Despite all the talk and focus on social media marketing, email remains the most effective means of reaching customers. According to a recent Salesforce Study, nearly 70 percent of internet consumers prefer email as the method of communicating with businesses. The study also indicates that 80 percent of marketers feel email marketing is crucial to business success. But here's the challenge: according to econsultancy.com, more than 200 million emails go out every minute of every day. For an email message to make it through all that noise and reach its intended target, it needs to be backed by a well thought out marketing plan.
Here are the major components to consider when doing a email marketing campaign.
Nail the Subject Line and the Content
It is assumed that a lot of work has been done before even writing marketing content - like identifying the target audience, segmenting the contact list, getting buy-in or permission to email recipients, and setting goals for conversions. Once all that is done, it's time to nail the subject line and write some compelling content. An email subject line must be enticing and demonstrate value to the person reading it, or the email will never get opened. Get it wrong, and they might even unsubscribe.
A successful subject line should be brief, informative, and free from deception, yet conveying a sense of urgency. Also, it should tie directly to the intent of the marketing campaign.
Make it Mobile-Friendly
Even those new to marketing should know that the majority of their audience accesses email through their mobile devices. It is hard enough to get recipients to open and click through an email, issues with rendering or responsiveness on mobile devices would only add to that challenge. 53% of emails are opened on mobile devices - Campaign Monitor.
Industry-wide email open rates are somewhere near 20 to 25 percent with a click through rate sitting in the low single digit percentages according to recent data from MailChimp research. If an email is not formatted well and won't display on a mobile device those click-through and open rates drop to next to nothing.
Luckily, email systems like MailChimp, Campaign Monitor, and others take mobile access into consideration and format all of their emails accordingly. Make sure to perform tests on all emails before they go out to ensure that they render properly across a variety of mobile devices.
Perform A/B Testing and Analyze Statistics
Finding the format, subject lines, timing and content that works best involves a lot of trial and error. Although performing A/B testing is time-consuming, the results can be significant and far outweigh the cost of effort. Analyzing the statistics in conjunction with A/B testing will help marketers get to the most effective approach regarding formatting, subject lines, calls-to-action, and timing. Make time to review your reports, and test often to get the most out of your campaigns.
Make Your Call to Action Clear and Compelling
If a marketer is not clear on the call-to-action before even crafting the email, then the customer is going to be even less clear. There is nothing that derails an email campaign more quickly than an unclear call-to-action (CTA).
To successfully convert readers, present a relevant and obvious CTA as well as a landing page that is ready to convert those that click-through or a form that is ready to capture their data. Next to the subject line, CTA's are the most important components of a successful marketing email.
Use the Right Tools
As referenced earlier, having a single email automation tool can not only help get the mobile-friendly email formatting right but it's an effective way to:
- segment the audience
- track click-through rates
- open rates
- schedule email blasts
- build off of existing templates
- get a host of data and statistics back
Mailchimp, Constant Contact, Mautic, and countless other software or web-based providers offer a variety of features in easy-to-implement marketing tools.
You can implement a variety of marketing automation tools into your concrete site. The best tool for you will depend on your budget, the size of your list, whether you require marketing automation, which integrations you require, and much more.
Show a form on your website that allows visitors to subscribe for a certain list in MailChimp.
Opt-In Pro is an add-on for creating pop-ups or slide-ins to increase newsletter signups. There is a free and paid version.
This add on will provide basic newsletter marketing solutions. Promotions has ability to set up a birthday club message to your website viewers, create email template equipped with shortcode attributes.
This Concrete5 Add-on lets you add the Mautic tracking pixel to your Concrete website and embed Mautic forms in the content.
Have you used any of the concrete marketing add-ons? If so we welcome you to post a product review so that others can benefit from your experience. We know time is scarce so we especially appreciate your time and input.
Implementing some of the above points will land a company somewhere along the spectrum of email marketing success. Hitting all of the points will be transformative and all but ensure that any small business email marketing campaign will get its highest possible ROI.