Email marketing is considered one of the oldest forms of digital marketing, having been in existence since 1972 (Australian Academy of Digital Marketing, n.d.). With a user-base of 4.5 billion, it has established itself as the leading marketing channel, easily outperforming social media and SEO (Patel, n.d.). Neil Patel describes email marketing as a “marketing strategy where businesses send promotional messages to people in mass quantities.” As straight forward as this explanation is, a successful email marketing campaign will be well thought-out and contain best practices that allow it to stand out. This report will provide an overview of some of these best practises such as personalisation, segmentation, the role of engaging subject lines, effective copy, and CTA usage.
Email Segmentation
With the high volume of emails circulating every day, it can be difficult for email marketing to cut-through all that noise and have impact. Employing email list segmentation can create a highly targeted campaign and has been found to increase revenue by 760% (Campaign Monitor, n.d.). According to Campaign Monitor, email segmentation is “breaking up your email subscriber list into different groups based on unique sets of data.” There are many ways to segment an email list: purchase history; newsletter subscribers; demographics; stage of sales funnel; inactivity; are all examples. The goal here is to provide relevant and useful content to your segment. Tripadvisor make good use of segmenting by stage of sales funnel; they prompt their browsers who have abandoned their search with “Let’s complete those trip plans” encouraging them to re-engage. Effective email campaigns will have content mapped to the different stages of the buyer’s journey and tailored to the specific interests of the segment, leading to improved open and click through rates (Patel, n.d.).
Email Personalisation
A properly segmented email list, enables brands to shape the content for the target audience, allowing for a more personalised experience. The practise of personalising email content is considered integral to building connections and trust. Research has found that 72% of consumers say they only engage with personalised messaging (Wunderkind, 2022). Email marketing best practices recommends starting the email with a personal greeting instead of a generic one. For instance, starting with “Good morning, Anne” offers a more personal touch than “Dear Subscriber” (Vaughan, 2022). Personalised product recommendations are another way to make consumers feel individually acknowledged. Reading Eggs’ re-engagement email is a great example of how these practices can be used, it starts personably with, “Hi Caroline, My name is Riley and I work for the ABC Reading Eggs Customer Service Team.” She goes on to offer a special price on a specific product subscription tailored to the customer. Providing context within content is tied directly with generating sales as Campaign Monitor state “Relevancy is the marketer’s secret weapon, and the fastest path to revenue.”
Subject lines and Pre-text
A powerful way to boost open rates is having a persuasive subject line and pre-text. In fact, 33 percent of email recipients open email solely based on the subject line (MacDonald, 2022). Using best practices such as targeted messaging, creating a sense of urgency, and providing an enticing offer will help an email to stand out. Village Cinema achieves this with their enticing title, “$30 Vrewards Gold Class Vouchers!” They back this up with to-the-point pre-text, sitting directly below the subject line “Save over 25% on Vrewards Gold Class Vouchers!” Subscribers will take only seconds to decide if they will open an email so having an attention-grabbing title and pretext can increase the open-rate for emails (Australian Academy of Digital Marketing, n.d.).
Email Copy And Layout
When it comes to the body of the email, best practice is to keep it short, concise, and scannable (Australian Academy of Digital Marketing, n.d.). Time-poor readers should know the purpose of the email up front with a layout incorporating, where appropriate, bullet points, bolding, on-brand colours, imagery and logos. Simple, short, layouts and copy are also more mobile friendly; a key consideration since mobile can account for up to 77% of email opens (Campaign Monitor). Even newsletters can be presented succinctly; Provincial Home Living give small previews of their Journal articles with appealing imagery that viewers can click on to read more elsewhere.
CTA Usage
Call To Action’s (CTA’s) in email marketing, play a vital role in increasing conversion rates and nudging the consumer on to the next stage in their journey. CTA best practices can be followed by placing CTA’s at the top and bottom of the email (Patel, n.d.). Placing CTA’s above the fold, means recipients will see it immediately upon opening the email, and then again at the end, to catch those that have scrolled down. Using clear language and contrasting colours will engage and encourage the viewer to take the next step towards a conversion (Cox, 2022).
Clean Contact Database
There are some practices that are best avoided when it comes to email marketing. One of those, is continuing to send emails to addresses with low open-rates and those that bounce. This can adversely affect your reputation score and your chance to connect with other potential customers (Hubspot Academy). Reputation score is a record of how well emails sent from your domain have performed (Campaign Monitor, n.d.). Any email marketing campaign will be undermined if those emails are considered spam. By following best practices, such as asking for double opt-ins and removing addresses that maintain low open-rates; sender reputation can be protected (Campaign Monitor, n.d.). “People who never open emails make your campaign look worse since you’re not analyzing the campaign’s quality against your most loyal recipients”(Vaughan, 2022).
Purchasing An Email Marketing List
Another mistake to avoid is buying an email list. The acquired contacts may not be interested in reading these emails and therefore leave them unopened or mark them as spam, consequently sender reputation and ROI is likely to be poor (Halliday, n.d.). Even worse, if consent has not been given by the recipient, and a company is found in breach of the Spam Act 2003, there could be fines and penalties involved (Halliday, n.d.).
Conclusion
Email marketing remains the most effective means of contacting consumers, with 61% of consumers preferring to be contacted through email rather than social media (Guttman, 2022). Armand Thiberge acknowledges email’s position as a strong marketing channel “While email has been around since the mid-‘90s and, in comparison, may seem old school, it’s continued to maintain a stronghold with consumers thanks to its ubiquity around the world and broad appeal across age groups.” (BasuMallick, 2020). Email marketing best practices offer an opportunity for brands to develop relationships with their readers. Employing good habits such as personalisation, segmentation, crafting winning subject lines with clear copy and effective CTA’s will lead to email engagement and ultimately generate more leads and conversions.
References
Australian Academy of Digital Marketing (n.d.) [Online] Email Marketing Available at: https://www.digitalmarketingacademy.com.au/ Accessed 24 November 2022
Australian Academy of Digital Marketing (n.d.) Managing Email Campaigns [Online] Available at: https://www.digitalmarketingacademy.com.au/ Accessed 24 November 2022
BasuMallick, (2020) ‘What Is Email Marketing? Definition, Tips, Best Practices, Benefits, and Examples’ Spiceworks [Online] Available at: https://www.spiceworks.com/marketing/marketing-automation/articles/what-is-email-marketing-definition-tips-best-practices-benefits-and-examples/ Accessed 30 November 2022
Campaign Monitor (n.d.) ‘The New Rules Of Email Marketing’ [Online] Available at: https://www.campaignmonitor.com/resources/guides/email-marketing-new-rules/ Accessed 28 November 2022
Campaign Monitor (n.d.) ‘What Are Some OF The Best email Segmentation Ideas?’ [Online] Available at: https://www.campaignmonitor.com/resources/knowledge-base/what-are-some-of-the-best-email-segmentation-ideas/ Accessed 28 November 2022
Campaign Monitor (n.d.) ‘What is Email Sender Reputation?’ [Online] Available at: https://www.campaignmonitor.com/resources/knowledge-base/what-is-email-sender-reputation/ Accessed 30 November 2022
Cox, L.K. (2022)’27 Brilliant Email Campaign Examples [+Template]’ Hubspot [Online] Available At: https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/email-marketing-examples-list Accessed 27 November 2022
Federal Register of Legislation (n.d.) ‘Spam Act 2003’ Australian Government [Online] Available at: https://www.legislation.gov.au/Series/C2004A01214 Accessed 1 December 2022
Guttman, A. (2022) ‘Leading Ways Consumers Prefer To Be Contacted By Brands in the United States As Of June 2022’ Statista [Online] Available at: https://www.statista.com/statistics/750858/us-consumers-preferences-brand-contact/ Accessed 30 November 2022
Halliday, B. (n.d.) ‘Why You Should Never Purchase An Email Marketing List’ Vision6 [Online] Available at: https://www.vision6.com.au/blog/why-you-should-never-purchase-an-email-marketing-list/ Accessed 1 December 2022
HubSpot Academy (n.d.) ‘Email Marketing Course’ HubSpot [Online] Available at: https://academy.hubspot.com/courses/email-marketing Accessed 7 December 2022
MacDonald, S. (2022) ‘The Science Behind Email Click-Through Rates (And How To Increase Email CTR)’ SuperOffice [Online] Available at: https://www.superoffice.com/blog/email-open-rates/ Accessed Accessed 30 November 2022
Patel, N. (n.d.) ‘Beginners Guide to Email Marketing’ Neil Patel [Online] Available at: https://neilpatel.com/blog/beginners-guide-email-marketing/ Accessed 25 November 2022
Patel, N. (n.d.) ’25 Email Marketing Best Practices That Too Many People Ignore’ Neil Patel [Online] Available at: https://neilpatel.com/blog/email-marketing-best-practices/ Accessed 25 November 2022
Provincial Home Living, (n.d.)[Online] Available at: https://www.provincialhomeliving.com.au/blog/ Accessed 28 November 2022
https://readingeggs.com.au/ Accessed 29 November 2022
https://www.tripadvisor.com.au/ Accessed 29 November 2022
Vaughan, P. (2022) ’17 Email Marketing Best Practices That Actually Drive Results’ [Online] Available at: https://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/23965/9-email-marketing-best-practices-to-generate-more-leads.aspx Accessed 30 November 2022
Wunderkind, (2022) ‘The SmarterHQ Offering Is Now Wunderkind Audiences’ [Online] Available at: https://www.wunderkind.co/blog/article/smarterhq-wunderkind-audiences/ Accessed 25 November 2022
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