Effective email marketing begins with the right email marketing strategy campaign. Learn how to take yours to the next level and create campaigns that convert.
Email marketing has come a long way. The plethora of tools and software today allows marketers to get really creative and provide a truly enjoyable experience for customers without things getting too complicated.
And it’s worth it – the return on investment of a well thought-out email marketing strategy is high. In fact, it boasts a higher ROI than any other marketing method, bringing back $56 for every dollar spent.
But, to get good results, you’ll need a strategy that consistently converts.
This means putting into place a series of email marketing tactics so you can tweak, measure, improve, and continue to provide a great experience for subscribers.
Read More : 4 Email Marketing Tools and Their Unique Features
It’s not enough to write up a couple of emails and send them sporadically throughout the year. Instead, we’ve put together some key strategies you can use to improve your campaigns and make them a powerful marketing asset.
Effective Email Marketing Strategy to Take Your Campaigns to the Next Level
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Clean Your Email List
One of the biggest issues people face in email marketing is making sure their campaigns land in their subscribers’ inboxes. This is known as email deliverability.
To avoid deliverability issues, it’s essential to regularly clean your email list.
What do we mean by list cleaning? List cleaning is the process of removing email addresses from your contact list that have been unengaged for a long time as well as removing contacts who unsubscribe.
You may be thinking, “What good will deleting contacts do? I worked long and hard to grow my list! ”
Yes, exactly! To make the most of the marketing efforts you put into growing your list, you have to prune it sometimes too. By removing un-engaged contacts, unsubscribed contacts, contacts who mark your content as spam, and email addresses that bounce, you’re left with a higher quality list.
In the long run, this helps improve your sender reputation and overall email deliverability.
So while it may seem counterintuitive, purging inactive and un-engaged email addresses on a routine basis is core to an effective email marketing strategy.
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Provide Value Every Time
Next up, providing value to subscribers is equally essential to an effective email marketing strategy. If you consistently provide value, your subscribers are more likely to consistently open and read your emails. In fact, they might even start anticipating your messages landing in their inbox.
So how exactly does one “provide value”?
Think about what your customers want and need from you and build your email strategy around that. Maybe you’re an ecommerce clothing retailer, and a major pain point for your customers is not being able to try on your items before purchase. Your email marketing strategy can and should address this issue!
In your email newsletters or marketing campaigns, you could feature content with advice on online clothes shopping. Similarly, you could transform your generic size guide into a custom size finder and link to it in your emails.
This kind of email content is what we mean by providing value to your subscribers. Of course, promotions and new product features provide value too, but consumers have come to expect this type of content, so it doesn’t come across as exceptionally helpful.
To avoid guessing what your subscribers want from you in terms of content, try asking them! You’ve got a few options here:
- Allow new subscribers to select what type of content they prefer when they sign up to your email list.
- Survey existing customers to see what they want to get from you and take note of any changes in preferences.
- Invite subscribers to respond to your emails with their ideas and opinions.
While we’re on the point of providing value to subscribers, accessibility is an important consideration to make. Your audience won’t be able to see the value in your emails if they can’t properly view the email itself! Specifically, there are two points to consider:
- Mobile-friendly emails: make sure your content is responsive across devices (desktop, mobile device, & tablet). Doing so is easy with Sendinblue’s 40+ free responsive email templates.
- Screen reader-friendly emails: make sure your emails are accessible to visually impaired users! Adding descriptive alt-text and using an easy-to-read font will help with this.
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Optimize Your Calls-To-Action
Your calls-to-action (CTAs) can dramatically affect the click through rates of your emails. (And, therefore, your conversion rates too). A weak CTA means less visitors and, ultimately, less sales so it’s worth spending time on your CTAs to make sure they pack a punch. ?
Experiment with using buttons and text CTAs and focus on making sure the words you use are compelling enough for subscribers to click on.
Here are some email marketing tips for making your CTAs as powerful as possible:
- Start with a strong command verb, like “shop”, “buy”, or “download.”
- Evoke emotion.
- Give subscribers a reason to click, like “buy now to get 50% off.”
- Tap into FOMO, like “grab your seat – only 5 spots left!”
Another best practice when it comes to CTAs is to use specific language. You want to give your subscribers a good idea of where you’re sending them, especially for your higher-level CTAs.
For instance, if you’re featuring a new line of products, your CTA could read “check out our summer collection,” and the link should go directly to this section of your website.
Word-of-mouth marketing is an incredibly powerful tactic, and user-generated content (UGC) is basically the digital version of it. ?️ When subscribers see that other customers are enjoying your brand and products, they’re more likely to want to find out more.
Integrating things like customer photos, videos, reviews, and stories in your emails creates a sense of community and encourages more click throughs. According to research, UGC drives a 73% increase in email click through rates.
If you’re struggling to find user-generated content, consider starting a hashtag campaign. #️⃣ By encouraging customers to tag you on social media and feature your products is a great way to spread the word as well as compile UGC in one place!
Apart from helping boost click-through and conversion rates, featuring user-generated content plays an important role in building a community around your brand. It creates a two-way street between you and your customers.
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Connect With Social Media
Speaking of social media, it’s another component of any effective email marketing strategy! There are plenty of ways these two digital marketing channels can interact to help expand your brand’s reach.
For starters, you should be sure to include CTAs to your various social media in your email campaigns and newsletters.
Depending on the campaign, you may want to share the email content itself on social media. With Sendinblue, you can do so easily! All you have to do is click “share on social media” to get a shareable link. For more details, check out this Help Center article.
Social media is also a great way to grow your email list. Once you create an email signup form, you can use the same “share on social media” function to distribute the form and grow your audience across channels.
Conversely, including links to your social media in a welcome email to new subscribers is a great way to introduce your audience to your various channels. Take a look at this welcome email from Permission, another Sendinblue customer:
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Optimize your subject lines
Your subject line is the first thing your subscribers will see. Given that 35% of email subscribers open an email based solely on the subject line, if it’s not compelling, they won’t click through. ?
This is why it’s important to spend time on your subject lines – it can mean the difference between a lot of click throughs and none.
Plus, competition is tough in inboxes these days. People are bombarded with dozens of marketing emails every week. Your task is to make yours stand out but not come across as overly promotional.
Here are a few points to consider:
- Keep your subject line to 50 – 60 characters to make sure it can be read.
- Use powerful, action-based words.
- Set expectations for the body of the email.
- Use subscriber names in the subject line for more personalized content.
Looking for more subject line resources? You’ve come to the right place:
- The 7-Step Process For Writing Fantastic Email Subject Lines
- 50 Holiday and Christmas Email Subject Lines for Higher Open Rates
- 40 Black Friday & Cyber Monday Email Subject Lines to Boost Your Open Rate
Make the Most of Your Email Marketing Strategy
Knowing how to create a good email is one thing. Knowing how to craft an effective email marketing strategy is another. It’s how you connect with your audience, drive sales, and build a community around your brand. The key to a successful email marketing campaign is to optimize every element, from the subject line to the content and CTAs.
Use an email marketing service like the one we offer at Sendinblue to do all the hard work for you. Segment subscribers so you send only the most relevant content; A/B test emails to determine what elements perform best; and build out trigger-based campaigns that are highly personalized.