, and you’re just showing face in terms of improving their customer experience. They think that the job of improving your email strategy falls to your hands alone. But if you offer an incentive in participating, like a discount on their next purchase, they’d be happy to help you out.

An example of a business offering rewards to their customers participating in their surveys is Uber. They give their customers Ubereats Credits if the customers answer surveys on LEO. By offering a reward for their help, customers will think that you’re really serious about improving your services and will be keen to point out areas of email marketing you lack on. You can then analyze the data taken from feedback to make the necessary improvements in your email marketing strategies.

#2 Make your message clear and concise

Long marketing emails with too many vague words might work on elderly prospects, but that’s just that. Younger generations of consumers prefer an easily understandable and short promotional message with a clear call-to-action in the end.

That is why PayPal sends marketing emails that are clear and concise. They tell their recipients that PayPal is a better payment service than their competitors, explain 3 to 4 points why so, and they tell their email recipients to register to their service at the end. A good marketing email should have 200 words at maximum in its content.

#3 Use analytics to gain insights

Using essential features of a reliable email marketing platform such as A/B testing, you can experiment with different email templates, email body wordings, subject lines, email sending schedules, and personalization styles to use on your customers.

The A/B testing feature will then provide you with analytics on which of the two different email campaign templates yields the most engagement rates. Do tests frequently on various email marketing elements so you can combine the successful elements into a perfect email marketing template that’s sure to drive more engagement and sales.

An example of A/B testing was Coca-Cola’s infamous “New Coke” back in 1985. While the stunt caused a global uproar, it taught Coca-Cola one thing: Don’t fix what’s not broken!

#4 Don’t underestimate catchy email subject lines

Subject lines are the first thing your customers read when they open their email inboxes. That’s why when you’re writing one for email campaigns, they should be able to catch your recipients’ attention at one look.

One effective way to do that is to create a short and clear subject line with a sense of urgency. For example, if you’re selling a limited supply of products, you should write “[WEEKEND ONLY] Get this NOW before it’s gone…” as the subject line.

#5 Know more about your audience to segment effectively

Each customer is different. One may prefer to receive camping equipment promotions while the other is more interested in athletic shoes. Look at your customer’s search queries, abandon carts, and purchase records. That can help you determine which product promotion should be sent to who.

But no matter how different your customers are, there will always be one thing they share in common with one another. Find out what that is by getting to know your customers more. When you’re done, assign them to a segment with a label using your email marketing tool and write personalized email campaigns to them based on the segmentation. If you’re struggling with this process, a digital agency could further help you with the segmentation and the setup.

#6 Write welcome emails that give off a friendly vibe

Another strategy that increases engagement rates is to welcome your customers that have just joined your mailing list with excitement. Thank them, show your appreciation and happiness in the automated welcome email. This will build trust and loyalty because your customers will feel that they’re treated like family instead of a commodity.

Almost all internet businesses send their new customers a welcome email. The Guardian, South China Morning Post, Walmart, Adidas, and many more entities follow this trend.

#7 Retarget inactive email subscribers with ads on Facebook

It is highly encouraged to clean your mailing list every six months. This is because inactive subscribers ruin your engagement metrics by not opening your email campaigns. When you have low engagement rates, your email marketing address and email sending IP address will be flagged as a spam-sender by internet service providers and email service providers. This ruins your email deliverability.

A lot of these inactive subscribers are active on a social media platform like Facebook. Mainly because they don’t like emails or are receiving a lot of them, through retargeting ads, you’ll be able to pinpoint these inactive users for re-engagement. This can save you a lot of money from advertising and campaigning to gain new customers. A business that retargets a lot on Facebook is Wish.

Final Thoughts

The best way to learn lessons for email marketing strategy improvements is to subscribe to big brands’ mailing lists first, like those mentioned above. Refer to the seven essential marketing elements above and analyze how big brands implement them in their email campaigns. Then, follow their styles or plan a better strategy on your own.

Baburajan Kizhakedath

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