Tag Archive for: email marketing
Email remains one of the most effective forms of marketing. Despite its success, there are likely plenty of your customers and prospects who are not opening your emails at all.
Equally disheartening is when a customer or prospect opens your email but fails to convert. What’s a business to do? Well, read on for important tips that will help to boost the open and conversion rates of your emails.
- Segment your email lists. Targeting the right people is the key to improved email conversion rates. In light of this fact, it is imperative that you routinely evaluate your email lists to make sure they are as up-to-date as possible. Remember, most lists have a shelf life of only six to 12 months.
- Customize. The more you know your customers and prospects, the better able you will be to tailor the content of your emails. And research shows that the more customized an email, the higher the conversion rate.
- Double opt-in. When you ask customers to confirm their email address, you increase engagement and also guarantee that your information is accurate. This small task takes little effort but can make a big difference.
- Nurture leads. One email is unlikely to convince anyone to do business with you. Instead, make sure you send a series of emails. For example, the first can introduce someone to your brand, the second can give an overview of your products or services and the third can offer a coupon or discount on an initial purchase.
- Use your brand voice. If your emails are being opened but not converting, you can probably attribute that to what you emails have to say. This is another case of how important it is to know who your audience is. Generic emails speak to no one. Serious customers will respond to an authoritative voice and statistics. Young mothers will likely respond best to calm and concern.
- Get the title right. No one has the time to guess what your emails are about. That means if the title or subject line of your email doesn’t tell them, they are going to hit the delete button sooner rather than later. There will be an opportunity once an email is opened to get your point across, but you have to get the reader to open it first.
People get several emails every single day. If you want yours to stand out, you have to make sure you know who you are targeting and allow those individuals to get a feel for who you are. Only then will your email campaigns be successful.
Email marketing is a great way to reach new customers. And while landing new customers is an outstanding reason to use email marketing, it isn’t the only one.
Customer loyalty is another reason to employ email marketing. After all, customer loyalty is essential to the success of any business. Further, it is much more expensive to obtain a new customer than it is to retain a current one. And according to a recent study, email marketing did more to promote customer loyalty than social media.
Of course, using email to attract new customers and using it to retain current ones require slightly different tactics. Therefore, it’s important to know how to implement an email campaign that specifically targets your existing customers. What follows are some tips that will help make sure that you are engaging current customers with your email efforts.
- Get personal. A person’s name in the subject line is proven to increase open rates and increase spending! One study showed that transaction rates were more than 20 percent higher when an email was personalized in this manner.
- Remember that content is still king. Content that connects, educates and inspires is particularly important when targeting existing customers. If an individual is your customer, chances are that you have earned their trust. Continuing to provide them with quality content will take it a step further. They will come to see you as a thought leader in your industry and will be more likely to make purchases based on your recommendations.
- Segment your lists. Just as your target audience of prospects is segmented, your target audience of current customers should be, as well. A good way to make sure that your emails are being read is to tailor those emails to a particular demographic. Research shows that segmented email campaigns have an almost 15 percent greater open rate and get almost 60 percent more clicks than those that are not segmented. The best part is that since these are your customers, you have the data necessary to segment your list. Choose demographics such as age, gender, income, locale, purchase history and more.
- Don’t forget the call-to-action. Of course, there is one important thing that all emails-whether they target existing customers or prospects-must contain. A well-written, easy to see call-to-action is critical to getting customers and prospects to take the next step.
Email marketing is a tremendous way to attract and retain customers. The key is to tailor each campaign for the individuals you are targeting.