10 Tips For Successful Email Campaigns
On average, 15 to 20% of traffic to a retailer’s site is generated by email campaigns. It is also an effective marketing lever to increase traffic to stores. In addition to being profitable, emailing remains the preferred commercial lever for Internet users to be approached by brands. You can get the services of Email Marketing Services Company. Here are 10 tips to improve the performance of this channel, essential to your digital marketing strategy.
1 – Target your content on a single main message
The recipient will take less than 5 seconds to quickly read your email before deleting it or giving it more time. Therefore, choose a single priority post for your content. This message must be easily understandable, treated with short texts and graphically identifiable. All of the content will serve one of your objectives: generate in-store traffic, successfully start a promo, announce an event, etc. You can optionally supplement with secondary information (example: reminder of a current promotion ) provided that it has little visual impact.
2 – Design emails in a responsive format
More than 60% of emails are viewed on a mobile. Your emailings must therefore be built in a “responsive” format, in other words, they must automatically adapt to the format of the recipient’s screen. Start by designing your email with the screen width of mobile before imagining the rendering on a computer format. Build your content by respecting an HTML block structure. These can easily be superimposed or enlarged to adapt to the size of the recipient’s screen. Action buttons should be large enough to easily click on mobile.
3 – Challenge the recipient with the subject of the email and the subtitle
To prevent your email from being deleted before it has even been opened, you will have to be creative with the subject. For example, you can use the news or the weather to contextualize your subject, ask a question by indicating that the answer is inside the email, dynamically add the recipient’s first name, etc. Do not neglect the first award present in the content of your email. In general, this is displayed in the messaging software just under the subject. It becomes a subtitle that can make a difference in improving your opening rate.
4 – Make all your email clickable
To improve your click-through rate, it is obviously necessary to place clearly visible action buttons. However, do not neglect the so-called “cold” areas such as the title of your paragraphs, your texts, or the illustration images. Make all these elements clickable, you will sometimes be surprised at the areas that collect clicks… This advice also applies to information emails that intuitively do not encourage clicks. In fact, every email can bring you traffic.
5 – Add rich content
With the number of emails flooding inboxes, your content needs to stand out. Thanks to HTML 5, supported by more than 75% of email clients, you will for example be able to insert videos in your emailings. Other possibilities are animated GIFs or small animations that make your products rotate. Remember to use these formats sparingly, as they can also increase the weight of your emails.
Example of an animated GIF embedded in an email from the Jack Spade brand.
6 – Take care of the Header and the Footer
The top of your email or Header should contain quick links to your categories or to the My Account area of your site. They are often used for convenience and can group together up to 2% of clicks on your emailing. The bottom of the mail or Footer is an opportunity to highlight your services, your guarantees, your customer service, your store locator, and your social networks. It is a marketing signature that allows, by the repetition of newsletters, to install in the mind of the recipient your differences compared to your competitors.
7 – Personalize your content and create a link with your brand
Is it still necessary to remember that the basis of the performance of an emailing campaign is to send relevant content to the right person? Start by segmenting your customer base and creating groups based on their responsiveness to emails, their preferences for your products, or their appetite for promotions. If you want to generate in-store traffic, the geographical criterion can also be useful. It is then up to you to adapt your messages according to the profiles and your objectives.
Emailing is a privileged communication channel to establish a relationship between your brand and your customers. Do not hesitate to add a personalized statement of loyalty points or any other advantage dedicated exclusively to the recipient. With segmentation algorithms based on artificial intelligence, you will soon be able to send a specific email to each of your customers.
8 – Optimize deliverability
The subject is vast, but here are some basic tips to minimize the risk of seeing your emails end up in the spam box of your recipients. To avoid being penalized by messaging software, regularly clean up your contacts by removing inactive or erroneous emails. Use a specific sending IP address for the most responsive customers to your emails and another IP address for reactivation or prospecting campaigns.
Clearly display your unsubscribe link. Unsubscribed contacts are better than repeated spam reports to email providers. Respect a ratio of 60% text for 40% images in your content. Avoid capital letters, smileys, exclamation points and other “urgent” or “to be entered” in the subject of your emails. These are all elements that email providers will identify to classify your newsletters as spam.
9 – Perform “Split Tests”
With the “Split Test” method. It consists of sending a version of an email to 50% of your base and another control version to the remaining 50%. You can organize numerous tests. For example, test variants of the footer, content blocks, and action buttons. Also the subjects of your emails or the sending times. Then analyze precisely the effects on your click-through rates and don’t forget to document all your results in order to be able to progress continuously. Obviously, only test one variant at a time against your control email, otherwise, the results will be unusable.
10 – Listen to your customers
The best way to ensure that you carry out successful emailing campaigns is to ask your recipients for their opinion. Organize satisfaction surveys, collect their suggestions and take them into account.