Are you tired of hearing about the latest marketing trends and strategies? Well, here’s a little secret: email is still the OG of digital marketing. Yes, you heard that right. Despite the ever-changing landscape, email remains a cost-effective powerhouse that delivers high returns on investment. With its wide reach, personalization options, and immediate communication, it’s no wonder why savvy marketers continue to rely on this tried-and-true method. So sit back, relax, and let us show you 7 reasons why email is still the king.

1. Cost-Effective and High ROI

If you want to maximize your marketing budget, email is the way to go for its cost-effectiveness and high ROI. When it comes to affordability, email marketing takes the cake. Compared to other digital marketing channels like social media advertising or paid search, the cost per acquisition (CPA) for email campaigns is significantly lower. This means that you can reach a larger audience without breaking the bank.

email marketing remains a powerful and cost-effective tool for businesses to engage with their audience and drive results. Here are some industry statistics that highlight why email marketing is a great option:

1. Impressive ROI: According to the Data & Marketing Association (DMA), email marketing has an average ROI of $42 for every $1 spent, making it one of the highest ROI marketing channels.
2. High Conversion Rates: Email marketing consistently achieves higher conversion rates compared to other marketing channels. Statista reports that the average email conversion rate in the United States was approximately 8% as of 2020.
3. Wide Reach: As of 2021, there were over 4 billion email users globally, and this number continues to grow. (Statista) This means you have access to a vast audience through email marketing.
4. Personalization Drives Engagement: Personalized email campaigns have shown significant performance improvements. According to Instapage, emails with personalized subject lines generate 50% higher open rates.
5. Automation Boosts Efficiency: Marketing automation can save time and increase engagement. A report by Epsilon showed that automated email messages have an open rate that is 70.5% higher than non-automated messages.
6. Mobile Responsiveness: With the increasing use of smartphones, it’s crucial that emails are mobile-friendly. Statista reports that about 55% of all emails are opened on mobile devices, highlighting the importance of responsive email design.
7. Segmentation Increases Relevance: According to the DMA, segmented email campaigns can increase revenue by up to 760%. Sending relevant content to specific segments of your audience is a key strategy in email marketing.
8. Customer Retention: Email marketing is an effective tool for customer retention. According to Invesp, it costs five times more to acquire a new customer than to retain an existing one, and email can help nurture existing customer relationships.
9. Measurable Results: Email marketing platforms provide extensive analytics, allowing businesses to track open rates, click-through rates, conversion rates, and other key metrics, helping them refine their strategies for better results.
10. Regulatory Compliance: With the introduction of regulations like GDPR and CAN-SPAM, email marketing has become more compliant and focused on obtaining explicit consent, ensuring ethical practices.

These statistics underscore the enduring value of email marketing as a versatile and efficient tool for reaching and engaging with a wide audience while delivering an excellent return on investment.

In addition to being cost-effective and profitable, email marketing is also highly efficient. With automation tools and email service providers, you can easily set up automated email campaigns that deliver the right message to the right people at the right time. This not only saves you time and effort but also ensures that your messages are delivered consistently and effectively.

Wide Reach and Targeting Capabilities

With email marketing, you can effectively reach a wide audience while targeting specific segments of your market. This is because email allows for global outreach, making it possible to connect with people from different parts of the world. Moreover, email marketing offers the ability to target specific demographics, ensuring that your message reaches the right audience. By segmenting your email list based on factors such as age, location, or interests, you can tailor your content to resonate with different groups of people.
 

Another advantage of email marketing is its cross-platform compatibility. Emails can be accessed and read on various devices, including smartphones, tablets, and desktop computers. This allows you to reach your audience wherever they are, ensuring that your message is seen and engaged with.

Additionally, email marketing provides real-time analytics, giving you valuable insights into the performance of your campaigns. You can track metrics such as open rates, click-through rates, and conversions, allowing you to measure the effectiveness of your email marketing efforts and make data-driven decisions to optimize your campaigns.

Personalization and Customization Options

Take advantage of the personalization and customization options available in email marketing to create tailored and engaging content for your audience. These options provide you with the ability to deliver highly targeted messages that resonate with your subscribers, increasing the chances of conversion and customer satisfaction. Here are some key strategies to consider:

• Behavioral targeting: By analyzing your subscribers’ behavior, such as their past purchases or website interactions, you can send them relevant emails based on their interests and preferences. This helps to create a more personalized experience and increases the likelihood of engagement.
• Dynamic content: Utilize dynamic content within your emails to display different elements based on specific criteria. This allows you to showcase personalized content, such as product recommendations or location-specific offers, that are more likely to resonate with each individual subscriber.
• A/B testing: Experiment with different variations of your emails to determine what resonates best with your audience. Test different subject lines, call-to-action buttons, or layouts to optimize your email campaigns for maximum effectiveness.
• Segment-based campaigns: Divide your email list into segments based on criteria such as demographics, interests, or past purchase behavior. This allows you to send targeted messages to each segment, providing a more personalized experience for your subscribers.
• Personalized recommendations: Use data and analytics to provide personalized product recommendations based on your subscribers’ preferences and past behavior. This can greatly enhance the user experience and drive more sales.

Direct and Immediate Communication

Get ready to experience the benefits of direct and immediate communication with your audience through email marketing. In today’s fast-paced digital world, real-time interactions are crucial for customer engagement and business success. Email allows you to connect with your customers instantly, providing a platform for instant feedback and increased conversions.

With email marketing, you have the power to reach your audience at any time. Whether it’s a special promotion, a new product launch, or an important announcement, you can send targeted messages directly to your subscribers’ inboxes. This direct line of communication ensures that your message is received and read by your audience.

Furthermore, email marketing allows for open rate analysis, providing valuable insights into the effectiveness of your campaigns. You can track and measure how many recipients opened your email, clicked on links, and took action. This data-driven approach allows you to make informed decisions and optimize your marketing strategies for better results.

Measurable and Trackable Results

You can easily measure and track the results of your email marketing campaigns, allowing you to analyze the effectiveness and make data-driven decisions for your digital marketing strategy. Email marketing provides a wealth of data for measuring effectiveness and tracking success. Here are three reasons why email is the OG of digital marketing when it comes to measurable and trackable results:

• Measuring effectiveness: Email marketing platforms provide robust analytics that allow you to measure key metrics such as open rates, click-through rates, and conversion rates. These metrics give you a clear picture of how well your emails are performing and help you understand what resonates with your audience.
• Tracking success: With email marketing, you can track the success of your campaigns in real-time. You can see who opened your emails, clicked on your links, and took action. This level of tracking allows you to identify high-performing campaigns and optimize your future efforts.
• Analyzing data: The data collected from your email marketing campaigns can be analyzed to gain valuable insights into your audience’s behavior and preferences. By understanding what content resonates with your subscribers, you can tailor your future emails to deliver more relevant and engaging content.

Integration With Other Marketing Channels

To maximize your marketing efforts, email can be seamlessly integrated with other marketing channels, such as social media and content marketing. By leveraging these integrations, you can reach a wider audience, increase engagement, and drive conversions.

One way to integrate email with social media is through social media integration. This allows you to share your email campaigns on social media platforms, expanding your reach and driving traffic to your website. Additionally, you can encourage your email subscribers to follow you on social media, increasing your social media following and creating more touchpoints with your audience.

Another effective integration is content collaboration. By collaborating with other brands or influencers, you can create valuable content that resonates with your target audience. You can then promote this content through your email campaigns, driving traffic and engagement.

Influencer partnerships are also a powerful way to integrate email with other marketing channels. By partnering with influencers who have a relevant and engaged audience, you can leverage their reach and credibility to promote your products or services through email.

Mobile optimization is crucial for integrating email with other marketing channels. With the majority of emails being opened on mobile devices, it is essential to ensure that your emails are optimized for mobile viewing. This will provide a seamless experience for your audience, regardless of the marketing channel they engage with.

Lastly, customer relationship management (CRM) plays a vital role in integrating email with other marketing channels. By using a CRM system, you can track customer interactions across various channels and tailor your email campaigns accordingly. This allows you to provide a personalized and consistent experience for your audience, enhancing engagement and building long-term relationships.

Longevity and Endurance in the Digital Landscape

With over 50 years of existence and continuously evolving, email has proven to be a reliable and enduring marketing tool in the digital landscape. Its longevity speaks to its effectiveness in reaching and engaging audiences. Here are some reasons why email has stood the test of time:

• Role in customer retention: Email allows businesses to stay connected with their customers long after the initial purchase. By sending targeted and personalized content, businesses can nurture relationships and encourage repeat purchases.
• Adaptability to evolving technologies: Email has seamlessly adapted to new technologies, such as mobile devices and social media platforms. It remains a versatile tool that can reach customers across various channels and devices.
• Role in building brand authority**: Through well-crafted email campaigns, businesses can establish themselves as industry experts and build trust with their audience. By providing valuable content and insights, email helps to position brands as authoritative voices in their respective fields.
• Role in nurturing customer relationships**: Email allows businesses to maintain a consistent and personalized line of communication with their customers. By sending relevant and timely messages, businesses can foster loyalty and strengthen their relationships with customers.
• Role in driving website traffic**: Email serves as a powerful driver of website traffic. By including compelling calls-to-action and links to relevant content, businesses can direct recipients to their websites, increasing engagement and conversions.

Email’s enduring presence in digital marketing can be attributed to its ability to retain customers, adapt to new technologies, build brand authority, nurture customer relationships, and drive website traffic. As the digital landscape continues to evolve, email remains a reliable and effective tool for marketers.

Conclusion

In a digital world filled with ever-evolving marketing techniques, email remains the true pioneer. Its cost-effectiveness and high return on investment make it an essential tool for businesses. With its wide reach and targeting capabilities, personalized and customized options, direct and immediate communication, measurable and trackable results, integration with other marketing channels, and enduring presence in the digital landscape, email marketing continues to be the reigning champion. Like a timeless masterpiece, email stands tall amidst the ever-changing marketing canvas, captivating audiences and driving successful campaigns.

Contrary to what many people believe, email marketing is not dead. It’s actually very much alive, and a number of marketers have been able to successfully leverage it to generate leads and sales. However, these campaigns require careful planning and execution to ensure they’re effective.

When it comes to email marketing, the importance of tracking metrics can’t be understated. In fact, every email marketing strategy should have a set of goals and a tracking method in place in order to measure success. It is necessary to understand whether your emails are connecting with your audience and helping you accomplish your online business goals.

In this article, we will discuss the three most important email metrics you should understand and track in order to create a successful email marketing campaign, as well as provide actionable tips for email delivery service made easy.

Open Rate

The open rate is the percentage of recipients that read your email. It is a useful metric to know because it helps you understand how well your email is performing, which allows you to optimize your campaigns to increase click-through rates and conversions.

The best way to track open rates is by using a third-party email tracking software, such as HubSpot or MailChimp. These platforms allow you to track analytics through a series of reports. The open rate report shows the number of recipients who opened your email and how many times they opened it.

For example, you can see what time of day your emails are most likely to be opened, which provides new possibilities for scheduling. This information can help you schedule your campaigns accordingly, increasing the likelihood of clicks and conversions. You can also see how many clicks an email receives, which can help you determine the effectiveness of your call-to-action.

If your open rate is low, it could be because of subject lines or content that isn’t interesting enough to make recipients want to know more. To increase your open rate, consider adding an attention-grabbing teaser or offer in the subject line to entice recipients to open your email. You can also test different types of content and messaging.

Click-Through Rate

The click-through rate is the number of people who clicked on a link in an email divided by the number of people who opened the email. It is a key metric because it tells you how effective your call-to-action is. It helps you determine what message resonates best with your audience and gives you clues about what type of content they prefer to read.

To track click-through rates, use the same third-party email tracking software that you use for tracking open rates. These platforms will allow you to track the number of times a user clicks on a link in your campaign, broken down by the type of link: standard text links, images, videos, and so on.

For example, if you are running a campaign that sends out two different versions of an email, one with a text link and another with a video, using this feature will allow you to see which type of link has the highest click-through rate. This information will give you insights into what content your audience likes to consume and help you determine what types of links perform best based on their preferences.

Bounce Rate

The bounce rate is the percentage of messages that were returned as undeliverable by a recipient mail server. The bounce rate is usually caused by an incorrect email address or a server that doesn’t accept messages from your domain.

Email bounces can be caused by a number of factors. First, if your email provider is sending to an email address that doesn’t exist, the recipient will receive a bounce message. Sometimes, the recipient’s spam filter will automatically return your email as spam or the recipient may have changed their email address and not updated their records with their email provider.

There are hard bounces and soft bounces. Hard bounces are those that result when a server doesn’t exist. Soft bounces occur when the email is accepted by the server, but the recipient doesn’t receive it. This could be caused by a spam filter or an inbox that is full.

To track bounces, you should use your email tracking software, which will report this information. If you’re not using software, you can use an email address verification service such as Return Path, which allows you to detect hard bounces and understand why they’re happening.

How to Improve Open Rates, Click-Through Rates, and Bounce Rates

The key to improving your email metrics is to continually test and optimize your campaigns. Here are a few tips for how you can improve your open rates, click-through rates, and bounce rates:

• Test and optimize your subject lines. Your subject line should be interesting and compelling enough to make recipients want to open your email. Try testing different types of subject lines to see which ones garner the highest open rates.
• Optimize your content. Your content should be engaging and relevant to your audience in order to keep them interested. Consider using segmentation or personalization to ensure that you are sending the right message to the right people.
• Use an email verification service. This will help reduce hard bounces and ensure that emails are being sent to valid addresses.
• Monitor your bounce rate. If your bounce rate is too high, it could indicate a problem with your email list. Make sure you are removing invalid emails from your list on a regular basis.

Conclusion

Email metrics are essential for tracking the success of your email campaigns. Open rates, click-through rates, and bounce rates are all important metrics that you should be monitoring in order to ensure your campaigns are effective and help you reach your online business goals.

By understanding these metrics, you can better optimize your campaigns and increase your success.

To improve your open rates, click-through rates, and bounce rates, you should test and optimize your subject lines, optimize your content, use an email verification service, and monitor your bounce rate.

With the right strategies in place, you can ensure your emails are connecting with your audience and driving the desired results.

There’s pretty much no end to successful email marketing strategies. Still, to use this marketing avenue to generate leads, you need to find some brilliant strategies that can work wonders.

By using all the modern methods, most businesses are making efforts to attract recipients to open emails. But for the industry favorites, it has been discovered that customers want brands to connect with them more personally. So, defining these requirements, if you try to incentivize your users properly, then certainly will boost your customer base and increase sales dynamically.

Having an email lead generation strategy involves strategically nurturing leads. This approach is an effective system for gathering leads and ultimately transforming them into customers. A good lead generation strategy can boost your brand awareness and ultimately convert your probable lead from prospect to paying customer.

Below we are mentioning some brilliant email marketing tips and strategies that can be specially employed for effective lead generation and can help you reach your target audience easily –

Optimize efforts with lead scoring

Enabling the lead scoring option is an effective technique for ensuring that you get qualified leads. By adding them to your list, you can reach the right people with the right message. You can even use an email automation tool to help score leads and use this facility to boost your leads for the signup process.

Design clean and concise emails

With that vast number of emails flooding your customer’s inbox every day, make sure to design clean and concise emails. Having an excess of templates can distract them from the targeted message. So, use only simple fonts without any flashy graphics and make it as easy as possible for your subscribers to go through your valuable content.

Learn to grab attention with subject lines

By far, the best way to keep your emails contextual is by highlighting your subject lines. Capture your audience’s attention and leave a hint of curiosity to engage the subscribers to get your emails opened. This strategy will drastically increase your email open rates and give your business quality conversion rates.

Always include a strong call-to-action (CTA)

It is also important to incorporate an element of urgency with subject lines by placing your call-to-action buttons at appropriate places. It will compel your readers to act on it immediately and thus encourage them to follow through with the buying process. Using some action-oriented text can spur readers into the action and generate higher click-through rates.

Leverage social media channels

To build your lists and encourage better leads, you need to promote your CTAs on social accounts. You can also try tools like Facebook marketing to generate leads on autopilot mode. Additionally, a signup button and opt-in form can even generate a faster number of leads. Thus, you can leverage the social platforms with the help of an email marketing consultant and thereby expand your audience reach.

Use email automation

Using an email automation tool is the best email marketing strategy to attract the best of leads. It helps you automatically send bulk emails to specific recipients at specific times. With automatic personalization, you can trigger your potential buyers with the right type of email. Thus, this is one of the most effective and the easiest tactics you can use for lead generation in recent times. With the right email marketing software this could be an important step.

Incentivize referrals from current subscribers

Try to lend incentives to your current subscribers who refer your products and services to other customers. By offering appealing rewards, you can get them to refer customers and thus expand your lead base. Make sure that what you offer is beneficial for them in every sense and make them interested in promoting your offerings to their friends and family.

Use Compelling Offers 

One of the most lucrative strategies to attract your subscribers is by enabling attractive offers, discounts, and Call-to-Actions to draw huge crowds. This technique is crucial to any email marketing strategy, so ensure to delete the wrong audience from your contact list and increase the effectiveness of your email marketing. These discounts and gift coupons will require the customer to go through the email signup process to unlock the offer. So, use such types of giveaways thoughtfully and retain customer interest seamlessly.

Conclusion: A Roundup of Email Marketing Strategies 

With Email marketing being the most powerful marketing strategy, you need to be very cautious in implementing the strategies. Choose only those strategies that may work for your business. By utilizing the correct email marketing strategy for your platform, you can get the maximum reach of your leads. They have been proven to be effective over time, and by implementing them in your email marketing campaign strategies, you can certainly reap the maximum ROI for your business. Follow these full-service email marketing strategies and ensure better leads with some enticing appealing offers.

Email has been in use for nearly four decades now. While it’s gone through various interpretations and numerous other forms of communication have arisen, there is still no communication method as strong as email marketing. Marketing teams nowadays are giving a lot of attention to social media, but they sometimes overlook the benefits that email provides. If you’re just getting started with email marketing, you should consider some of the following tips and advice along the way.

Why Email Marketing?

Still not convinced that email marketing is superior? Here are just a few reasons to implement an email strategy:

• Most everyone checks their email every day. You should be targeting people in hope that they’ll open your email and check out what you have to say.
• Conversion rates are high among emails, meaning that it’s more likely for a past customer to return to your site after seeing an email with intriguing content.
• You can curate a list of people to email. With a subscribers’ list, you can effectively target specific people, keeping in touch with them, both now and in the future.

Getting Started with Email Marketing

Before you can begin creating emails for customers, you need a list of subscribers to work with. One of the best ways to accrue a list of potential subscribers is to feature a pop-up on your website—one that asks visitors if they’d like to sign up for your email service. You can further entice them to do so by saying they’ll be notified via email about sales, new products, and more. To-do Monday.com is also a great resource.

Once you begin establishing your list of subscribers, you’ll want to move on to finding the right email marketing service for you.

Choosing Your Email Marketing Service

Email marketing services are platforms and software which simplify the email process for businesses. Upon signing up, businesses will be provided with an intuitive, interactive interface that allows them to store subscriber lists that can be emailed on command. Think of the software as a means of streamlining the process, where emails can be scheduled ahead of time—like using Hootsuite to schedule future social media posts.

Mailchimp is a popular email marketing software in the business world. With affordable plans, you can have anywhere from 2,000 subscribers to more stored within your email database, ready to email once the right content has been crafted around a campaign.

Segmenting Your Email List

Some email management software will allow you to segment your subscribers’ list, meaning you’ll be able to add tags to specific subscribers with available information. Rather than keeping your subscribers’ list as is, you can customize lists with various designations, including subscriber location, preferences, interests, activity, shopping cart abandonment, and more. Maybe you’re sending mass emails to employees or business partners and want to ensure you meet the same tone.

Segmenting makes it easier to target specific people when creating email campaigns for any type of group. Instead of emailing your entire subscriber base at once, this segmentation allows you to effectively email certain groups of people. Examples include sending a welcome email to new subscribers or rewarding with coupons and special deals recipients who have opened past emails.

Improve Email Engagement

Write to the Right Audience

With your subscriber list segmented, you should make sure to target specific individuals from the list. You should be writing to the people you are targeting with each one of your emails.

While you should set the tone and content for the particular group, remember to write the email in a personal way—you shouldn’t be writing to a group but to an individual. This is important to make recipients feel as if they alone were emailed rather than just received a generic group email. Get an idea for what these people want to hear and how they want to have that content provided, prior to sending your email.

Make Content Stand Out

Emails should be interesting. You shouldn’t just be pitching your services and products to recipients with every email. And, even if you are pitching a service or product, it should be wrapped in more interesting, informative content.

You want people to open your email. Consider presenting them with the information they might be looking for or a headline that pops and catches their attention. They might already know what you offer as a business, so show that you understand just what it is they’re looking for in life.

Analyze Your Timing

The time that an email is sent can have a serious effect on whether or not it is opened. An email sent during the middle of the night is sure to be missed by a large segment of your subscribers’ list. Instead, consider tracking the engagement of your emails via a “time posted” basis. Consider doing some A/B tests to see how certain timeframes affect the rate at which recipients open emails. With a bit of research and testing, you can find the best time of day to send emails to your subscribers’ list.

Keep Track of Your Data

To make the most of your email marketing campaigns, you should keep track of available metrics to make the most out of every future post. Most email marketing platforms will provide you with metrics that can be tracked to determine the effectiveness of past campaigns.

Metrics you should consider tracking include deliverability rate, open rate, and click-through rate. These metrics allow you to identify how many emails successfully made it to recipients, how many recipients opened their emails, and how many recipients who opened your email clicked on a posted link. These analytics can be used to determine how effective past campaigns were and what things need to be tweaked. Perhaps certain emails didn’t make it to some recipients or maybe some people received them but didn’t open them. What could be the reason? With these metrics, you could start analyzing past emails to see flaws that could be fixed for future campaigns.

Summing Up

Email campaigns don’t have to be complicated. With the right host and a smart strategy, you can effectively reach recipients and keep them interacting with your brand.

Have you ever thought of email marketing? With the increased use of internet, this is something you definitely want to take advantage of. It involves sending commercial messages to people through their emails. You can use it to send advertisements, request business, solicit sales, build loyalty or to put your brand out there to potential clients. Sounds interesting, right?

President Obama used emails extensively during his campaign. In as much as some people considered the messages annoying, he reached so many people in the United States of America and beyond. How much did he need for this? Only a handful of people to create the messages and send. This is the magic!

It’s all about Strategy

Big cup little cup is an online exclusive brand that uses intelligent email marketing drives to convert website visitors to customers. It is all about packaging the information in an irresistible way that will leave people looking for your products. Is this not something you want?

Most people think that this form of marketing has been passed by time. However, it is one of the most effective and efficient ways of getting to your customers. You just have to use a better strategy that will set the ball rolling. Let’s look at the advantages of using email marketing.

• It is simple. Email marketing is not rocket science. Anyone can do it any time. All you need is an email list and a catchy message, then you just click. Is it not simple?
• It is free. Well, not absolutely free, but it costs less than other marketing avenues. Your company might be having some financial constraints, but you still need to be out there. What do you do in such a case? Consider email marketing. It will save you a great deal of money.
• You can reach many people within a short time. Let’s say you are running a campaign drive for a particular course, your aim is to reach as many people as possible. Since a large number of people are actively using their email, let them find it there when they are expecting to find that email for a new job.
• Email marketing is a highly personal approach to marketing. People feel better when a company finds it good to contact them at a personal level. As such, they identify with the company. They are likely to get back to you and embrace your product.
• It is easy to track. You can track using the number of subscribers at any particular time, the bounce messages, clicks-throughs etc. This way, you can up your game to ensure you reach your objectives at the end of the day.
• The response is fast. Direct emails take a long time to get response. With email marketing, you can easily get the response by looking at the online sales. Sometimes this occurs in a very short time.
• Target marketing. With email marketing, you can easily target a specific group of people if the product is tailored for them. For example, you can easily target students if you have online courses for them by maybe looking at their ages.
• You can use email marketing to reach many parts of the world. This can help you market your products beyond your borders. You will find this exciting once it picks up.

Choice of Words

You will need to be careful when packaging your message for email marketing. If it is too wordy, people will not read. It should therefore be precise and to the point. Use photos to help you with the marketing. Always remember to start with the most important things first. Let the less important things come at the end.

To ensure that the target audience gets your message, you must know how to create a target email list for maximum profit. It is of no use sending mails to people who are not interested. Autoresponder system is an effective way of getting started. In this system, when customers key in their details, they will receive special and free offers thatthey really need. Some autoresponder systems that you will find helpful are Aweber and convertkit.

Content is King

Now ask yourself, where do you get the emails? For sites, such as WordPress, they have email marketing plug-ins. This will help you get genuine followers who you will need when you are having something that you will want them to know. One thing that you must not forget is that good content will always have you get a lot of subscribers. People are naturally drawn to good things.

If you are a blogger, it is good to always remind your readers to subscribe to your site. Thank me later is one of those ways that WordPress plug-in offers, which help you to send thank you notes to your blog commentators. This way, your readers feel appreciated. This can be helpful to convert your commentators to regular readers.

Analyze the trends and learn

For effective email marketing, you will need to maintain your email lists. You have to drop those emails that bounce. This is to increase your chances of mail delivery once you sent the mails. You could also find it important to check on your non responders, if they are not responding to your message, it means they are not interested and you will do yourself a favor by not sending them mails. You can also send test emails to those mails that have not been active for more than six months. This can help you to re-engage your subscribers.

Email marketing is an effective tool that can be used to reach millions of people. It is cheap and reliable. All you need to do is to have an efficient system that delivers. You will find it fun and enjoyable.

Author Bio:

Derek Iwasiuk runs national digital search engine optimization firm headquartered in Minneapolis. He also spends a lot of his free time educating the minds of thousands of young SEOs and top agencies. For any inquiries on email marketing, simply visit Engage the Crowd Minneapolis. You can also follow him on Twitter @Diwasiuk

Prior to the invention of the Internet, marketers would buy targeted lists of names and mailing addresses. They would then create a series of letters designed to convince people on the list that they couldn’t live without a particular product or service. This approach is called direct marketing and it generated billions of dollars for its practitioners over the decades.

It was only natural to adapt the same sales process to the online environment. E-mail addresses have replaced physical addresses but e-mail marketing is a close cousin to its snail mail counterpart.

The benefits of e-mail marketing would fill volumes but boil down to low cost and global reach. If you wish to get the most from your e-mail marketing campaign, follow these simple steps and reap the benefits of your hard work.

Preparation

Before you sit down and dash off an e-mail to a list of prospects, take the time to think about what you want to accomplish in very specific terms. There is a big difference between trying to get new signups for your product and going for actual sales.

Keep in mind that anything you do with e-mail marketing should be in line with your company’s overall marketing strategy. Don’t send a single e-mail unless you have a purpose.

The first order of business is to create a sizable e-mail list to send your pitches to. You’ll soon discover you can buy lists, just like the snail mail direct marketers, but resist the urge. There is no quicker way to torpedo your online marketing efforts than to send unsolicited e-mail. People will complain that you are spamming them and you will be blacklisted.

The accepted way to build an e-mail list from scratch is offer something of value free in return for an e-mail address and permission to make regular contact.

Select and Create Your Campaign

Let the goals you set out in the preparatory phase guide your choice of campaign. In general, there are four basic types of e-mail campaigns to choose from:

1. Newsletter: Sent daily, weekly, or monthly, this is an informational publication targeted to a specific area of interest. Newsletters are a great way to keep in touch with people you already know.
2. Marketing Offer: Differs from a newsletter in that it seeks to encourage recipients to buy then and there. Coupons or discounts are a great example.
3. Announcement: Sent when you have a new product or service to announce. This e-mail type is perfect when you expand selections regularly.
4. Event Invitation: If you have an event coming up, send one of these out to encourage attendance.

Know How To E-Mail

Knowing when and how to send e-mails is your key to success. For instance, experts used to suggest marketers use the “Auto Insert” feature to personalize each e-mail with the recipient’s name. However, research has shown that this approach is a little too familiar for most people’s taste.

Your e-mail marketing campaign will rely on your subject line. Invest enough time and effort to create an engaging subject line that sparks your customers’ curiosity.

Think about when you should send your e-mail. Your best bet is to send it out between 8 pm and midnight on Saturday or Sunday. The main reason for this is that sent volume is low within these parameters, which gives your message a greater chance to be seen. For even better response, give something away. The Internet was created on the free content model, and it’s never truly disappeared. Target your freebie to the specific interest of your list and watch those click-through rates soar.

If you want to save time, consider using the mail merge feature of your e-mail provider. Both Gmail and Outlook provide you with the opportunity to easily create personalized e-mail messages that you can send to multiple people at once.

Perhaps the most critical lesson of all is to know how to keep your messages out of the dreaded spam folder. The first step is to read the CAN-Spam Act, which spells out what is acceptable e-mail behavior and what isn’t. Next, familiarize yourself with trigger words and avoid using them. While there is no definitive list, the point is to keep overtly salesy, hyperbolic, misleading messages from arriving.

Be Consistent

This is a fairly straightforward step. Do what you say you are going to do. Keep your promises and never promise more than you can deliver. Also, do not e-mails than you say you will. Some marketers fudge this area. If someone signs up for a weekly newsletter, resist the urge to send them a daily message.

When you do get responses or inquiries, answer quickly and politely. Customers are the reason you’re in business in the first place. Treat them like the gold they are.

Manage The Numbers

There is no point in even beginning an e-mail marketing campaign unless you keep track of the numbers. That means you need to monitor which e-mails are being opened, which generate clicks, which website pages convert to sales or sign-ups and which don’t. Use an e-mail marketing tool combined with Google Analytics to obtain all the information you need in order to analyze your e-mail marketing strategy.

In conclusion, e-mail marketing should be a crucial part of your digital marketing. Although social media gets the splashy headlines, e-mail marketing still generates twice as much business. With a carefully designed e-mail marketing strategy, you could soon be taking your piece of the multi-billion dollar revenue pie that online sales generates.

About Author:

Heather Redding is a part time assistant manager and freelance writer from Aurora, Illinois. She is a coffee-addict who enjoys reading and running. Street photography is her artistic outlet and she likes to capture everyday little moments with her camera. You can reach Heather via Twitter.

There are tons of online marketing tactics being used by businesses to increase their sales; however, email marketing is considered to be one of the most powerful and highly convertible marketing tactics in the industry.

According to a research, consumers who receive email marketing messages spend 83% more while shopping and the average ROI is around $44.25 for every dollar spent by the business, which is huge! Email marketing is believed to be the most preferable choice for many businesses  because; it’s easy, cost- effective, versatile and above all personal.

However, the things being mentioned above will only happen when people would actually open and check these marketing emails and this does not happen in most of the cases. More often than not, the opening rate of email marketing campaigns is normally 10 percent; however, if you are good enough in constructing a message, this number might rise up to 15% to 16%.

In this post, I am going to cover the ways that can be used in creating your email to make it more engaging and attractive, thus improving the email-opening rate.

1. Real Person, Real Interaction

There was a time when having a killer logo was everything that you required to start a business but now people have changed (I must say evolved). They do not want to interact with the logos and brands. Instead, they would want an interaction with real people who are associated with the brand.

While sending marketing emails, you must ensure that it is being sent through an official email ID mentioning the sender’s name instead of a corporate email address where the sender’s name is undefined.

This is an email that I received from SEMRush.com and if you look at it closely, you will find that the address they used for sending an email is a personal one (Sender’s Name: Alexandra) instead of an address that says info@semrush.com  or anything similar.

Pro Tip: It is good to use a name when sending marketing emails but it will be great if that person owns active social profiles as this will give people a feeling that they are real and communication will be more proficient.

2. Segment your Opt-in recipients

If you have been involved in email marketing for quite some time, you must know the importance of segmented and targeted recipients’ list based on their location, behavior and needs. This is very important if you want to increase your email-opening rate.

I use Get Response as my email marketing software, where segmenting an email list is just a click away. If you have a location-based campaign, then make sure you are sending emails to the right kind of audience located in the targeted area. Moreover, designing multiple email templates, that target the audiences’ needs and wants, can also significantly increase the opening rate as well as the conversion rate. According to a research, targeting and segmenting the opt-in list increases the CTR from 3 to 8%.

While sending marketing emails, always make sure that you are sending it to the right kind of audience, then track it to see how it affects the opening rate of your emails.

Pro Tip: It is great to divide your email list in to 3 or may be 4 parts on the basis of their wants and design them accordingly. This will not only help in increasing the opening rate but it will also help boost the conversion rate.

3. Subject Line should be a KILLER!

There is a famous quote that says, “Don’t judge the book by its cover” however, when it comes to email marketing, more than 50% of the people click on an email just by looking at its subject line. A catchy and well-phrased subject line has a direct impact on the opening and conversion rate.

When crafting a subject line for your email, make sure you are keeping your audience’s behavior, sentiments and needs in mind. Technically, make sure that your subject line is 50 characters or less so that the mobile users can read the full subject line accordingly.

If you closely look at the subject lines and opening rates being posted above, you will notice that the shorter the subject line, the better the opening rate will be!

Pro Tip: There is no secret formula for devising a subject line that assures success; however, the best idea is to formulate different subject lines and see what works better for your audience.

4. Where to Put Call to Action

Different researches have shown different results but if I were to sum-up, I can easily say that a corporate American receives 80+ emails a day on an average so it is very important for an email to be conversion-friendly or else they will switch to some other task without even opening it – something that you are not looking for!

On a website service copy, it might be ideal to put call to action at the end but when it comes to an email, it is highly recommended to have call to action above the fold so that the user does not really have to scroll down to see what he really wants to do with the email. When crafting email templates, always try to put call to action in the upper part of email so that user should know where to go to get more information about the product or service you are trying to pitch.

Pro Tip: Email Marketing is quite tricky so I would suggest using multiple calls to actions (maximum 3) throughout the email.

5. Optimized for Mobile Devices

On an average, around 35% or more of the total emails are accessed from the mobile daily and if you specifically ask about the number of people  in United States who access their emails on a cell phone,  this will shoot to somewhere around 70% and plus. This indicates that the mobile usage is becoming more and more popular and by 2015/16, this number will increase significantly, therefore, if you are not optimizing your email marketing campaigns for the mobile devices, you are surely missing a big number.

While constructing an email, here are the following points that you should consider in order to make sure that they are well optimized for mobile devices:

1. The design of the email should be such that it can fit any device size. This will help you make one version for all.

2. Title of the subject line should be crafted in such a way that it can be read on a mobile device.

3. You should be using fonts and color scheme that looks appealing on the mobile screen.

4. Test them locally before you send.

A study reveals that the mobile users are usually more interested in buying a product online as compared to a desktop user; therefore, optimizing emails for mobile devices can ensure more chances of getting a high conversion rate against your email marketing campaign.

6. Personalization is the key

No matter if you are sending an email for a link request, data sharing, to ask for an interview or even if it is a regular email marketing campaign; if you are not personalizing it, then you should not expect a reply or expect someone to perform the action you want them to perform.

When sending emails to people, always consider their time as important and keep this in mind that they might be receiving multiple promotional emails, therefore,  the marketing email that you send should not only feature powerful content, but they should be personalized enough to make them read it. Try to address them with their names in the subject line as well as in the starting of the emails so that they can get a feeling that you or your brand is directly interacting with them.

Pro Tip: When it comes to personalization, try sending them customized emails on their Birthdays, as this will encourage your users to get closer to you and your brand.

There are plenty of ideas that can be shared but these are the quick ones that can be implemented for achieving eye-opening results for your next email marketing campaigns. Are you in to email marketing? What are your secret tips? Please share it in the comments section.

The rise of social media and blogging have led many marketers to question whether email is still a relevant channel in their marketing strategy. So let’s look at the numbers. Worldwide there are almost 3 times more email accounts (4.4bn) than the number of users on Facebook (1.1bn) and Twitter (500m) combined. Email is also a more active channel than Facebook and Twitter, producing 45bn emails per day, against 4.7bn shares of Facebook content, and 400m tweets, and that’s not including spam emails.

It is safe to say that email is alive and well. So if you want to reach a large audience, email marketing is a valuable tool that shouldn’t be ignored. Here are five essential top tips for effective email marketing:

1. Manage your database

Poor quality data is probably the biggest barrier to effective email marketing. Your client database is the most powerful tool you can have as an email marketer, so make sure you’re using this information to tailor the content and relevance of your emails down to a customer level. Segment your data into as many groups as your resource can manage, and send each group emails that are relevant to them. It is also important that you keep your database up to date, and clean. Process any unsubscribes, and remove hard-bounces and undeliverables to make sure you email reputation isn’t harmed.

2. Optimize your emails for mobile

Mobile data traffic is skyrocketing. In 2012 mobile data traffic was nearly 12 times that of the entire global internet in the year 2000. It’s predicted that mobile data traffic will increase by 300% by 2017 and as of January 2013 mobile represented 43 per cent of all email opens. But while companies adjust their websites for mobile visitors, few are doing the same with their emails. Emails not optimized for smartphone and tablet viewing give your recipients a very bad experience, and often get deleted. With this is mind responsive design is the best approach, and makes your email look good on all screens in all sizes – mobile, tablet and desktop.

3. Timely and relevant content

Being relevant is still relevant! The most important moment to you as an email marketer is the point at which your customer’s attention is at its peak – for example, immediately after signing up for emails, or abandoning their shopping basket. This is when a personalize event-driven email containing relevant content and a clear call to action can make all the difference not only to your opens and click-through rates, but also ultimately to loyalty and retention levels.

4. Test, test, test

Testing is possibly email marketing’s worst kept secret. And yet so many businesses still don’t do it. It’s difficult to know what to do next if you don’t know what’s working (or not) for you now. Unless you are sure beyond doubt that the time of day, day of the week, subject lines and other elements of your email campaigns are working as hard as they can for you, then you should have a testing plan in place. Split-testing is the most effective way to learn more about your audience and improve open and click-through rates.

5. While we’re ‘on the subject’…

Your subject lines are fundamental to your campaign open rates. They are the interface between your email and your customer, and are one of the primary drivers behind your customer’s decision to open your email or not. Days of work on responsive design templates and content could all be for nothing if your customer never actually sees the thing. So what makes a good subject line? Keep it short – subject lines under 35 characters perform best. Keep it relevant and accurate to what’s inside – don’t frustrate your customers by fooling them with a misleading subject line.

In summary…

Keep it relevant, timely, don’t forget to optimize for mobile. And when in doubt, test.

Author Bio

Keredy Andrews is an account director at Punch Communications. Serving a wide range of clients, from start-ups to global brands, across the integrated disciplines of SEO, PR and social media.

Email marketing is one of the best ways to reach out to your prospects and kick up your company’s sales. Everyone is focused on social media, PPC ads, and any other method that will get sales right now. The problem is that your customers will buy when they’re ready to buy, not when you’re ready to sell. Often, there’s a time duration mismatch between when you want to sell something and when your prospects are ready to buy.

To overcome that, you have to get intimate with your prospects. You have to stay in touch without looking desperate. Guess what? Email provides that intimacy without any of the drawbacks of other advertising methods.

Tell a Personal Story

Sending out an email isn’t enough. You have to have a reason to contact your prospects. Think about reasons why you contact your friends and family. Don’t you often tell them about your life? Usually, there’s some kind of story going on you want to share with them. Maybe you’re forwarding funny jokes, emails that will enrich their lives, or something really helpful. Maybe you’re even helping them out of a jam.

This is what you want to weave into your emails to prospects. Tell a rich story. Tell a story about your product. Don’t mention why it’s great. Mention what problems it helps to solve. Talk about how it solved a problem you were having. Talk about the prospect’s needs. His desires. Tell him you know what he’s going through because you’ve been there. You’ve discovered what really works.

Reach out to him like you would a friend. Use autoresponders to space out your message and automate your marketing campaign. Some of the best marketers in the world do this. It works.

Don’t Over-Hype The Message

There certainly is an art to drafting effective emails. Most amateur marketers give away the fact that they don’t know what they’re doing by hyping up their products and services. In a normal conversation with someone you trust, you do not constantly flail your arms in the air, shout, browbeat the other person into submission with your ideas, or otherwise excite the other person for the entire duration the conversation.

Look at the tempo of your emails. Are they a never-ending string of one-liners? Are your messages overflowing with adjectives? If a rational, sane, person would run away in the other direction after reading your email, you’re taking things too far.

You definitely don’t want to bore your audience, but you don’t want it to sound “over-caffeinated” either. The tone should ebb and flow. Some parts should move more quickly than others. That’s how real conversations (and real emails) work. It’s perfectly natural – and that’s how you want to come across to your prospects: natural.

Use Multi-Part Emails

Finally, people these days have short attention spans. Keep that in mind when crafting your emails. You might only be able to hold their attention for 300-500 words. That’s OK. You can always follow up with them in a few days. Multi-part emails also give you the opportunity to structure your emails like a soap-opera. In other words, make the end of each email a cliffhanger so that they can’t wait to receive the next installment.

Author Bio

Jack Harding is a website marketing consultant with a penchant for email marketing. He loves sharing his insights through blogging. Visit Wish.co.uk to see the methods they use to reach out to their customers.