Is email marketing worth the time and investment despite spam filters?
Given its low cost and high ROI (return on investment), email marketing remains a highly effective way to stay in front of your customers and drive sales. In fact, 58% of adults check their email first thing in the morning.
Build and grow your contact list with opt-ins
With the advent of stricter spam laws and advanced spam filters from email service providers (ESP)s, it’s critical to avoid purchasing email lists for marketing purposes. Such lists often violate terms of use, leading to higher bounce and abuse rates, which can damage your sending reputation. Excessive spam reports can result in your account being temporarily paused, reviewed, or even closed.
These hurdles can be avoided by including opt-ins for service, which ensures that contacts on your email list are interested in your services and wish to be included in your campaign.
Effective strategies to build your email list:
- Opt-in forms on your website
- Use banners, sidebars, short forms, or pop-ups to encourage visitors to subscribe. For e-commerce businesses, offering incentives like a 20% discount on the first purchase or a free gift with a promo code can be very effective.
- Gated content as a lead magnet
- Offer valuable gated content such as white papers, webinars, podcasts, free trials, quizzes, coupons, infographics, free tools, product demos, training videos, or YouTube sign-ups. These lead magnets can entice visitors to join your email list.
- Email collection at in-person events
- Use tablets, QR codes, online forms, or paper forms to gather email addresses at a variety of in-person events. Be sure that you clearly indicate that they are opting into your email list.
- Point of purchase email collection
- Ask for email addresses during the purchase process. Online, this can be as simple as an opt-in checkbox during account creation or checkout.
- Collaborative giveaways
- Partner with influencers to run giveaways and collect email addresses.
Segment your audience and personalize your emails
Breaking down your email list into smaller, targeted groups allows you to market more effectively to specific audiences. By creating personalized content for each segment, you can craft highly tailored messages that drive conversions.
This approach not only aligns with the interests of your recipients but also provides you with better metrics to gauge the success of each campaign. Additionally, it reduces the frequency of irrelevant emails for the receiver, lowering unsubscribe rates. Set up your opt-in forms to include segmentation options to pre-filter your lists.
Optimize emails for mobile devices
Smartphones are now the primary device for checking email, accounting for 41.6% of email opens, followed by webmail at 40.6% and desktops at 16.2%. With the increasing reliance on mobile devices, it’s crucial to design emails that are optimized for mobile viewing.
Year-over-year, this trend shows a decline in desktop email checking in favor of mobile devices. A staggering 99% of email users check their email daily, with some doing so up to 20 times a day.
Tips for mobile optimization:
- Optimized images and media
- Keep your email images between 500 and 650 pixels wide and compress them to improve load times. Avoid large files that could slow down email loading on mobile devices.
- Compelling call-to-action (CTA)
- Ensure your CTA buttons are mobile-friendly, large, easily identifiable, and have clear, concise text.
- Accessible links and elements
- Make sure links, buttons, and clickable elements are appropriately sized and spaced for touchscreens to prevent accidental clicks.
- Minimal scrolling
- Keep essential information visible without excessive scrolling. Position crucial content and CTAs within the initial screen view for better visibility. Keep the main message and call-to-action above the fold.
- Device testing
- Test emails on various mobile devices, laptops, desktops, and email clients to ensure compatibility and readability across different platforms.
Craft irresistible subject lines
A well-crafted subject line is your ticket to capturing your audience’s attention and convincing them to open your email.
- Emojis: Use emojis to make your subject line pop, but do so sparingly and strategically. Ensure they enhance the message and fit naturally within the context.
- Engaging techniques: Ask questions, create urgency, and personalize your subject lines. Avoid using all caps, be concise and specific, and include preview text to give a sneak peek of the email content.
- Curiosity and action: Arouse curiosity to entice readers to open your email. Keep your subject lines short and use action verbs to drive engagement. Experiment with different lengths to see what resonates best with your audience.
- A/B testing: Regularly A/B test your subject lines to refine your approach. This can help you determine which tactics and subject lines are most effective at engaging your recipients.
By implementing these strategies, you can boost your open rates, clicks, and overall campaign effectiveness.
Create personalized landing pages
Match your landing pages to your email message’s content to create a seamless experience. Redirect subscribers to a fully personalized sales pipeline to boost conversion rates and improve ROI. This can help you track your customer’s journey more effectively.
Utilize AI for enhanced writing
Leverage AI to elevate your email marketing efforts. Use AI to craft compelling headlines, engaging paragraphs, and effective CTAs for A/B testing. Start by drafting your email and then let AI assist with enhancing your subject line and preview text, rephrase email language, make paragraphs more creative, personalize messages, and improve overall content quality.
Elevate your email marketing strategy with data-driven insights
Harness the power of data to enhance your email marketing strategy. Focus on key engagement metrics such as open rates, click-through rates, unsubscribe rates, unique open rates, unique click rates, bounce rates, and ROI or sales revenue, depending on your ESP. Many ESPs also offer heat maps that visually display user interactions within your emails, highlighting the most clicked links. This valuable information allows you to fine-tune future campaigns by understanding what elements resonate with your audience and which ones fall flat.
Looking to invigorate your next email marketing campaign? Reach out to the experts at Baer Performance Marketing and let us help you achieve outstanding results.
