Inbound Marketing Insights

Contrary to what others might say, email marketing is still incredibly effective for engaging with your prospects and customers. The fact is that email marketing has evolved. It is no longer about delivering the same message to your entire list. It is about providing the right content at the right place and time.  There are many ways to do this, but it requires being strategic about your email efforts to ensure you get the best results.

Check out these six tips to help you create email marketing that people want to engage with and increase your email marketing conversion rates:

1)   Use Dynamic Content: Did you know there is a 7% higher click-through rate when using a person’s first name in an email? This seems simple, yet companies still send blanket messages that are not addressed to one person. Being human allows people to connect with you and your brand. Over time, this will create the connection you need to convert that lead into a customer.

2) Be Human:  What is the email address from which you send mass emails? Some companies send mass emails from noreply@theircompanyname.com. While this doesn’t affect their open rate (because people don’t know that until they open it), it does affect the reply rate. When you send an email from an address that won’t accept replies, it lessens the ability for someone to engage with you and your brand. Encourage the conversation and let people reply to you and connect with you.

3)   Avoid Over-Communication: If you don’t have something urgent, it might be best not to say it all. Unfortunately, people are no longer waiting for a weekly or monthly newsletter. People are inundated with emails daily, so if it’s not helpful content, you will likely be annoying your leads instead of connecting with them. Only send email when you have incredible, valuable content to deliver.

4) Purge Your List: If someone hasn’t engaged over a certain period of time, it might be time to stop emailing them for a few weeks or even a month. Then, do a win-back campaign. This might help them see exactly what they were missing when they weren’t seeing your content as frequently. If not, it might be time to take them off your list so you have a fresh and valid list from which to work.

5) Check Your Work:  Emails with spelling and grammar errors result in a .6% lower click-through rate. While that number may seem small, your readers will judge you. Could you double- and triple-check your content before sending it out to the masses? A second set of eyes is always a good idea!

6) Images and Calls-to-Action Are Necessary: Emails with 1 - 8 graphics have five times more clicks. Try testing an email with no images or CTAs and compare it with the click-through rate of an email with images. The one with images draws the reader to do exactly what you want them to do…click to convert, click to buy, and more. An image can also be a call-to-action button. We see that 99.2% of the time, CTAs and images are the most clicked asset in an email, so be sure it's included as part of your creative strategy. 

Email marketing is becoming more sophisticated every day through list segmentation, developing buyer personas, and creative content development. If utilized correctly, email marketing can be crucial to your marketing strategy. If used correctly, or as email was several years ago, it could benefit your marketing strategy.

We invite you to schedule a 30-minute meeting with our email marketing specialists to discuss your strategy.