Time and again email has been chosen by consumers as the preferred way to communicate with brands and companies. In fact, email is so important that all age groups see it as a part of everyday life, and something they check several times a day.*
However, despite the fact that consumers want emails and that email has been proven to be the most effective marketing channel in terms of ROI, we know that not all emails get read and not all emails convert.
If you’re not happy with the results you’ve been getting, or you’re now starting out, continue reading for tips on how you can optimize your email strategy for greater results.
Did you know? Email is 40X more effective for customer acquisition than Facebook and Twitter combined! ~via McKinsey & Company
Optimize Your Content
85% of consumers sign up to get discounts, but 41% are looking for service and product updates. (Source: Adestra)
Mix up your content, keep it fresh and value-packed. Include relevant discounts and special offers, but also make sure you provide other content that would be beneficial to the customer and lead towards a sale such as customer reviews, product/service know-how or how-tos etc.
You can also use email content to entertain your customers and help them to engage more with your business or brand eg. have them complete fun surveys, participate in polls, watch videos, or feel like part of a relevant movement or worthy cause.
Of course, the keyword in all of this is “relevant”. What’s relevant for one person/age group may not be for another. In order to determine what’s relevant for your customers, you’ll need to learn a lot more about them! This leads us to the next point…
Personalization Is The Magic Sauce
55% of consumers prefer email messages containing products and offers that are relevant to them (Source: LiveClicker)
Clothing retailer JustFab saw a 103% increase in revenue from implementing in-depth email marketing personalization. (Source: Venture Beat)
Personalized email messages improve click-throughs on a call-to-action by an average of 14%, and conversions by 10%. (Source: Aberdeen Group)
76% of Email Marketing ROI comes from segmented, targeted, and triggered campaigns. (Source: DMA )
Personalization is so much more than including first/last names in your email. It’s about serving up content that is relevant to the person receiving it. Let’s take for example clothing retailer JustFab - their personalization goes so much deeper to segment customers by behavior (eg shopping patterns), location, and interests (eg plus size), which translates into several highly targeted segments each receiving their own specially personalized content and messaging.
Of course, personalization like this isn’t something that you can just quickly pull together overnight. It requires having the right technology in place, conducting A/B tests, and knowing the right information to collect from customers. You can start by segmenting your customers with what you already know about them, and build from there with progressive profiling. Then move on to adopting technologies/systems that allow you to collect more in-depth actionable data.
Optimize For Mobile
56% of email is now opened on a mobile device. (Source: Litmus)
68% - 79% of mobile users will delete an email if it doesn’t look good on their phones and 12% - 29% will just flat out unsubscribe. (Source: Adestra)
Optimize your emails to be viewed and engaged with across multiple devices. Be sure include plain text versions for devices that can’t render html content.
Optimize Landing Pages
Among the biggest issues people have with email, 26% cite websites and landing pages not being properly mobile optimized. (Source: Relevancy Group)
Don’t let your business fall behind by providing an annoying customer experience due to an outdated digital presence. Your website and landing pages need to be mobile-responsive if your business is to dominate online. There’s no point in sending a great email with the perfect offer to then have customers click through to a website that is hard to view or navigate on their device. You’ve just lost the sale. Get your business a well designed mobile-responsive landing page or website.
Make It Easy To Unsubscribe
50% of email recipients marked a brand’s email as spam because they couldn’t easily figure out how to unsubscribe. (Source: Litmus)
Sounds counter-intuitive right? Why would you want to make it easy for people to unsubscribe? For the same reason you’d want to make it easy for someone to leave a room by providing a clearly marked exit sign above a door. Let your customers feel in control of the emails they receive (or no longer want to receive). You can also give them the option to receive fewer emails (if too many emails is their reason for wanting to unsubscribe), or provide options for them to change their preferences or the email address they have on file.
At the core of email optimization is the customer experience. It’s about creating more relevant emails that consumers want to open and making it as easy and painless as possible to act on those emails. Optimizing email marketing takes time, technology and a solid strategy, but the uptick in conversions and increased revenue is definitely worth it.
* Source: Adestra
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