With so many other digital marketing techniques taking off, it comes as no surprise that email marketing has been put on the back burner by businesses around the world.
Social media marketing especially has proven to be an invaluable resource and also already a leading cause of why people think email marketing is dead. Nonetheless, this isn’t the case. Email marketing has a six times higher click-through rate than a tweet (Source: Campaign Monitor).
Let’s look at a graph that shows the interest in email marketing globally from 2004 to the present.
The data in the graph shows that interest in email marketing in the last decade has seen only minor changes. This doesn’t mean that email marketing is dead. It means that it has just stagnated.
Email Marketing Lives On
There was a rumor going around that email marketing is a dying or extinct medium. While these speculations couldn’t be farther from the truth, we can concede that email marketing isn’t as relevant as it was back in 2005.
If we look at the evolution of email marketing, we will find that the growth of email marketing has just simmered down. There is still a lot of life left in it. Email marketing is not going anywhere anytime soon. In fact, if businesses start to adapt this method again, they will see how beneficial it can be for their business. Currently, only 26% of small businesses use online marketing to boost sales, while a mere 7% use it as a tool for branding (Source: National Client Email Report)
There are 3.9 billion email users in the world today. In fact, since a lot of business correspondence is done on email, customers can’t abandon this medium. This increases the chances of your brand email getting noticed. This, along with the returns it gives, has kept email marketing relevant even today and will continue to do so for a long time. In fact, 87% of marketers have plans to invest more in email marketing (Source: Email on Acid).
Email Marketing Tricks To Drive Sales
Email marketing is an effective medium to draw in leads and conversions. In fact, on an average, there is a $32 return on every $1 that is spent on email marketing (Source: Oberlo). However, how do marketers make this possible? How do businesses drive their sales up with email marketing? The tricks that you might need to make it happen are below.
· Run Campaigns Regularly
Stay fresh in the minds of your customers by regularly sending them ⁸. This doesn’t mean that you hit them up every day. If you send your customers an email every day, you technically are spamming them. In such a case, not only will your email not be read, but they can also get unsubscribe from your emailing list.
Therefore, it is safe to say that sending an email every few days is necessary. Without it, there will be a lower brand recall and lower sales. Many people buy from a brand because of their email marketing campaigns. In fact, welcome emails have a high conversion rate.
· Personalized Emails
Personalized emails get a better response than the generic ones. Personalized emails make the reader feel valued and more connected to the brand. In fact, personalization of emails to clients can increase a firm’s revenue by 760% (Source: Campaign Monitor). Only personalizing the subject line of your email can have a sizable impact. Personalizing the subject line can make it 26% more likely for the email to be opened (Source: Campaign Monitor). Personalization can help the brand create strong customer-brand relationships, increasing the chances of conversions.
· Designing The Layout
The layout of the email is as important as that on any online content. Your email should look engaging and aesthetically appealing. It should have high readability and should be optimized according to the F and Z patterns of scanning content that were identified in the Eye-Tracking Study. Also, it should contain a few graphics to support the content, such as relevant images or maybe a video message. Moreover, the email shouldn’t be too lengthy. In fact, it needs to be divided into different sections, subheadings, bullets, and more.
· Offer Discounts and Offers
Use FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out) to your advantage by offering time-sensitive discounts, exclusive offers, and maybe throw in a coupon or two. Create the urgency so leads turn into customers taking the desired action, thinking such an offer won’t come their way again. Also, if it is a discount, you are only offering them (personalized offer), then they would feel special enough to either avail the offer or click on the CTA, or at the very least, will remember the brand.
· Content
Content is a pillar on which the fate of a business rests, whether it is a dissertation editing service or an email marketing firm. When curating the content of a marketing email, there are some things that need to be paid special attention to such as the ones stated below:
Type
Type isn’t just confined to font selection; there is a lot more that needs to be taken care of, including font color, font size, font style, spacing (kerning, tracking, and leading), and formatting (bold, italics, etc.).
Graphics
Too many or too few graphics both are bad, regardless of whether you are adding a video or images. However, not adding any can make the post look dry and boring.
CTA
Add a CTA (anchor text, button, etc.) that is obvious enough to be noticed right away, but not enough to look gaudy. If you create the right CTA, then your conversions and click-throughs will increase.
Subject Line
The fate of your email rests on the subject line. Customers will form a decision on whether to open the email or ignore it solely based on the subject line. Therefore, it should be catchy, short, and sweet.
Landing Page
Create a landing page specifically for your email campaign and link it to the CTA in your email. However, structure the landing page in a way that encourages conversions.
· Optimize and Test
Optimize all elements of the email, including the subject line, CTA, and more. Optimization will improve the conversion and click-through rate of the email. However, if you still have doubts about whether your email is fully optimized for maximum conversions, then conduct necessary tests. You can use the A/B test and Percentage test to evaluate the email campaign before you send it to your customers and leads.
· Product recommendation
Though this point is a part of personalization, it deserves a spot of itself on the list. Product recommendations are a great way to boost the sales and revenue of a business through email marketing. Product recommendations, though, are a branch of email marketing, are focused on providing customers options of things/services that they would like to buy, whether it is a negan jacket or a blazer. The recommendations in the email are based on the previous purchases, Wish List, searched items, and products that were a victim to cart abandonment.
Pay heed to all the statistical data, tips, tricks, and information in the article to decide for yourself whether email marketing is no longer relevant today.