What Is Email Marketing? Why Is It Important? - Part 1

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Jun 21 2017

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Email marketing remains one of the primary methods to spread the word about your company’s products and services. When it comes to converting customers, emails are about 40 times more effective than social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter! As exemplified by the statistics below, the proliferation of smartphones in the lives of the masses today has only added to the increasing customer reach in the domain. There is much importance to Email marketing in Sales.

With the right strategy in place, emails possess the potential to profitably tap such niche markets which may not have even been in the blueprints of your marketing department. Let’s take a look at some effective email strategies which should be extensively implemented in every email campaign.

1. Email Personalization

Personalizing the emails with the help of the information available about the target customers goes a long way to boost the CTR of your email campaign. Prospects are more likely to click and read emails which they believe are tailored to be read by them.

2. Analytics

Using a dedicated method to track the analytics of your email campaign gives decision making a whole new perspective. The marketing team can better determine what’s working and what’s not. Emails can then be effectively tweaked to entice better responses from the readers.

3. Automation

One of the latest top strategies available to reach out to prospects today is using automation to drive the sales. Prolific automation platforms such as Clodura help companies to access an extensive database of email addresses and send out automated personalized emails to them based on high-level tracking information available about them.

4. Segmentation

One of the most overlooked strategies, segmentation is the process of dividing the email list into groups so as to facilitate the implementation of personalization in emails. The right kind of segmentation can have tremendous positive implications on the campaign’s revenue generation.

While there can be many such advance strategies to choose from, there are 3 basic strategies that cannot be overlooked at all costs – Time, Content and Subject Line.

Importance of Email Time

While one may do everything else right during a campaign, bad email timing can put the success of the whole campaign at risk as the email message may not reverberate well with the end users. One has to realize that there is a lot of noise in an office space as well as in the inbox of prospects. Hence, the campaign execution has to be near perfection to grab the attention of the readers.

As expected, email open rates take a dive on the weekends due to lack of office activities and preoccupation of prospects. On the other hand, mid-week (Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday) turns out to be the best time of the week to implement the campaigns, since that is the time of peak office activity throughout the week.

As depicted from the data, email open rates take a spike if they are sent out between 2-5 pm, and a significant plunge if sent out before 12 pm. The reason behind this just lies in the fact that prospects are more oriented towards executing pending tasks at the start of the workday rather than delving into new ones.

Thus, timing is a crucial variable to take into account while executing an email campaign to ensure its success.

Importance of Email Content

Always remember – Content is King. With so much information to consume over the Internet, the attention span of surfers is a continuous decline. A bland and dull email will quickly lose the reader’s attention before they even finish reading it. This often proves to be a severe blow to the CTR of the links in the email body.

Now the question arises – What constitutes a great email content regime?

Here are some attributes of emails that consist of impeccable content –

The good email content is free of grammatical and vocabulary errors. It should give present an opinion to the reader that English is the emailer’s first language.

Content should be targeted towards the needs of your readers. The focus should be on converting the prospects based on the information that is available about them. Keep in mind their age group, interests and past data about similar purchasing before penning down the email’s body. In other words, the content needs to be aligned with the goal of the campaign.

Breaking the routine of the email via graphic elements goes a long way to keep the readers engaged and increase the CTR of links. Though some email filters may end up blocking the images. Hence, it is important to include alternate text for every image.

Embedding a prominent call to action is the most important step while curating the email content. The CTAs should be clear and direct, instead of trying to entice clicks via clichéd phrases which often extend an image of spam.

Lastly, the email should have a footer with appropriate buttons such as social media directs, an option to unsubscribe as well as the postal address of the company’s office.

Importance of Email Subject Line

The subject line of the email is the first attribute of the email that your readers see in their inboxes. Hence, it becomes utmost important for the subject to be compelling enough to drive the email open rate. 33% of email recipients open to read them based on the subject line alone.

On the other hand, if the subject line is not handled professionally, it can also lead to negative publicity by making the emails look like spam. Look at the following alarming statistic.

Thus, a lot is riding on the email marketing strategy of your company. It is crucial to managing all aspects of the campaign to make it a success.

Now that you know the basics of email strategies let us delve into the topic deeper and cover many more interesting and important details that add to the success of a campaign in the second blog of the series – Email Marketing and its Importance – Part 2.

If you are looking to target more customers via personalized and targeted email strategies, check out Clodura today to revolutionize the way you perceive sales.

And don’t forget to share your views in the comment section below!

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