Staring into a crowded inbox, potential customers will toss uninspiring emails without a second thought. So how do you cut through the noise and get people to engage with your marketing emails? Nearly all consumers check their email daily, and a vast majority say they prefer to receive commercial communications via email. Beyond that, over half of online consumers made a purchase as a result of an email marketing message. We know that email is working.
Don’t think of email marketing as only a promotional engine; rather it should be your go-to touchpoint for customer interactions. Through email marketing, you can take advantage of customer context, showcase your understanding of customers, and build advocacy through messages that inspire readers to act. Email can build brand credibility and loyalty. In 2018 there are more ways to make your email marketing campaign stand out than ever before.
Interactive Email Marketing Campaign
Counters, rotating banners, integrated forms, a slider, or a gif are all interactive email elements you can use in your email marketing campaign. Interactive content in your email marketing is anything that requires a viewer to actively engage and participate with the content to access the full experience. Because interactive content requires the recipient to act in order to get the full message, the recipient then becomes part of the experience, which boosts user experience, helps increase your conversion rate, and drives up feelings of brand loyalty.
Interactive email has additional benefits, as recipients can take action in the inbox. Emails that encourage interaction can help you gather more data for deeper email segmenting. Providing the ability to interact through an email easily, regardless of whether it’s being read on a desktop, tablet, or smartphone improves reader experience. Using interactive content gives you the opportunity to surprise and delight your readers with something new, driving engagement along the way.
Personalized Email Experiences
In order to create personalized email experiences for your readers, you need to go way beyond adding the “first name” field to the email. You need to know their preferences, interests, location, gender, age, and other attributes in order to send compelling campaigns. Interactive experiences provide the perfect platform for gaining information about your subscribers.
Consumers respond more favorable to email that looks like it was created specifically for them. Far beyond addressing your subscribers on a first name basis, email personalization allows you to cater to individual preferences by taking demographics, interests, and other information into account. By leveraging customer insights you can contextualize messages, tying the customer journey back to the individual’s environment.
Self-Segmentation and Deeper Segmentation
You can have your subscribers do some self-segmenting through opt-in offers and surveys within your emails. For example, a bookstore might send a survey asking you to pick your favorite book genre. How a person reacts to an email can drive future marketing campaigns to them specifically. Over time you will be able to do deeper segmenting based on subscriber reactions.
The whole point of segmentation is to provide more relevant content to your email subscribers. There are a ton of ways you can segment your email list to run innovative and effective campaigns that customers will enjoy. Delving into analytics can make this deeper segmentation easier. You can segment based on anything from location and age to past purchases and buying frequency. The more information you collect about your recipients, the more opportunities you have to tailor your emails to hit the right note.
Fun Visuals and Plain Text Emails
While these might seem contradictory, it’s a good idea to send out a mix of types of emails. Fun and interesting visuals are good eye-candy. In addition to including photos in your emails consider creating infographics, shareable memes, and video content. Based on click-through rates you can determine which types of visuals resonate most with your audience segments.
While people are generally visual creatures, some do prefer text-based emails for speed of loading. When sending plain text emails make sure that you avoid using the same template each time, which can lose it’s impact. Short, personalized, plain-text emails have the chance to read more like an email from a friend than a marketing campaign from a brand.
Automated Drip Marketing
The biggest feature in marketing automation has become drip marketing. When done right, automated drip marketing saves time, boosts your user engagement, and speeds up the conversion rate. There are various types of drip campaigns, including welcome campaigns, onboarding emails, lead nurturing, education, renewal or confirmation emails, or re-engagement emails. These automated emails can assist both new and existing customers in learning how to get the most out of your product or service.
Email marketing provides an incredible return on investment. Contact us today for more ways to grow your business.