Are Email Newsletters Still Effective?
We’ve said it once and we’ll say it again, email marketing is still king! Sending email newsletters is an effective element of marketing that should be a major part of your marketing strategy. On average, business employees (of every industry), receive over 120 emails on a daily basis. Multiply that by the amount of email users (4.3 billion), and you get a remarkable outcome.
So, why do people still think email marketing is dead? That is the complicated part… We don’t even understand why people think that. If you’re not already an email marketing advocate, try to keep an open mind while you read through these statistics – they might surprise you.
Segmenting Your Subscribers Will Generate More Response
By separating and organizing subscribers on your list, you increase your revenue by over 760%. Yes, we said 760%. List segmentation won’t exclude or eliminate anyone from receiving your messages. Instead, it gives you the opportunity to send them more personalized messages that highlight products that they’re interested in.
When segmenting your list, think POP (products, opens and price). What recent products have your subscribers purchased? Who has opened your last few campaigns? Based on past purchases, what is their average spending amount? For a better visual, let’s pretend we work for an optometrist.
- P – I can segment my subscribers into two main categories. 1) People who purchased glasses, and 2) people who purchased sunglasses.
- O – From those two categories, I can separate who’s engaged and who isn’t. Half of my subscribers in the “sunglasses” category didn’t open the last three emails I sent.
- P – In the active “sunglasses” subscribers, 33% of them spent below $100, 33% spent above $100 and 33% spent above $200.
Knowing this information, I can now send relevant information to the active “sunglasses” list. What’s trending in the sunglass world? Did a brand they purchased release a new frame? What would complement their sunglasses? For my inactive “sunglass” subscribers, I might want to send an email that reminds them to make an appointment. Are their sunglasses up to prescription? Do they want to purchase the same glasses again, at a higher prescription?
When segmenting your listing using the POP method, you can dive deeper and deeper into each category. What products have they recently purchased? What is the brand? The style? The color? Who opened the last promotional email? Who hasn’t opened any emails since they first signed up? (In that instance, it might be better to send them “incentive for inactive subscriber,” emails). These lists can go on-and-on depending on your business. We recommend sitting down and creating the list ‘segments’ before going through your actual member list. Note, email lists don’t hold all the information! Check their recent purchases on your website too!
Be sure to send a variety of personalized-promotional and personalized-personal emails to your segmented lists. Some other ideas on how to segment your email list:
- Subscriber’s location (perhaps a handful of your email subscriber’s live in a pricier part of town).
- Customer’s age (will 16 year olds be interested in insurance plans or aging cream?)
- Customer’s gender (do men really want to receive emails about make-up sales?)
- Customer’s date of birth (summer birthday’s may be excited to see exclusive birthday travel deals).
- Subscribers who tend to share your content often (discounts and special pricing for their sharing contributions will help them fell appreciated).
Personalized Email Newsletters = More Sales!
You might be thinking, what the heck is the difference between a personalized-promotional and personalized-personal email campaign? Okay, yes, we kind of made up those words, but not the description behind them.
Every email you write should be personalized. According to various email marketing studies, only 30% of all companies take time to personalize their emails, losing a tremendous amount of revenue each year.
For those wondering, no! Email personalization doesn’t mean sending a single email to every customer on your list. Personalization means to send emails that are relatable and interesting to a particular group of customers. This is where you’d start using those list segmentation skills we had listed above.
If you’re looking for something more generalized, think about two major questions that can separate your customers. For example, let’s say that we run a pet store. To learn more about your our clients let’s ask them via email “do you own a dog, or a cat?” With their responses, we can now separate the animal owners into different categories and send them messages centered around the correct furry friends. Send a variety of personalized -promotional emails (emails that feature products and discounts), and personalized-personal emails (emails that highlight them, birthday cards, hand-picked products and discounts, etc).
With FireDrum Email Marketing, you can style the website sign-up form to include different categories. Just remember to keep your sign-up as short and sweet as possible! For email campaigns, make your messages even more personal with merge tags.
Call to Actions Create More Action
There is no such thing as adding too many buttons (unless your buttons are overcrowding the page). People who incorporate more buttons into their email newsletters see (on average), a 27% increase in conversion rates. Why? Well, these CTA’s (or call to actions), are more eye catching compared to your normal text link. In addition to being more eye catching, they help bring your subscribers through a journey.
This isn’t an excuse to throw in a bunch of random buttons into your emails. Make sure your buttons are attached to products, blog posts or sections that require an action to be taken. The only other time you should have button in your email is if its directing customers to your website, to your phone number or to an attached document.
A few things to consider when adding buttons to your email campaigns…
Color: Does the color of your buttons stand out compared to the rest of your email campaign? Do they match your brand colors?
Text: Is the text inside of your button short, but informational? Are you avoiding phrases like “click here” and “push this button?” *Note, it is best if you’re clear about the direction of your buttons. Example: “Download free graphics,” or “Keep Reading.”
Design: If you add any gradient or pattern on the button, is the text still recognizable? Will it distract too much from the rest of your content, or the message of your button?
Size: Are your CTA buttons large enough to attract attention, but small enough to look professional? Buttons are meant to be noticeable but not overwhelming.
Social Media vs Email Marketing
Despite what many people assume, social media marketing doesn’t outshine email marketing. You can expect over 40x the amount of customer acquisition through email marketing than Twitter and Facebook.
This doesn’t mean you should ditch your social media marketing strategy. Rather, spend more time perfecting your email marketing campaigns. With platforms like Facebook, you don’t have the control of who sees your post and who doesn’t. Some other downsides of social media:
- Only 2% of followers see your post in their feed. Unless there’s engagement from this 2%, you won’t appear in anyone else’s feed. (Yikes!)
- You don’t have control over the backend of your social media pages. If Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram or Snapchat has a glitch in their site, your data could be compromised and your customer’s won’t be able to access the information that they’re looking for.
- Social media platforms may drive traffic to your website, but that requires your energy and time. New posts = new ways to access your website, whereas website’s can continually lead your customers down a sales funnel.
- Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, Snapchat and Instagram are constantly updating their user experience and algorithm. Meaning, you’re having to set aside time to update your social pages and content to adhere to the new style and look professional.
Email marketing, on the other hand, gives you the opportunity to reach each client individually. (To increase engagement and deliverability, check out our blog post: “Deliverability Strategy” and “Tips to Engaging New Subscribers.”)
To keep your email newsletter messages and social media posts in-sync, we recommend taking advantage of our “auto-post to social media” feature. While designing and scheduling your email newsletter to go out, you can customize a social media message that shares your newsletter to post as soon as your email delivers. Easy, right?
Mobile Friendly Emails, Do They Matter?
Yes, responsive emails matter! Over 50% of all emails are viewed on a mobile device. For clicks, 30% originate on those mobile devices. If your email isn’t compatible to with all mobile devices, you can count on lower engagement rates. Why make your email newsletters harder to read and harder to navigate? To make it even better, if your emails are mobile responsive, you can count on 20% of your subscribers opening that email again. Like websites, user experience plays a major part in your acquisition and customer retainment rate.
With FireDrum Email Studio, your emails are automatically mobile responsive. Your building blocks break down to appear in a clean, easy to navigate order – making campaign building fast and fun. To check the responsiveness on each device, you can use our “inbox preview assistant.” Our inbox preview assistant generates over 54 different mobile and tablet previews to ensure consistent layouts for different users. Try it out!
Email Consistency is Key
To reduce the chances of being marked as spam, it’s important that you send emails at a consistent rate. Not only that, but it’s important that your campaigns look similar visually (matching your brand colors, layout and so forth). Without these two components, clients might not recognize who you are (which leads them to reporting you as spam or unsubscribing from your newsletters). Ouch! We don’t want that.
To keep your clients interested, we recommend sending one email per week (or four per month). By sending a weekly newsletter, your open rates will increase significantly. Create excitement for your subscribers by offering a weekly incentive, but keep the formatting consistent so they know what to expect.
What are the benefits of creating a custom template for your company?
- Brand awareness (highlight your company’s colors in a consistent fashion)
- Pre-determined formatting (save time on arranging the email, and easily make yourself recognizable)
- Reduce time spent on design, so you can focus on content
Custom templates can come in handy if you’re planning on sending a weekly newsletter or have similar announcements from time to time. Explore FireDrum’s custom template gallery and contact the experts, today, to learn more about what we can do for your business.
Automated Email Messages Produce More Engagement
Automated emails go hand-in-hand with email personalization and list segmentation. If your lists are properly segmented and personalized to fit each subscriber’s interests, you can create automated campaigns that get results. On average, automated messages receive higher open rates (over 70%) and higher click rates (over 150%).
First off, what are automated email messages? Automated messages are emails that are sent based off of the action of a customer. For more clarity, let’s send an email to our dog owners from above. Our next campaign is going to showcase new dog toys and accessories with CTA’s to view them on our website. Before sending this campaign, however, we’re going to create a new campaign that automatically sends to people who “click to view” dog leashes. This email will feature different brands, colors, styles and designs. Now, time for launch (schedule to send campaign #1)! Dog owners who click the CTA for dog leashes will automatically get campaign #2 that highlights other purchasing options. This is considered an automated email message, more specifically, a triggered campaign.
So now that we understand automated campaigns, it’s time to evaluate how your business can benefit from implementing them. What can you automate? What type of products or services should be highlighted? What do you know your customers will be intrigued by? What will produce the most revenue for you?
Alright marketers, now that you know these statistics, what are you going to change about your email marketing strategy? Sit down with your team and start discussing ways to boost email engagement rates and product sales. Remember, email marketing is not dead! If executed correctly, you can make a killing in the email marketing field.
Want more email marketing tips? Subscribe to our monthly FireLine newsletter, or contact our email experts, today.
Want more email marketing tips? Subscribe to our blog or contact the experts at FireDrum Email Marketing directly at experts@firedum.com.
