Email Marketing Delivers
Email Marketing is still one of the highest converting marketing strategies you can implement in your business. When compared to Social Media Marketing, Email Marketing still brings in the highest ROI’s.
Here are some of the latest Email Marketing stats;
- Shoppers spend 138% more when marketed to via email as compared to those who do not receive email offers (Disruptive Advertising)
- Email Marketing produces $44 for every $1 spent (Campaign Monitor)
- Email Marketing is 40 times more effective at acquiring customers than Facebook and Twitter combined (McKinsey)
Email marketing should be mastered
Considering the above statistics, Email Marketing should be one of the first things implemented within any business, and not only implemented – it should be mastered!
So why do many businesses fail to implement an effective email marketing strategy? Many reasons but here’s a few;
- They have a very small database or a stale database full of outdated customer information
- They collect customer data from multiple channels but it’s not consolidated and can’t be used to their advantage
- They lack the skills to create an engaging email marketing strategy that actually converts to sales
- They are too busy running the business to send effective emails
But we run paid ads; shouldn't that be enough?
Here’s the truth, many business owners are willing to spend big marketing dollars on advertising campaigns to gain new business, however with no follow up strategy in place all those marketing $ result in very little customer retention and ultimately, diluting the ROAS (return on ad spend).
This is where email marketing comes into play because engaging your new subscriber or transacting customer early on in the piece is KEY to converting them from a one-time customer to a returning customer through a solid engagement strategy.
Here are some of the latest retention stats that might surprise you;
- Acquiring a new customer can cost FIVE TIMES MORE than retaining an existing customer
- According to Salesforce, even a 5% increase in customer retention can INCREASE PROFITS BY AS MUCH AS 125%!!
- Also according to Salesforce, even a 2% increase in customer retention has the same effect as DECREASING COSTS BY 10%
These are staggering statistics! And considering Email Marketing is still one of the lowest cost marketing strategies to implement within your business, it’s a no-brainer.
5 Keys for Effective Email Marketing
1. Data is King
One of the first growth unlocks we address is consolidation and management of customer data. Many businesses receive customer data via multiple channels, but it is unmanaged and underutilised. According to The Economist “consumer data is now the world’s most valuable resource—the oil of the digital era”. Customer data is a key business asset, it must be managed as such. Here are some tips;
- Invest in a good marketing platform that offers an integrated customer solution – this will save you time and $ in the long term. By centralising your data, you will be able to track your customer interactions and become more targeted and strategic with your communications in the future.
- Keep your customer data up to date. You need a marketing platform that will integrate to your website, that will clean your data automatically – merging duplicates etc. Remove the dead weight made up of inactive contacts and those who never open your emails.
- Segment & tag your customers, this will allow you to strategically target specific segments with particular campaigns and offers.
2. Automated & Targeted Communications
Annoying your customers with irrelevant and generic email marketing campaigns will only achieve one thing – high opt-out’s and low open rates. Instead, your emails need to be relevant and targeted based on purchase history, interests, specific opt-in’s and demographics. The first thing to do is to map out a customer journey. What is the sales journey for a brand new customer? Or a customer who has not transacted with your business for X amount of time? Do you have an abandoned cart strategy? One of the highest converting automated email campaigns is a simple birthday email with a voucher. Birthday emails have one of the highest open rates and will give your customer a reason to transact with your business. A good marketing platform will allow you to become strategic in your approach and personalise your communications. You will achieve greater engagement and ultimately, increased sales.
3. Loyalty Rewards
According to Emarsys, 80% of businesses still rely on email marketing to assist with maintaining their client retention rate. Loyalty rewards provide the incentives customers need to continue to transact with your business. A good marketing platform will make it simple to email a discount voucher to your VIP’s or trigger a reward via email when a certain criteria is met (eg. X amount of $ spent or X amount of total transactions). Loyalty stats show that 77% of consumers prefer to shop with a brand that provides a loyalty program and through email marketing you can trigger automatic reminders when a customer has reached a certain milestone. The options are endless.
4. Professionally Designed Email Campaigns with engaging content
It’s important that your communications are visually appealing and that they also contain engaging content. Many marketing platform service providers will offer pre-designed templates that have been professionally designed. In saying this, it’s really important that you keep your branding consistent throughout all your campaigns. Things like font style, brand colours & themes, logo placement need to remain consistent throughout your communications. Be concise and clear with your message or your offer, using catchy phrases and colour to emphasise key words. Avoid spelling errors and bad grammar, it should go without saying, but unfortunately it is a common issue. If your business sells products ensure that your product images are high resolution and professional. There’s nothing worse than low quality images and it will put off your potential customers immediately. Finally, every communication should direct your customer to a call to action. Whether its to buy now, book now, or call now, direct every recipient to a relevant sales channel.
5. Test, Measure, and Adjust
Good marketing platforms will allow you to run A/B testing for your campaigns and some professional licenses will give you access to Dynamic Content. In a nutshell, A/B testing allows you to test multiple versions of your campaign to see which one receives the highest open rates and/or conversions – eg. testing subject line A with subject line B. Dynamic content takes this a step further and allows you to set certain ‘criteria’ for specific content blocks within your email. This could be to present a certain image or heading if recipient meets one set of criteria, or a different image or heading if they meet another set of criteria, eg. age or demographic. Through this type of testing and measuring, you will be able to make the necessary changes along the way to ensure greater success with your campaigns in the long term.
Effective Email Marketing requires planning and forward thinking. Consider the outcomes you desire and apply a strategy accordingly. Invest in a professional Email Marketing platform that offers integrations to help manage your customer data or invest in Data & Integration services from a professional agency. Automate your email campaigns to save time. If you are time poor or you don’t have the resources available, engage a Digital Marketing Agency to manage your Email Marketing.
Considering Email Marketing is still the HIGHEST CONVERTING Marketing channels, it should be on the high priority list for any business!
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About the Author
Founder and Head of Marketing at Mantle Digital Media, Pamela has decades of experience in the Marketing space and is passionate about supporting businesses to exceed their goals and objectives.
