Effective E-mail Marketing
Retailers, service providers, and others are constantly trying to balance staying relevant in consumers’ inboxes but not over-saturating them. Although there has been an increase in the ability to market to individuals via text messaging, E-mail is still an effective marketing channel because of its ease of use and low cost. That being said, there are some best practices that will help you avoid going straight into the junk folder or getting deleted.
Best Practices for E-mail Marketing
Subject Lines
Given the volume of E-mails the average consumer receives, it is more critical than ever to have differentiating subject lines. Avoid all uppercase, emoji’s, or other extreme measures as a means to catch the eye of the reader. Those methods can make your E-mails more susceptible to getting flagged as spam. Keep E-mails short whenever possible. If there is a promotion or offer inside the E-mail, that should be noted in the subject line.
Content
Now that you have caught the eye of the reader, it is just as important to retain their engagement with a strong message in the body of the E-mail. In today’s environment, you have a very short window to draw the attention of E-mail the the E-mail recipient and entice them to engage with the call to action. Any critical or important content should be placed at the top of the message. Keep the messaging clear and concise so that you do not lose the reader’s attention.
Segmenting
Having better targeted and specific messaging will allow for notably greater engagement. If you have consumer segments available (or have the ability to create them), they will almost always allow for higher rates of viewing. This will allow for more specific messaging to be sent to a more focused group of consumers with common attributes. Any time you send more than one blanket message to all consumers, focusing on unique messages to multiple segments; you are more likely to get higher engagement on each of those E-mails.
Trigger-Based
Depending on the complexity of your environment, you may have trigger-based E-mail functionality as a tool. This allows for the strongest engagement, as it not only automates message sends to your consumers, but it also allows for those messages to be triggered based on some action or habit of the consumer. This functionality typically requires more set-up, and it often involves integration or access to some kind of behavioral data. However, that is the reason it can be so much more efficient and impactful.
There are many nuances within any data set, and your customer base may engage differently depending on the industry, demographics, environmental factors, etc. But by keeping these key baseline strategies in mind, you are more likely to have successful E-mail campaigns.
If you’d like to discuss email marketing in more detail and learn how SmartBase Solutions can help you meet your marketing goals, you can reach us at info@smartbasesolutions.com or 612-767-9940.
