How many promotional emails do you receive every day? And how many do you actually read or respond to?
There are many marketers who do not grasp how to develop effective email marketing strategies. They confuse their strategies with general tactics or campaigns. Strategies, however, are considered to be long term plans, usually at a higher level, that requires a specific period of time, usually equating to 5 to 10 years. Tactics are the actual detailed actions that are established to accomplish the plans and will usually be completed within a shorter period of time, such as within a year.
The strategies that are established will identify what a marketer needs to do to in order to gain substantial advantages over competition or other goals of the business. It also maps out the plan of action that a marketer needs to take, as well as the resources that will be needed to successfully achieve these plans.
The inbox has become a fierce battleground for marketers to get subscriber’s attention. However, not every email campaign is successful; at least 80% of the promotional emails are ignored by subscribers because they are intrusive or boring.
So how does a marketer succeed in an email marketing campaign and what email marketing strategies are useful for a successful email marketing campaign? Here are some useful tips.
- Permission marketing with double and secure opt-in and opt-out.
- Rewarding opt-ins. Rewarding opt-ins is a great way to retain customers. Gift every opt-in a small offer that they can use to purchase a product in-store or on the web, say, 5% off on the latest Maybelline range. Such rewards can work well for repeat purchases through promotional emails.
- Know your subscribers as individuals and not groups. Encourage one-to-one marketing.
- Personalize individual emails and promote personalised offers to individual subscribers.
- Timing. Timing email promotions is a key to email campaign’s success.
- Don’t spam. Don’t spam the user with frequent promotional emails which are sure to either land up in the spam box or in the recycle bin. Frequency of promotional emails is very important.
- Use subject and sender details wisely. This will help the subscriber in knowing who is sending the email. A loosely subjected email will be skipped and marked as spam or deleted by most users.
- Call to action. The email campaign should enable a call to action by the subscriber. A discount offer or a free gift offer works well in the subject line.
- Make purchasing easy. Design a special landing page for every email that is sent. The landing page should have visible links to redirect the user to the offer and make a purchase easily and hassle-free.
- Test – Measure. Test the efficacy of the campaign for every individual subscriber by measuring the click-through rates.
- The friendly reminder. A friendly reminder to the subscriber on an event being organised in the subscriber’s location and how the subscriber can be a part of the event by responding to the email, can work wonders for the email campaign.
- Budget: Knowing how much to spend on email marketing will help to efficiently manage the email marketing campaign.
When you plan your email marketing strategy carefully, it can be successful. It is essential, however, that you avoid the common pitfalls that occur with these strategies and focus on the actual methods that will provide the results you are seeking.
