For the last several years, email marketing has proven to be an effective way to boost business. Many businesses use email marketing to boost conversion rates and revenue.
Yes, it takes time to build an email list but the time investment is more than worth it. Well-kept email lists give businesses the ability to reach out to customers 24/7. Many services provide great metric data that allows businesses to check the performance of their campaigns. Vital data allows for the monitoring of click-through rates, open rates, spam complaints, and more.
How do businesses harness the power of email marketing to help build their business? The following tips can help business owners and marketers get the most out of their efforts.
Evaluate email lists on a regular basis
Mistakes happen when signing up for email lists. Some sign up using fake emails while others change emails and forget to update. Incorrect or bouncing emails can have a negative impact on delivery performance. Messages sent to problem emails bounce, end up in spam folders, or provoke a spam complaint. Using reputable scrubbing and verification services to clean lists can help. The result is accurate data and a great reduction in spam complaints.
Personalize all emails sent
Most people get so many promotional emails each day. Even if a customer opens the email unless something grabs their attention, it’s likely they will delete it. By including their first name on the email, a simple ‘Hi there [subscriber first name],’ there’s an increased chance that they will read the email.
Test different send times
Most folks send emails to their list and hope all their subscribers will read them. Most, don’t stop and think if one deployment time is more beneficial than another. Testing with different deployment times could help increase recipient engagement. A business could try sending a message to one part of their list early in the morning and send to another part in the evening. Using analytic data, they should be able to determine which part got a better response. If the evening message had higher open rates, you can then try different evening hours to see which of those gets good results. Businesses can tinker and test until they find the best time for sending.
Segmenting list
One effective technique used by marketers to send targeted emails is segmentation. The business owner or marketer breaks the list up into smaller segments or groups. There’s a group who’ve put items in the shopping cart but didn’t complete the order. A special offer sent to that group could entice them to complete their buy. Often segmenting can help businesses achieve high click-through and open rates. Segmenting is a great way for businesses to give different customer groups what they want.
Include a call to action
Calls to action save customers time by telling them what action the sending business would like them to take. Without them, the results for an email campaign are nominal. Email recipients often don’t have time to read through lengthy emails to find out what they are being asked. If they don’t know what to do with a given email, they will often delete it. In giving those on an email list a call to action, they increase the chance that the recipient will take some action.