Email marketing is an underrated part of any digital marketing strategy, connecting you with interested customers in a more personal way and letting you communicate important updates and promotions. While social media marketing and online advertising are key to pick up new customers, having an email marketing strategy makes it easier to keep customers and encourage repeat purchases. A full-service digital marketing agency can optimize your email marketing strategy with effective wording and enhancements to help you stand out from the crowd.
At Wren Interactive, an experienced digital marketing agency based in Mandeville, Louisiana, we’re taking on new clients looking to enhance their digital footprint. Read on for the critical questions you need to ask while developing your email marketing strategy.
Developing Your Email Marketing Strategy
1. How Am I Building My Email List?
Email marketing is different from the other pillars of a digital marketing strategy because it comes after you’ve built awareness of your brand. The best way to get a big list of people looking at your emails is to include compelling prompts to sign up for the list in other parts of your strategy. Your calls to action should be included at points where people are most likely to be receptive, including after the point of purchase.
The ideal way to get people to sign up for an email marketing list is to let them know what they’ll be getting through it. This means you should be hyping up your sales, product announcements, and relevant content when you encourage people to sign up. Email marketing may be the second step in a digital marketing strategy, but it’s the one that can produce the longest-lasting success.
2. What Content Are You Delivering?
One of the biggest mistakes of email marketing plans is only emailing monotonous content that promotes your product without giving people a reason to read. The best email marketing strategy will include promotional content letting people know about sales and new product rollouts, but will also include varied content relevant to your readers’ interests. This is why many companies employ regular staff writers, either in-house or through a digital marketing firm, who produce exclusive content for their email marketing list.
Having regular blog posts for your subscribers keeps them engaged and makes it more likely they’ll open every email they receive from the list. Blog posts can stay exclusive to your email or be posted elsewhere, like a website or social media.
3. Are My Emails Personalized?
Personalizing your emails doesn’t mean you have to write every email separately or include the name or details about your subscribers. That would be too time-consuming for any growing company to manage without a staff dedicated to writing emails. There are ways to personalize your emails to your subscribers without increasing your workload while still making your customers feel like you’re writing directly to them.
One of the best ways to personalize your emails is to segment them, dividing your emails into categories by factors like demographics and purchase history. If a segment of your customers is most interested in an area of your product line, drop that into the opening few lines, and they’re more likely to read on. The body of the email should remain the same, but the intro that hooks people will have a personal touch that goes a long way.
4. Are My Subject Lines Getting People’s Attention?
It’s a sad fact that most people’s email accounts are filled with promotional emails, both subscribed emails like yours, and unsolicited spam. That’s why, to get the most out of your email marketing strategy, you need to hook people early and get their attention with a catchy subject line that gives them the information they need and a reason to click. Your email subject line should promise something worth opening another email, but it shouldn’t come off like a sales pitch because many people register those as spam-like immediately.
One of the best ways to get people to click on an email is with a question they’re likely to want answered. This is where personalization comes into play, because if you tailor your emails into groups by purchase history, you know the best way to appeal to your customers. You may only get a second to hook your readers into opening an email, so catching their attention quickly is a must.
5. When Am I Sending My Emails?
Scheduling your email blasts is important to getting the views you want, because the most important factor in readership has nothing to do with your content. If your customers don’t have the time to read your email when they arrive, they’re likely to get buried in a folder and forgotten by the time they have some spare minutes. That’s why many companies are making a big mistake when they schedule the emails to go out live during working hours.
The best time to send out your emails is between 8 PM and midnight, because this is when studies show they have the highest open rate. People are relaxing at home after work and are most likely to be browsing your email. But because people are in the mood to relax at this hour, it’s important to keep your email titles light and inviting, so it seems like casual post-dinner reading.
6. Should I Automate?
Many companies are hesitant to automate their email marketing because they think the emails are more likely to read as spam and get flagged by filters. The key to incorporating automation in an email marketing strategy is to know what parts can be automated without compromising quality. You always want the body of your email and the title to be written by people in the content creation business, because templates aren’t capable of customizing in the way you need to get customers’ attention.
Another worry with automation is that templates can easily be picked up by spam filters. A good marketing email should be written by a person, but there are elements of your strategy that can be automated easily. These include using software to auto-fill everyone on your list by category and setting the emails to mass-send at a pre-programmed time.
7. How Am I Growing My List Long-Term?
An effective marketing strategy won’t just build on the customers who signed up for your email list; it’ll parlay that into a larger list. One of the best ways to do that is include prompts or invitations for your subscribers to share content on social media. This is especially effective with blog posts that have general appeal, and new product announcements that could bring in new customers.
It’s also important to share sign-up links to your email marketing list on your major social media channels. Versatile companies will have a social media presence on all the major sites, with an emphasis based on demographics. Your social media presence is how you get new fans, and your email list is how you keep them, but an effective strategy keeps the two feeding into each other to strengthen your connection with your customer base.
A Compelling Email List Equals a Strong Company
Incorporating email marketing into your digital marketing strategy is an excellent way to turn one-time customers into long-term fans who will spread positive word of mouth on your product around the internet. A professional digital marketing company can help optimize your email marketing strategy. Contact Wren Interactive for more information on our services or to set up a consultation today.
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