In recent years, companies have implemented email marketing campaigns to engage prospects and customers to keep them coming back to the company website or ecommerce site. It’s the perfect first step in getting people engaged, but don’t miss sight of who the priority is when sending out the emails: the people. The key to successful email marketing campaigns is a strategy that encompasses a personal connection— which could mean the difference between an email being opened and getting sent to the trash bin.
Right Strategy
Don’t just send emails to send emails—send out valuable information. You wouldn’t read an email that wasn’t useful, and neither would your audience. Send specifically targeted emails to make contacts know that you understand who they are and what they need. Get the right people the right information at the right time. Improve contacts’ happiness with your company’s emails by following these three strategies.
Right People
First, discover who the right people are. Think of the different kinds of people that buy your product or use your service. Then separate the contact list to reflect those different types. Or segment by lifecycle stage (prospect vs lead vs customer), purchasing patterns, or interests. Each of these groups purchase differently than one another, and while no individual’s purchase path will be the exact same as anyone else’s, segmentation helps personalize and target the message.
Right Information
The next step is to determine what exactly is being sent. The more specifically targeted the content is, the more the audience will feel like you’re talking directly to them, and continue to open and engage with your emails. Include personalization tags, like name and company, based on previously collected data to create an even stronger connection. Offering special content like checklists or buying guides to help inform the reader for where they are now will also help move them down the sales funnel.
Add media to grab the recipients’ attention visually as well. Include the company logo at the top of the email so the recipient can easily identify who the email is from. To give your brand a face, try adding headshots of the sender at the bottom of the email. Or add an embedded GIF or screenshot that links to a YouTube or Vimeo video that illustrates the point of the email. No matter what is in the email, remember to keep the right audience in mind.
Right Time
To make sure your email hits the sweet spot of engagement, choose the right time to send. Automate the various lists of emails (newsletters, transactional, reminders) based on time of day, an upcoming event, or purchase cycle. Although the word “automate” might seem like the software you employ would do everything, you do have to manually set the time the email will be deployed and the frequency. Once you know when to send and whether it depends on another action, you can have confidence that the emails will keep on sending that way for the rest of time.
Implemented seperately, these tactics can improve email marketing data up until a certain point. Executing them together increases the potential of higher open rates, click-through percentages, and, ultimately, a more engaged and satisfied contact list. Sparkfactor successfully utilizes these strategies to help our clients improve their email marketing, setting sales records and substantially increasing open rates in the process.
Using email campaigns as a part of a larger inbound marketing strategy will help give you a broader picture of how people are interacting with your brand, while also looking at what specific segments, or even individual people, are engaging with the content.
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