Email marketing remains a key channel in digital marketing strategy to acquire new customers and drive revenue. Interestingly, recent research from the Direct Marketing Association (DMA) indicated that 90% of email marketing is being executed in house rather than outsourced to a specialist agency.
However, it is pertinent to note there are internal barriers to executing an email campaign efficiently; there can be limited internal resource, lack of strategy, inefficient internal processes and lack of content.
Despite this email marketing continues to be an important digital marketing channel to secure and retain business. in fact, Radicati Group reported the total number of worldwide email accounts is expected to increase to over 4.3 billion accounts by year-end 2016.
Top tips to improve engagement in email campaigns
1. Set email goals – email is considered to be the best delivery channel to achieve goals such as to grow your subscriber database, generate leads to acquire new customers, launch a new product, or offer a promotion to existing leads.
2. Personalisation – emails with personalized subject lines are 26% more likely to be opened; personalised emails also deliver higher transaction rates so segment (group) your customers and tailor your email messaging.
3. Email and social – email subscribers are three times more likely to share your content via social media (this is measured by the number who clicked on’ share this’); this may well account for why 76% of emails now include social media buttons.
4. Branded templates – pre-designed templates can you ensure every email looks professional and on-brand; these can be customised to specify brand colours and fonts.
5. Email metrics – data from GetResponse in 2015 found, for UK SMEs the average open rate was 22.87% (percentage of email recipients who open an email) the and click-through rate was 3.26% (percentage of email recipients who clicked on one or more links in the email).
6. Email engagement by industry – hobbies and photo/videos have the most successful open and click through rates; daily deals and ecommerce tend to have the least success for small and medium sized businesses.
7. Customer acquisition – according to McKinsey email is 40 times more effective at acquiring new customers than Facebook or Twitter.
8. Email and mobile – 73% of emails are opened on mobile devices so mobile-ready design is a must-have, perfect your message to ensure your email looks good and combined with relevant content it will drive engagement.
9. ROI – return on investment is the total revenue divided by total spend and in five years time it is said 74% believe that email will still be one of the highest channels for delivering ROI.
10. Test to convert – every audience is different so conduct split tests to improve conversion rates and identify which ‘Calls to Action’ CTAs and links that drive engagement to improve your conversion performance too.
Please do share your thoughts on email marketing and engagement and if it’s worked to raise awareness of your brand. Don’t forget to have your say on Twitter too.