Top 5 Email Marketing Tips That Get Our Vote
We’ve put together our top 5 tips to help you get the best value possible from your email marketing.
Our aim is to give you insights you can use so have a goal to action at least one or two!
Tip 1: Segment your list
Database segmentation may not be sexy but it’s the most important component of effective email marketing. Relevancy is achieved through personalisation and your data underpins all of this. Sounds simple but there’s a bit more to it...
Write a brief: Develop or download a data brief template that allows you to define exactly who you are targeting. This will ensure consistency and help guide you when selecting segment criteria.
Be specific: Email content relevancy is key so ask yourself which data points you’ll need to tailor your messages to your segments demographics, behaviour and preferences.
Apply exclusions: This step is as equally important as deciding who should receive your email. Start by excluding any subscribers who haven’t opened or clicked any emails in the last 90 days and aim to develop a win back strategy to re-engage them. Also consider excluding customers based on previous actions taken such as promo code redemptions, form completions, conversions etc.
Use dynamic content: Your core email content can be universal and also include blocks of content tailored to past purchases for example. Make sure this parent segment is built out at the same time as your child segments so that the rules are cascading and mutually exclusive.
Don’t forget to test! Check random customer records for each segment in your database to ensure they’re falling into the correct groups and the content matches.
Tip 2: Offer relevancy
To get cut through, your offer needs to do two things 1) be relevant 2) add value.
It’s easy to forget about the ‘who’ when creating the ‘what’ (killer offers) and the ‘why’ (content). But your offer must resonate with your customers for it to be noticed.
And by resonate, we don’t mean sending blanket offers to your entire subscriber database because you have opt-in permission. Customers now expect a certain level of personalisation from offers made to them and one size no longer fits all.
This is also why identifying your target audience needs to be the first step in the process so your offers can then be designed to suit.
Think about what you can give each of your core customer segments and develop offers that align to their demographics and behaviour.
Adding value through offers could mean something as simple as including a dynamic block in your email with different offers for different segments, e.g.
VIP - exclusive gift with full price purchase
Lapsed - deeper discount on sale items
First purchaser - in-parcel bounce back offer
Creating offers that are appropriate to the audience will give your campaign the best shot at success.
Tip 3: Sexy doesn’t always sell
Email design is the most visible component of email marketing. It’s also the least important compared to your list and offer.
While there are best practice design techniques to consider, the only real rule is to make sure your email creative and copy is tailored to suit your audience.
What this looks like can differ vastly from business to business.
To give context let’s look at James Smith’s (@jamessmithpt) emails from the highly saturated online fitness industry.
His emails don’t contain imagery, not even a logo in the header. Instead he tells a recent life story through short, punchy, centre aligned paragraphs in Verdana font. It’s the bipolar opposite of sexy email design - but - it 100% works for his audience. It’s seriously engaging.
The copy and subject lines are gritty, entertaining, in your face (not PG) and lead to a single focused call to action at the end. His writing style builds trust with readers through authentic, personable story telling backed by Instagram stories to cement that it’s actually not BS.
The point here is that your email creative can be whatever works best for your audience and your business.
Also consider this: Over 65% of emails are read on mobile devices and this statistic is on the rise. Think about how you view emails on your mobile. The first things you see are sender name, subject line and pre-header text, not creative.
Get some quick wins under your belt by focusing on testing subject lines and pre-header text because essentially this is your ‘in’ for getting your emails opened and your content seen.
Final thought: Look over your data and make an educated guess as to what your audience wants to receive then test, optimise, repeat until you have a design that’s ticking all boxes.
Tip 4: Automation is life
Despite the fact this news isn’t new, only 40% of businesses are actually embracing it!
The benefits far outweigh the effort though so if you need some convincing read on…
Besides freeing your time up (winning), businesses that use automation receive a startling 35% improvement in total email driven ROI than those without.
Reason being is that automation takes care of two fundamental marketing elements - relevancy and timing. Get those two things right and you’ll reap the rewards of boosted sales and better customer relationships.
Automation helps keep the conversation going with your customers when you can’t be there. Even if you’re not sending regular campaign emails, triggered automations can be running in the background making you money while you sleep (more winning)!
Email marketing software has also come a long way over the years and there are plenty of solutions out there that have done a great job of making automation easy for the user to set up.
The pay off for your business will 100% outweigh the time sacrificed by a long shot. So find some motivation and start mapping those journeys or get in touch with us to find out how we can help.
Tip 5: Keep it personal
Gone are the days of blasting bulk one-size fits all email campaigns. Customers now expect a greater level of relevant, personalised content.
Creating personalised email content doesn’t need to feel like a huge, overwhelming task. Any level of personalisation you can include will positively impact your results.
In fact, businesses who use personalisation reported a 30%+ higher click rate and 25%+ better ROI than those without.
Have a look at the type of customer data you have available to you and decide how you can apply it. At a basic level, it can be as simple as a male / female content split or use of salutation in the subject line.
A lot of businesses also have purchase history, email engagement, address and even web engagement data readily available but aren’t using it‼
Start small with something you can easily do yourself. For example, use your email engagement data to resend a promotional email to non-openers (with a different subject line of course!).
If you’re a data rich business, it is worth getting a specialist to analyse your database and provide recommendations on how best to use it to create personalised communications. It’s a worthy investment.
Also consider setting up a preference centre for customers to tell you want they want to receive. It’s best to collect snippets of data throughout the onboarding process so your customers aren’t bouncing when presented with a lengthy form to fill out initially.
Thanks for reading - we hope you got something out of our top five tips!