Email marketing is a crucial tool in every marketer’s arsenal to achieve a marketing goal. For brands looking to expand their audiences, it is one of the essential Shopify solutions for 2021.
A well-executed email marketing campaign can help you boost your revenue and drive conversions. And the best part is that you can expect an average return of $32 for every $1 spent if done correctly.
Although the pandemic changed a lot the marketing landscape, email marketing has the power to help you grow your business quickly. Having one of the best email marketing software is the first step to success. In addition, you might be interested in referring email providers for reaching business goals.
The only struggle is that most people don’t know how to execute their campaigns effectively. This is where the following strategies come into play to help you craft an efficient email marketing campaign.
So, let’s take a look at some of the tips below.
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Define your goals
Every marketing strategy needs specific goals to ensure that every move aims towards what you want to achieve as a brand. Email marketing is no different.
Focus on the objectives you want to achieve with your email marketing campaign.
Here are some of the most common goals regarding email marketing:
- Increase brand awareness
- Attract new customers
- Build relationships with your customer base
- Increase brand loyalty
- Increase website traffic
Having a clear plan of your objectives is crucial for your email marketing. Set them in a way that is easy to track so that they can help you stay focused throughout your campaign.
Build an email list
Email marketing is not as useful if you can’t build an organic email list.
For a successful email marketing strategy, it’s essential to use an email finder and send emails to your target audience and people who engage with your industry, products, or services. USPS Marketing Mail permits businesses to mail to all individuals in a specific geographic area. It is an inexpensive way to build an email list and send messages at events and industry conferences.
A popular way to build an organic list is to include a “Subscribe” button on your website or blog. To register these emails, you will have to link this button to a landing page.
Another popular email marketing strategy is to offer users something in exchange for their email addresses. This could be a free ebook, or webinars and podcasts, for example.
Leverage the power of segmentation
With an email list in your hands, you can proceed to the next step, which is segmentation, which is vital if you want to upgrade your email marketing campaigns.
The best part is that 9 out of 10 marketers avoid segmentation because they lack the data or they don’t put in the work. To me, that’s great news because you can get ahead of the competition easier.
Here are some categories to help you while segmenting your email lists:
- User behavior and engagement
- Lifecycle stages of subscribers
- Demographics – gender, age, location
- Buying frequency
Creating segments can have a massive difference in your efficiency because you can tailor your email communication to match a particular segment’s needs.
Segmentation allows you to personalize emails instead of having a generic approach and is a core element of every successful email marketing strategy.
Clean your email list
As we mentioned above, a necessary asset of any email marketing strategy is the subscriber list.
So, you must check your prospects regularly and provide email list cleaning of all users who have unsubscribed from your campaign.
Keeping inactive users in your email lists will drop your engagement levels. Having a list of users who don’t interact with your content is not useful for your email outreach campaigns.
Most email marketing services will have automation to remove inactive subscribers. Take advantage of these features if you want to create a strong customer base that will convert every time.
Craft Compelling Subject Lines
Subject lines can be a deciding factor whether a user opens an email or not. It is the first thing that will notice in their inboxes.
Email subject lines directly affect your open rate; thus, compelling ones can grab the attention of your readers.
There is no magic formula to craft a compelling email subject line; however, a great tip would be to include the recipient’s first name.
Another approach would be to include some kind of offer or discount in your subject line. This can have a significant impact on motivating users to open your email and take action. Once you create the subject line, you could consider using an email generator to save time crafting the emails.
Here are some other practical tips that help you with your subject lines:
- Have short and straightforward subject lines.
- Avoid using phrases like “Free” and “Earn Money” that could land your emails in the spam folder.
- Have a question in your subject line to sound more engaging and conversational.
Use an Attractive Design
People are visual creatures, and a well-crafted design can be the reason for more conversions. Having a strong design is one of the most crucial parts of a successful email marketing strategy.
So, how can you end up with an attractive email design?
Here are some key elements to keep in mind while designing your email templates:
- Use a vertical layout.
- Have a lot of negative space (white space).
- Keep paragraphs short to improve readability.
- Have one call-to-action button.
- Avoid using too many visuals.
- Add buttons to share on social media.
- Provide your contact details in the footer.
So, how can you make your life easier?
There are various email marketing platforms in the market that have drag-and-drop builders and well-designed templates. These are the only tools you need to create professional-looking emails and personalize your email copy with advanced personalization options.
Optimize your emails for mobile devices
Mobiles have become a huge part of our everyday life. Most people check their emails through these small devices, according to recent research. So, while implementing an automated emailing strategy, don’t forget to optimize your messages for mobile as well.
But, you already knew about that. The problem is that most marketers worldwide don’t optimize their emails for mobile devices.
Considering that so many people will use mobiles to check their emails, we have to ensure that we also design for mobile screens.
If you don’t do that, your potential customers will end up seeing images or fonts that are oversized and barely fit on their mobile screens.
Here is how to optimize your emails for mobiles:
- Use a responsive email template.
- Avoid large image files in your emails.
- Place buttons and CTAs in the center of your email.
- Use short sentences and paragraphs.
- Increase the size of your links.
- Use contrasting colors for your CTA buttons.
- Preview your emails on mobile phones before launching a campaign.
A/B test your emails
Not every campaign will be a success. Testing can give you valuable insights and get you closer to your desired results.
A/B test is not a breakthrough idea, but it is a key factor to take your campaigns to the next level.
Prepare different email templates before sending them out and test different versions of the design, subject lines, and content.
By sending these different templates to a segment of people from your lists, you will gather useful information about each campaign’s efficiency.
Try to close the gap by making big tests, and as you have more data, go for small changes that can significantly impact your campaigns. Experiment with color, font sizes, visuals, and call-to-action.
A/B testing needs time to design them and analyze the results to craft a better version of the same campaign. Track and analyze open rates, click-through rates, and bounce rates.
Keep in mind that the more, the merrier in this kind of situation. The more data you have, the more efficient your campaign will be.
The takeaway
Email marketing remains one of the most efficient ways to increase your revenue as a brand without breaking the bank. Following these strategies above will ensure that you are on the right track to having success with your email campaigns.
Keep in mind that, although it is a straightforward process, you need to test what works best for your kind of business. Try to implement as many tips as possible but always track and analyze your insights to create better email marketing campaigns.
Until the next one, keep sending!
This is the guest post contributed by Alex from Moosend
Alex is a content writer at Moosend. He leaped faith in the digital marketing world from an architecture background and has never looked back. You will find him traveling in places around the world in his free time. Find out more on LinkedIn.