10 powerful email tips - how to love owning the rails and be more effective
Edward Crossin
Award winner | Marketing communications leader | Mentor | Uber rating 4.8 | Behavioural scientist | Digital data connoisseur | Problem solver | Solutions finder |
The benefits of owning, not renting the rails
While marketers can gravitate towards shiny objects, there is one tried and tested channel that works: email.
Email holds several advantages.
First, unlike the allure of social media, it's not pay to play. A marketer is not forced to pay the rental fee to use another company's rails, paying to have their content published on a third party channel.
Second, your email channel email means that you own the rails. Here, a marketer has greater influence over who engages with your content and when. A marketer owns the story, and is not at the mercy of a mysterious social media algorithm, with a wind that can blow your content and efforts away.
With great email power comes great responsibility
Owning the rails occupies great responsibility. Protecting brand reputation, protecting a business by complying with local regulatory laws and promoting customer experience are chief among these responsibilities.
Here is a top 10 best practice guide for email marketing right now.
#1 Design for mobile
Mobile accounts for over 50% of all web traffic. It is safe to say that engagement of email on a mobile device is similarly high.
What's key is to put the user at the centre of your design in how they ultimately engage and interact with email. Designing emails for mobile is an important element. An email designed only for desktop is doomed to alienate and disengage half of your audience or market.
#2 Personalise
A danger of business speak are terms like 'users' or 'leads.' It can depersonalise human connectivity and interaction.
Behind users and leads are humans.
It is ultimately humans with whom email seeks to engage. And humans will prefer to be addressed by their name, not by 'customer' or 'sir madam.'
Personalisation is not a new concept for best practice in email marketing, but it is essential.
#3 Diligent data
What underpins personalisation is a commitment to data integrity. It's here that the adage of rubbish in rubbish out applies. Instead, a clean house is required. That means a diligence and ongoing commitment to data integrity, including:
#4 Think journeys and customer lifetime value
After the welcome email, you're initiating the journey. And if it's a profitable and positive customer relationship, it is one that should be viewed as a customer for a lifetime or CLV (customer lifetime value).
This journey and relationship can be nurtured and grown with email communication playing a pivotal role.
Beyond the agreement of the sale and terms of the relationship, email is a channel through which value can be added to a customer relationship. This could be a message from the CEO, messaging which can reinforce a company's value and purpose. Or it could be seasonal updates and value add information that demonstrates the expertise of the company and benefits the customer.
Some businesses view the close of a sale the close with a customer is a close of the process. This is a mistake. Because in a customer's shoes, it is the beginning of the journey.
A fruitful beginning of a customer relationship can be initiated by a welcome email. It opens the communication channels and can help orient a new customer relationship.
A welcome email also orients and provides the guidelines of what content your customer would like to receive. With a customer choosing their content and experience that is most relevant to them, a business creates a foundational platform from which to enhance and add value to a relationship.
#5 How to convert prospects into sales
As well as adding value to a customer relationship, email can also help convert prospects into sales.
A combination of tactful, relevant content or promotional offers can move a customer from being interested, to being a paying customer.
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#6 Make it easy to skim
The structure and layout of an email impacts how it will be engaged. Structure your emails to help readers quickly take in as much information as possible. Shopify's best email practices include:
#7 Set a consistent cadence
Humans are creatures of habit. By setting up a regular routine of email and content delivery, you're creating consistency, habits and a hunger for the next email. This may include the next CEO letter, white paper, market update or opinion piece.
Take the cue from media, which has cultivated repetition and routine, and the anticipation that it creates. Consider the market anticipation and demand that has been created through events such as State of Origin, which falls on a Wednesday night during Australia's winter. Or Warren Buffett's letter to shareholders, which is a major annual event in financial markets.
Digital marketing expert Neil Patel highlights the advantage of routine:
Regularly send emails to your list to keep your subscribers engaged (warm). However, sporadic emailing could result in subscribers forgetting who you are and lead to low conversion rates.
New York Times bestselling author Neil Patel. Photo credit: smallbusiness.co.uk
#8 Get automated
With automation, email marketers can easily send individualised emails when subscribers or potential subscribers exhibit certain behaviors. These may include abandoning shopping carts, referring new customers, or signing up for your list. Sending emails based on events or time can be useful as well. An anniversary or birthday email can be a great way to put your brand in front of subscribers.
In Marketo's article about email best practice , automation will save you time and effort in the long run.
A survey conducted by Smartsheet found that 69% of respondents said automation helped reduce wasted time and 72% said that they would use the time they saved to focus on higher-value work.
Automatically delivering more timely, personalised emails is likely to increase customer retention rates and increase your reach.
#9 If you can test it, you can optimise it
With A/B testing you can compare different elements of your email sendout to see what performs best. Here’s a list of the different elements you can experiment with through an A/B test:
Image credit: Marketo
#10 Align Your Emails and Landing Pages
Marketo recommends that the look and feel of your emails should match corresponding landing pages. Most subscribers are excited to open emails from you, particularly those announcing new products or sales, so make sure your landing pages carry that same energy. Be consistent with your subject lines, design, content, and copy to avoid confusing your readers.
Moving from email to landing page to checkout should be a seamless transition.?
Test out this flow to verify that your readers can get to where they need to go easily. Keep track of which email campaigns and landing pages generate the most clicks and conversions as well. And try to use the messaging appropriate for each segment of your audience.
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The views expressed in this article are my own and are not connected to my employer.
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