Email marketing should, without doubt, be a part of your digital marketing strategy, it is entirely measurable, allows you to build trust and loyalty online and fundamentally, is timely, cost-effective and ensures your business stands out at the right time.
Email Marketing is your answer to getting in front of your customers quickly!
Just the words ‘email marketing’ may be enough to fill you with fear especially since the GDPR updates back in 2018, but fear not!
We have put together some of our top tips and best practices to help you create a killer email marketing campaign. Despite common thought, email marketing is just as strong as ever, and dare we say it, has become (for some) a much stronger member of the digital marketing team since the new GDPR regulations came into force. If you’re not investing time or money in your email marketing, we strongly advise you think about it.
Make It Personal
As long as you have been updating your database with the information you need (at least a first name) you can personalise your email campaigns. Why? A personalised email is much more likely to jump out to a reader in a busy inbox than a generic one. It’s also more likely to connect with them if it’s opened. Depending on your email marketing platform, it’s relatively easy to personalise email campaigns. The most common way is to use a tag that pulls through the relevant information from the database.
Top tip: It’s always a nice touch to send something special for customers birthdays, you just need to remember to ask them for the information when they sign up to your list.
Short & Simple
It’s important to keep your email campaigns as consistent as possible, so the communication is instantly recognised as your brand. We’d always recommend designing a template that you amend for each campaign. It’s also a good idea to keep the content short, sweet and informative, remember you don’t have very long to impress. We’re all very busy don’t you know!
Organise Your Data
Most email marketing platforms will let you split your database into specific segments. These segments allow you to contact groups of people with specialised messaging which can increase your conversion rates (yippee). You can organise your segments by purchasing patterns, or how the data was added to the list in the first place – whatever makes sense to your needs.
Special Delivery
We’re going to split this section, to cover two common ways of sending marketing comms via email.
Regular Emails / Newsletters – If your subscribers have signed up to receive regular updates from you and your business, it’s important to stick to your word and deliver your emails when they are expected. You may find your daily/weekly/monthly deliveries have a better open rate than your one-off campaign comms, which is not surprising really. If subscribers are expecting an email from you, they are much more likely to open and engage with it.
One-Off Campaigns – You should always think about the delivery date and time very carefully when you send an email campaign. Send at the wrong time, and all your hard work could be completely wasted. Now, the perfect time to send a campaign varies hugely depending on industry, location and audience – so what is the best way to find it? Testing.
Speaking Of Testing
As you would with the other branches of your digital marketing strategy, you should be thoroughly testing your email campaigns. Most email marketing platforms will allow you to split test your data, letting you change a condition and see which version delivers the best results. It is a great way to learn how to communicate with your database effectively.
Don’t Be Annoying
It’s quite a privilege to be invited into the private space of an inbox on a regular basis. It’s up to you to be responsible with your communications, stick to regulations and not spam your devoted lists. This is probably a great time to remind you to never buy databases from anyone and to brush up on your GDPR knowledge – because not only is it the law, it will also make your email communications much more effective.
We hope you have enjoyed our bite-sized email marketing tips, if you would like to learn more or if you would like the Blah team to take care of your campaigns, you can get in touch with us right here.
Orphic
Victoria Barr
