Why e-mail marketing?
What makes e-mail advertising one of the best digital marketing strategies available? Before we discuss unique campaign ideas, we’ll share why e-mail marketing should be an integral part of your strategy.
1. E-mail is used everywhere in the world
Of all the marketing strategies available, e-mail is one form of communication that is used all over the world.
By 2020, it is expected that 3 billion people worldwide will use e-mail. Currently, 92% of adults who have access to the internet use e-mail – 61% of them daily. And when it pertains to communicating with brands through other channels such as social networks or SMS versus e-mail marketing, 74% of users say they prefer e-mail.
These numbers suggest that e-mail is a sure way to reach a large portion of your target audience.
2. High ROI
ROI (return on investment) is the quantity you earn for every dollar spent. You want a high ROI because it means you’re getting more bang for your buck and spending it wisely.
The average ROI of an e-mail advertising campaign is 3800%, and 77% of that ROI comes from segmented, targeted, and triggered campaigns.
3. High engagement
Overall, users engage more with e-mail than other digital marketing forms.
For example, an e-mail is six times more likely to be clicked than a tweet. You can utilize engaging elements in your e-mails like photos, videos, gifs, buttons, and more – and while you can use some of these elements in a tweet, e-mails offer the text content that a tweet can’t.
Plus, your message is five times more likely to be seen if you write it in an e-mail than if you post it on Facebook.
4. Generates conversions
Conversions are one of the most important goals of digital marketing – and e-mail conversion rates are considerably high.
Compared to search engines and social media, conversion rates are highest for e-mail marketing, with 4.24% of visitors making a purchase, compared to 2.49% for search engines and only 0.59% for social media.
5. You can personalize every e-mail
If you think about every tweet that goes out to your followers or every post you publish on Facebook, there are ways to target your audience, but you can’t personalize it for every viewer.
With e-mail advertising, on the other hand, you can personalize each e-mail to appeal to each recipient. If you’re unsure how personalization will affect your e-mail marketing campaign – trust us, it’s a lot!
When you personalize an e-mail, you can get up to six times higher transaction rates. Not to mention, e-mails with a customized subject line are 26% more likely to be opened than those with a generic subject line.
As for personalization in general, you can personalize your subject lines and even use the recipient’s name in the e-mail introduction. You can customize your campaigns so that customers interested in particular products or services receive e-mails matching those interests.
These segmented and targeted e-mails generate 58% of sales.
6. Real-time delivery
Unlike a direct mail campaign (or any other traditional marketing), your e-mail recipients receive your message in real-time. Whether they see your message the moment it arrives in their inbox is hard to say, but no matter, when you send an e-mail, it reaches the recipient within seconds.
Drop mail can take days to deliver – not to mention that with e-mail marketing, you don’t have to pay postage.
7. Better and easier communication
E-mail marketing makes it easy to get and stay in touch with current and potential customers.
And you’ll also have the ability to respond quickly and efficiently to keep an open dialogue with your customers. For instance, if you send out a monthly newsletter about one of your new products, your clients can contact you quickly and easily via e-mail if they have any questions. You can also utilize e-mail blasts to send a single e-mail to your entire subscriber list.
Accessibility is something all customers look for – especially if they’re not interested in your product. They want their questions answered before spending money on anything from your company.
8. Easy to follow up
When you run a direct mail campaign, you’ll never know if the mailing you sent ended up in a filing cabinet or the trash or if you even opened it. That can be a massive waste of money on postage and paper products.
Also, it’s challenging to figure out what’s working and what’s not in your mailing campaign because, for those who did open your mailing, you have no way of knowing which parts the recipients read, which parts they want to know more about, or which parts they weren’t interested in.
E-mail marketing lets you easily track your e-mails, so you know exactly who opened them, when, and how often.
You can also track which links your subscribers clicked on in the e-mail to determine if the content you’re offering is helpful or if recipients aren’t interested.
By tracking your e-mails, you can create the perfect content after analyzing what your recipients seem interested in, what they don’t click on, and what brings them to your website.
Now that we’ve discussed eight ways e-mail marketing is one of the best strategies, we will share some unique e-mail marketing ideas for your business.
Unique e-mail marketing ideas for your business
44% of e-mail recipients purchased in 2015 due to a promotional e-mail.
However, to get a high percentage of purchases from your e-mail marketing campaign, you must do it right and stand out in the inbox.
Users won’t respond to boring e-mails that don’t include engaging elements like photos and gifs – and even if you do use engaging elements, people want to see unique content that sets your business apart.
Here are some unique e-mail marketing ideas that make your business stand out in your subscribers’ inboxes.
Give your e-mails the same branding as your website
Many businesses forget that e-mail marketing extends their other marketing channels, such as their website and social media profiles. To give the feeling of a solid brand presence that spans more than just one of your marketing channels, consider giving your e-mails the same look and feel as your website.
For example, if your website consists of bright pastel colors and floral patterns, your e-mail should include some elements to ensure your branding is cohesive.
If someone is a frequent visitor to your website, they know your brand identity – and you want them to know the e-mail is from you as soon as they open it.
Birthday e-mails
One way to reveal that you know your clients is to celebrate important dates, like birthdays.
When users sign up for your newsletter, you can ask them for their birth date (and, if appropriate for your business, other dates like anniversaries). For example, if your business makes gourmet cat treats, you could ask users for the date they adopted their cat, or if you offer jewelry, you might ask for a wedding anniversary.
This way, your customers will feel closer to your brand and appreciate you taking the trouble to wish them a happy day.
Tell them you forgot something
A clever method to get users to open your e-mails is to tell them in the subject line that you forgot something about their last purchase. This tactic only works if a customer has already purchased from your company, but it’s a great way to keep them engaged.
For example, if you just shipped an order, you can send a follow-up e-mail saying that you forgot to add a coupon code for your next purchase.
The subject line is interesting and can encourage recipients to revisit your website and look at more products they intend to buy with their new coupon code.
Customized Gifs
As long as the internet loves gifs, some are overused, so why not develop your own?
Developing custom gifs for your e-mails takes your campaign to a new level because you’re offering something recipients have never seen before. For example, if you’re a kitchen appliance company, you could create a gif featuring your newest and most popular product or a gif featuring your new collection.
Try creating a gif that brings your product to life to show what users will get when they buy it.
Weekly summaries
Another great way to keep users up to date on your business is to create roundups of the most important happenings in your business over the past week. These can include links to blogs you’ve published in the past week, new products you’ve launched, new employees you’ve hired, or product development updates.
With these types of e-mails, you make your customers feel more detailed about you and your brand name because they always understand what’s happening.
Simplify a procedure
Everybody is a follower of simplicity, as well as if there is a process you can simplify for your customers, you should include it in your e-mails.
For instance, if you’re an eyewear company that offers customers the latest and most fashionable frames, you can let recipients know when their prescription expires. That saves them from wondering when they need to see an eye doctor, and they can thank you.
If you desire to take it a step further, you can personalize the e-mail by providing a list of an optometrist in the area so recipients can quickly contact them to schedule an appointment.
This e-mail reveals that you care about your customers – and they’ll appreciate it.
Send instructions
Regardless of what type of product your company offers, content that explains how to use your product to create something unique is an authentic way to motivate customers to use your products. You can use this e-mail marketing tactic for almost any business.
Connect your e-mail advertising with your social media marketing.
Another method to increase the reach of your marketing and kill two birds with one stone is to link your e-mail marketing to another marketing campaign, such as social media.
For example, if you just created a how-to guide for one of your items, you can urge users to share the results on your social media site’s web page or tag you in their posts.
With such a strategy, your product and brand name will be visible to a more significant number of social media users, not only your friends and followers but also the friends and followers of your customers who also post.
Create vacation campaigns
The holidays can be among the most stressful, especially regarding gift giving.
Try creating an e-mail campaign around the holidays to help your users find the perfect gift – and promote your products.
E-mail marketing is about creating content that benefits your readers, and you can do just that by creating Christmas campaigns.
Conclusion
Even in the age of social media advertising, e-mail marketing is still one of the best marketing tools to attract customers and grow your customer base.
E-mail marketing brings enormous profits for marketers willing to learn how to do it right. It doesn’t have to be overly complicated.
First, remember that you are a guest in your client’s inboxes. Be polite, respectful, and offer value. Your e-mails are always just a click away, far from losing their interest forever.
To start, you need to ask for permission. That is the right thing to do, of course. In the age of new data protection laws, such as the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), it’s also a legal requirement.
It would be best if you also delivered on your promises. Provide customers with what they asked for and send regular e-mails to meet their expectations.
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