Category: Email Marketing

A happy customer generally tends to recommend to an average of 11 people. – American Express.

The stats say quite a lot about the power of a customer for your business. If a customer is satisfied and happy with your product and services, they recommend it to their friends and relatives, eventually turning into your brand advocate. A brand advocate is a person who loves your products/services and is interested in promoting them in numerous ways they can, like, posting on social media, participating in discussions on the online platform, writing blogs, creating videos, as well as publications.

Having customers as your brand advocates proves to be extremely beneficial for the growth of your brand. Research suggests that 92% trust the product recommendations coming from the peer, more than any other medium. Brand advocacy email marketing works in the form of a chain, passing it from one group to another, and so on, expanding your brand reach.

20-50% of purchase decisions are influenced by word-of-mouth.- Social Media Today

However, you can never turn a customer into brand advocates overnight, you need to do a lot of effort for that. Not every customer comes to the brand to become your regular customer or brand advocates. Some might just make a single purchase and never return back. Some might frequently purchase your products but do not take interest in advocating your brand or are still not convinced enough to advocate your brand.

Hence, the foremost thing you need to do is filtering your customer list to find out the customers who can turn into your brand advocate. You can filter your list based on various factors like-

• Frequency of their purchase.
• Their reviews/rating on your product and services.
• Their responses in the survey/questionnaires conducted by you.
• Their level of participation in your events/discussions.
• Ask your customers directly about their likelihood of recommending your product and services in their peer group.

Once, you have listed the potential customer whom you can turn into your brand advocates, create an effective customer engagement strategy for the same. The following are some of the most effective practices for turning customers into brand advocates.

Most-Effective Brand Advocacy Email Marketing Tips to Convert Customers

Before heading with the process, always remember that the customers you have shortlisted for the brand advocacy email marketing are already the happy ones. They are satisfied with your product and services. All you need to do is walk a little extra mile and convince them to advocate your brand to their peer groups. Here are some useful tips that you can follow to make the process more effective.

1. Always focus towards a good Customer Service

   70% of the customer’s journey depends upon how the customer is being treated at your company. – McKinsey

   Customer service works as a deciding factor in his journey with your brand. It’s your service that makes you different from your competitors. A brand is always remembered by the customer for its service, based on which he plans his future actions.

   More than 50% of US-based customers have canceled a purchase order due to the bad service.- Business Wire

   So, if you want to turn your customer into your brand advocate, always focus on the services that you provide to your customer. Failing to serve your customer up to their expectation will not only cost you one customer but at least 10 more who can come through them.

2. Personalize the Customer Experience

   Personalization has no longer remained an emerging trend, it has become a compulsory digital marketing discipline. In light of this fact, almost every company is trying to incorporate it in one or another way.

   You can find personalization options everywhere, starting from your usual google search about the topics of your interest, to the music you listen to, the food you order as well as the products and services offered by the companies. Every customer prefers customized services, in fact, they appreciate it, prefer indulging with companies who do the same.

   In the respect of the importance of personalization, Amazon chief Jeff Bezos stated, “If we have 4.5 million customers we should not have one store, we should have 4.5 million stores.” The higher the customer satisfaction, the greater is the probability of brand advocacy email marketing working. So, give your customers more personalized services, and give them the reason to advocate your brand.

3. Drive Repeat Purchases

   The market is full of brands having a pool of products and services. You should make sure that you don’t get lost in the crowd. The customer should remember you and keep buying from your brand to become loyal customers and eventually your brand advocates. The more times a customer makes a purchase from your brand, the more they feel connected to your brand.

   A major part of the business growth comes from repeated purchases and customers. The probability of the return customers to purchase products and services is 33% more than that of the new clients. In fact, the return customers are 77% more likely to advocate about your brand.

   There are numerous factors that affect the purchasing decision of the customer, you can retarget your customer through the following ways-

   • Avail 24/7 customer service
   • Frequent discounts on the products
   • Free Shipping
   • Send Gift Coupons on their special days
   • Personalized product recommendations
   • Easy replacement and refund
   • Authentic and Quality product
   • Place creative ads about the offers

   If you will take care of the above factors, the customer will definitely make repeated purchases from your brand, and thereby turn into your brand advocate.

4. Get feedback

   Feedback works in two ways- first helps you to serve your customer better and understand that whether they have the potential to turn into your brand advocate, secondly it makes your customer feel special and valued. Hence, they come closer to your brand, advocating about the treatment they get from you.

   There are numerous ways you can take feedback from your customer-

   • Conduct a survey or poll.
   • Ask them to fill up the short questionnaire about a company’s products/ services.
   • Install a chatbot on the website requesting feedback about the purchase process once the customer has completed checkout.
   • Grab every opportunity to get your customers feedback

5. Loyalty programs

   Brand advocacy Email Marketing is all about customer loyalty, that is how much a customer is loyal towards your brand. Only a loyal customer can advocate about your brand. Hence to turn your customer into a loyal customer, you can conduct a loyalty program that makes them feel special. Around 70% of the customers tend to advocate about a brand that has a better loyalty program

   However, do not let your existing loyal customers feel left out, take care of them as well. According to HubSpot, 50% of US customers left a brand they were once loyal to for a competitor that met their needs to a better extent. There are the following types of loyalty program you can conduct for your business-

   • Points Program: Customer earns points on the purchase.
   • Tiered Program: Loyalty benefits are based on certain criteria, based on which the customers are served accordingly.
   • Paid Program: These are the subscription-based programs that provide the customers with additional benefits.
   • Partnered/ Coalition Program: These are the loyalty programs conducted by two companies jointly. For example, a customer buys from one brand and gets benefits from the other company.
   • Cashback Program: The customer directly gets a rewarding cashback.

6. Referral programs

   The customer will only recommend your brand to others, either If they are extremely impressed by your brand or they get benefits by referring to it. Referral programs prove to be extremely beneficial in this case. Referral program functions in numerous ways-

   • Offer referral points that can be redeemed in future purchases
   • Offer cash equivalent prizes for each referral
   • Create a shareable referral link that the customers can forward to their friends for further reference.
   • Design a productive referral scheme, for instance, reward points or cash rewards on every 5 referrals.

   For Example, Dropbox offers 16 GB of extra space to the customer on referring it to their friends.

   

   Source: Link

7. Highlight the Good Customer Reviews

   94% of online customers read reviews before making any purchasing decisions.– Fan & Fuel

   The customers always cross-check the customer reviews before purchasing your product. The reviews have the capability to both make and break your brand. Highlight the good ratings and use the top reviews as a testimonial for your brand. These testimonials work as advocates for your brand, attracting customers to your brand. When a customer comes across these testimonials, he tries to indulge in your brand.

Wrap-up

Turning a customer into brand advocates can be a great contribution to the success of your business. By now you might have been acquainted with the ways that can help you increase your brand advocates and take your company to another level. Customers are the most important asset of a company, so try to gain the trust of your customer and develop a long-lasting relationship. Always remember a customer will never advocate your brand if he doesn’t trust you. Hence, formulate an effective strategy and leave no scope to lose your customer. If you need any assistance with the process, reach out to the experts.

No matter how perfect you are, there is always some scope for evolution and betterment. Hence, you should never stop evolving and growing, instead, keep pushing your limits. The same goes for email marketing. The power of email marketing is no more under the veil, having the potential of returning an average of 42USD on each spent US Dollar.

Email Marketing gives you a great opportunity to reach out to your customers directly and know them better. Unlike generic social media ads, it allows you to serve your customers in a more personalized manner- one of the biggest reasons behind its tremendous conversion rate.

However, regardless of how your email marketing strategies are performing, you should always try to make it better. Being one of the biggest opportunities to enhance your business-customer relationship, you should try to upscale in every possible area you can, as any mistake in this can push you behind your competitors.

To help you with the same, here are 10 extremely effective as well as crucial factors you should keep in mind while planning your email marketing campaign.

10 Most Effective Ways to Upscale Your Email Marketing Campaign

1. Responsive Email Design

   According to Hubspot, there are 3.9 billion daily email users, 46% out of which open their email on mobile devices. If the email doesn’t open properly on the device, they close it within seconds. In fact, 71% of the users tend to delete the email immediately, if the email design is not responsive.
   To avoid such kind of situation, always opt for a responsive email design for your emails that displays well on all mobile devices. Along with the email responsiveness, also follow these additional tips-

   • Use the minimalist email design with the right quantity of white spaces in your email.
   • Right placement of CTA buttons.
   • Use a single-column email design, that facilitates vertical scrolling

2. Email Segmentation

   According to HubSpot, the companies that use segmented email marketing campaigns observe an increase in revenue by 760% and opening rates by 203%. Segmentation works great for the email marketing campaign, empowering you to target the right audience.
   There are numerous subscribers associated with a company, each with varying choices, and preferences based on gender, age group, geography, etc. as well as privileges like discount offers or coupons.
   You can segment your email list based on these factors and serve them aptly. Make your email list more productive by segmenting the subscribers based on the above factors.

3. Personalize your Email

   Personalized emails tend to attract subscribers comparatively more than non-personalized ones. Imagine you receive two emails; one addressing you with a general term ‘ user’ and the other one addressing you with your name. Which email will you open first? Definitely the personalized one.
   Email personalization is not restricted solely to the name of the subscriber. There are numerous other ways to personalize your email and make it more effective, such as you can-

   • Personalize your emails based on the client’s persona.
   • Personalize your brand and give a human touch. Instead of using the brand’s name in the sender section, you can use some professional’s name.

   Once you personalize your email, do not forget to match your personalized email with the landing page. For example, if you are using a CTA button for ‘Sign Up’, make sure it lands on the signup page instead of some other one like the ‘About us’ page.

4. Schedule your Email Smartly

   Email marketing campaigns aim at building a good relationship with the customer, in which the content plays a crucial role. The content has the potential to gain the customer’s confidence and direct his actions. However, what if the subscriber does not open your email and go through your content, then how will they be able to connect with your brand?
   The best thing that can work here is email timing. Make sure you send the emails to your subscribers at the time when it is most likely to get opened. According to Hubspot, the best time to send emails to the subscribers, especially the office employees, happens to be the mid-week at around 10 AM. For the other individuals, you can schedule your emails on Saturday at 10 AM.

5. Use a Compelling Subject Line and Pre-header text

   The open-rate of the emails not only depend upon the timing but also the subject line. The compelling is the subject line of your email, the higher are the chances of getting it opened. Make sure the subject line of your email is powerful enough to create curiosity within the users and persuade them to open your email.
   There are various tried and tested phrases that work great in this respect, such as- ‘Hurry’, ‘Last Day’, or ‘Last few days’, ‘2 more days’ etc. Keep the subject line short i.e. up to 50 characters, so that the impact of the email does not fade away with the length of your subject line.
   Along with this, do not forget the pre-header text of your email. The next thing noticed by the subscribers after the subject line, when he receives your email, is the pre-header text of your email. Preheader text works like the trailer of the movie, giving a glimpse of your email idea in short. Preheader text provides you another opportunity to attract your subscribers to your email and encourage them to open it.

6. Use a Clear and Catchy CTA

   The biggest myth about CTA is that it is an optional element of the email. The truth is that you should always include a CTA in your email if you want your email to result in a conversion. According to Wordstream, Emails that have a single CTA increase the clicks to 371% and sales to 1617%.
   When a subscriber opens your email, he quickly checks out its CTA to decide his action. Make sure your CTA content is not misleading or blurry in concept. It should be clear and catchy, so that the reader can easily understand the idea behind it, thereby taking action immediately.

7. Do Not Forget About The Preview Pane

   The preview pane is a part of the inbox, that allows the users to peek at part of the email in a shorter area that does not include images and videos. Based on this content, they can decide whether to open the email or not. Hence, if this content fails to entice the previewers, he might delete the email even without opening it fully.
   Hence, always try to include the main information as well as the Call to action in this space itself. Also, make sure to always optimize your email content for the preview pane, which creates curiosity in the users to open your email and go through the content. Do not depend solely upon the images to convey information, rather use text.

8. Allow your Customer to Know More About your Brand

   Although the ultimate aim of your business is to sell your product and services to your customers, that does not mean you should only focus on sales. Not all the customers immediately want to buy your product and services right after receiving the first email. Some want to dig deeper and know more about you, before settling on a decision. Hence, you should also include the options to allow them to know more about your brand and services. You can include the ‘Learn more’ or ‘Know more’ button or link in your email.

9. Track your Email Performance Periodically

   To upscale your email marketing campaign, you need to track your email performance periodically. Tracking the email performance gives you an idea about the loopholes in your email marketing strategy. You can find out the performing and nonperforming elements of your email marketing campaign, such as- the best suitable time, the performing subject lines, the most effective personalization tactics, etc. Based on this analysis, you can make the necessary changes in your email marketing plan and enhance its performance.

10. Give the Subscriber the Charge

    Every business put a lot of effort to serve its subscribers the best. But, no matter how hard you try, perfection cannot be promised as every subscriber has different preferences. Some subscribers like to receive the emails once or twice a week, and some like to receive them daily or once a month. The best way to deal with this is to give charge to the subscriber himself. Talk to your subscriber about his expectation and preferences, thereby serve them accordingly.

Are you ready to Upscale your Email Marketing Campaign?

Upscaling your email marketing campaign opens new doors for your business, and strengthens the existing ones. The technology, as well as the market, is upgrading every day, and with this change, the customer expectations and needs are reaching new heights. The companies who will not walk with change will be left behind.
If you don’t want to be one of them, you must upscale your email marketing campaign and leave no scope for disappointment. Now that you are acquainted with the email marketing upscaling factors, you can reap the best out of your email marketing campaign. In case of any further assistance with your email marketing campaign, reach out to our experts. Our email marketing experts will analyze your requirements and bring out the best email marketing strategy that suits your needs.

An email marketing campaign can be an excellent investment for your company if done properly. Whether you’re sending a promotional email to recommend products and boost sales, a welcome email to make the customers feel a part of your family, or a thank you email to express your gratitude, it contributes to the profit of your company. Hence, you need to be cautious throughout the email marketing process to deliver quality.
We all are humans and the occurrence of a mistake is a probability. The same happens with email marketing. Whether you are a professional or a newbie, you might commit any of the common email marketing mistakes while sending the email campaign. Hence, to avoid it in your campaign and reap the full potential of email marketing, we have listed some of the most common mistakes that commonly happen to the marketer.

10 Most Common Email Marketing Mistakes

1. Do Not Test & Improve their Emails

   Merely drafting and pushing the email in the subscriber’s inbox does not make your email marketing campaigns successful. You need to test its performance frequently to achieve this. Testing gives you an idea about loopholes responsible for the failure of your email marketing campaign, based on which you can make improvements in your email and upgrade performance.
   Before sending your emails to the subscribers you can perform A/B testing to check its performance. With A/B testing, you can not only improve your email marketing campaign performance but also learn the nitty-gritty of the performing and nonperforming elements and practices which you can use to prevent mistakes in your campaign.

2. Choosing the Wrong Type of Email

   Email marketing proves to be extremely effective in nurturing the customer throughout its life cycle with your brand. But even the rich set of colors cannot decide the fate of your painting; it’s the way you use it. The same set of colors can create a masterpiece as well as a disaster based on the choice of colors and the process of usage. The same holds for email marketing which if used appropriately can work wonders for your brand however in other ways it might lead to big losses.
   You should not send the emails to the subscribers just for the sake of sending; it should conform to the customer’s life cycle stage. For example, you cannot send a welcome email to existing customers or vice-a-versa. Choosing the wrong email might annoy the customer preventing him from opening your email in the future.

3. Using Non-personalised Email Templates

   Imagine you go to a clothing store, where they address you with your name and offer you personalized offers based on your past shopping preferences. Won’t you feel special and happy with their services? The same happens with your personalized emails.
   Personalization makes the email more attractive to the subscriber encouraging him to interact with the email content. Personalized emails are more likely to get opened and drive more revenue up to 18 times as compared to the non-personalized ones. The non-personalized email appears more like a general bulk email which the subscriber avoids opening.
   Email personalization can be done in various ways like including the name of the subscriber, giving customized offers, image location product recommendation, and so on. Here is a great example of email personalization used by ING Australia which not only personalizes the subject line using the name of the recipient but also so designs the email content based on the customer’s interest.

   

   

4. Not Using Call-To-Action

   You have crafted a wonderful email with meaningful and creative content reading which the subscriber is extremely delighted and desires to take the relationship further through an action. But what if he does not find the click to action button to take the journey ahead.
   The subscriber need not bother to go to a browser, open your website, and find out what’s going on. He quickly closes the email and starts going through the other emails in his inbox. Did you notice missing a single element that is the call to action button can make you lose a good opportunity?
   The best approach is that before you start drafting your email, settle down on a clear goal that you want to achieve. This helps you in creating a compelling CTA for your email that guides your subscriber for the further process. Here are some useful tips, you should consider while creating your CTA-

   • Easily locatable
   • Comprehensible
   • Frequency of using CTA in the email
   • Color of the CTA button
   • Visibility of the CTA

5. Sending Incorrect Information

   Your email copy contributes to your brand image requiring you to be careful about the details like email design as well as the information in it. An inappropriate email design or misleading information within the email can leave a very bad impact on the subscribers. The most common mistakes that occur in the aspect of information are-

   • Sending an email to the wrong subscribers
   • Broken Links
   • Wrong Links
   • Including incorrect details like dates, product price, events, etc.
   • Fake discount coupons
   • Offensive content

   Such mistakes occurring frequently, raises questions on the credibility of the brand, gradually pushing you towards their spam list. So try to avoid this kind of mistake within your email copy however if in case it occurs make a quick apology to your subscribers. If a mistake occurs one time in forever the customer does understand and forgive your mistake. However, if it happens frequently or you do not address it with an apology or make-up for it, it might lead to the customers losing confidence and interest in your brand.
   So, for longer customer retention, make sure to apologize for your mistake and make up for it just like in the following example. This shows your responsible behavior to the customer thereby gaining their confidence.

   

   Source: Really Good Emails

6. Plan to Handle Mistakes

   Business is a long term journey, in which you cannot assure a flawless process throughout. Mistakes do occur which cannot be undone but can be improved. Though you should try to avoid any kind of mistake, preparing for unexpected mistakes is equally important. This will help you to handle the situation smoothly.
   To start with, jot down all the possible issues that might occur in the email marketing journey. Classify the issues based on the urgency of response. Not all the issues need your response, some issues like a casual spelling mistake can be left unattended without drawing light on it. However, in the other case, you have to be prepared.
   Decide how a particular issue needs to be addressed. Whether you should send an apology email or print an apology letter, address on social media, or something else. Also, you can outline the apology email and create an effective email template to save your time.

7. Not Using Segmentation

   Email segmentation plays a very important role in email relevancy. A business caters to a wealth of audiences dwelling in different stages of the customer lifecycle. Based on the stage they are in, they require a different kind of information/content. If you serve them irrelevant content continuously, there are chances that your subscriber might unsubscribe from your newsletter, or spam you. Segmentation helps you serve your subscribers with relevant content, hence considered as one of the most effective personalization tactics by 51% of marketers.
   Subscribers don’t like to indulge in irrelevant content. The more relevant and personalized is the content of the email, the higher is its opening rate. You can segment your email based on numerous factors like-

   • Location
   • Age criteria
   • Gender-based
   • Language
   • Customer’s Interests
   • Shopping Behaviours
   • Regional Beliefs

8. Not optimizing the Emails for Mobile

   As technology is advancing, moving away from desktops to mobile devices, mobile email marketing is becoming extremely critical for companies. 50% of emails are opened on mobile devices. Hence, if you are not optimizing your emails for the mobile devices and designing it responsively, there are chances that your emails might be closed within 3 seconds. If a user is not able to access your email properly, the probability of the success of the email marketing campaign diminishes.
   
   Source: Juvlon

9. Sending Filler Emails

   Consistency is important to build a strong relationship with the customer. However, sending filler emails to remain consistent merely to fulfill the schedule, is a bad idea. You should always deliver value to your customer to sustain them longer. So before you start drafting your email, set up a goal for your campaign. Determine what you want to convey to your customers. Once decided, draft your email accordingly and then send it. Missing a schedule won’t damage your image that much as an irrelevant email might do.

10. Not Choosing the Right Email Marketing Tools

    The initial step to surpassing your business objectives is picking the correct email marketing tool. The right tool can bring a huge difference to your email marketing campaign. However, if you are using a tool that does not comply with your campaign goal, you might be keeping your business away from some great opportunities. To avoid this, you should check out its features to ensure you pick the tool that turns out best for you and your organization.

Wrap-up

Preparation not only prevents you from big damages but also helps you handle the situations smoothly. And now that you are acquainted with some of the most common mistakes that happen during the email marketing process, you can prepare for the mistakes and plan out your campaign to mitigate such mistakes easily. For more information or further guidance on Email Marketing campaigns, Reach out to our Marketing Experts, and add value to your campaign.

Email marketing is no more an alien thing to anyone, being a part of every business type, big or small. Email marketing is viral, accredited to its targeted approach and higher ROI ratio, i.e., 42:1(USD). Email Marketing is one of the most powerful marketing techniques that allow you to reach out to your customers directly.

80% of business professionals admit that email marketing increases customer retention. However, an email marketing campaign can only be considered productive if it leads to the desired action. The action can be anything like product purchase, subscription renewal, etc.

You should always craft your email content so that it takes your subscribers to your website, increasing their chances of conversion. If the customer does not take the desired action, you need to revise your email copy.

An Email Marketing Campaign can work wonders in boosting up your sales if used in the right way. Here are some proven strategies that will help you create an outstanding email marketing campaign that drives more actions and traffic to your business.

15 Actionable Email Marketing Tips For Your Business

1. Avoid Only Sending Sales Email Marketing

   Email marketing is definitely meant for promoting your brand and selling products/ services. But that does not mean that you will talk about the same thing every time you send an email to your customer. With a similar sales email sent every time, the subscribers start losing interest in your email and the brand. And a time arrives when they stop opening your emails, pushing you towards the spam list, or leading to unsubscription.
   Try sending some other interesting and engaging stuff to the subscribers that encourages them to go through the emails. You can mix different types of content in the campaign, such as newsletters, questionnaires, discounts, offers, etc. This tends to gain customer’s confidence, making your place on their favorite’s list.

2. Design Newsletters that speaks Your Brand

   60% of the customers prefer buying from the brand they are familiar with. The same is the case with emails. Customers always open emails that are coming from a recognized brand. This familiarity and confidence can be developed by brand consistency.
   Remember, a brand is not the name and logo that you place in your email, but it is also the voice in the email. Hence, along with the email design, images, colors, text font, and logo, the content of your newsletters should speak your brand’s voice. The more meaningful your content will be, the most interested will be the subscriber to hear from you.

3. Test Your Email Campaigns

   Testing your email campaign is extremely important for the success of your campaign. Testing gives you an insight into your email performance, helping you find out the performing and nonperforming factors of your campaign.
   The best approach is to assess the performance of previous years campaigns, based on the following factors-

   • The opening rate
   • CTR(Click through rates)
   • Conversion Rate
   • Unsubscription Rate

   Or, you can also do the A/B testing for your emails. A/B testing analyzes the campaign’s performance on slightly varying factors such as on 2 different times. The analysis gives you an idea about the most performant content and design, the most appropriate time, and the most potential subscribers. This helps you strategize your email marketing plan accordingly and make improvements where necessary.

4. Create Engaging Subject Lines

   Did you ever realize the foremost thing you notice in an email when it lands in your inbox? And after which, you decide whether to open the email or not.
   The answer is – The Subject lines of the emails. The subject line is the first thing that interacts with the subscriber, giving them the email list at a glance. The subject line of the email plays a vital role in the opening rate of the email. Look at the following stats to understand the importance of the subject lines in the emails-

   • 33% of the recipients open emails due to their catchy subject lines.
   • 69% of recipients tend to report an email as spam solely based on its subject line.
   • An interactive subject line leads to 70% higher conversion rates than those who use static content.

   Hence, make sure you use a compelling subject line in your email; it has to be extremely creative and powerful. For this, you can use power words in the subject line that encourages the recipients to open the emails.
   
   Source: Coschedule

5. Try to Establish a Real Conversation with Your Subscribers

   “An engaging email doesn’t just talk to a reader; it also gives him a reason and an opportunity to respond, just like a real-world conversation.”- Marketo.
   Customers like real conversations. A conversation coming from a human appears more genuine to them, making the subscribers feel special and attended. Computerized emails appear more generic and do not have that power.
   So, to create a friendly and trustworthy relationship with the subscribers, you should incorporate your name in the sender’s field. Along with this, also allow your subscribers to respond to your email. Two- way communication tends to be more productive than one-way communication. This allows the customer to share their experience and put up their queries related to your brand. The more attended a customer feels, the more are the chances of future interactions.

6. Personalize and Segment Your Emails

   How does it feel if you are a grown-up man and someone gets you a toy car for your birthday? Or mentions someone else’s name on your gift? You will definitely get annoyed. The same happens with emails. Subscribers stop opening emails that do not serve them appropriately, increasing the chances of unsubscription and spamming. 67% of total unsubscriptions happen because of too many irrelevant emails sent to the subscribers. Personalization and segmentation can work here.
   Personalized emails generate 6 times higher transactional rates. – Experian
   Subscribers prefer personalized and segmented emails more than the general ones. To create a personalized experience for your subscribers, you can add the sender and recipient’s name in the email. You can also segment your email list based on factors like gender, age, interest, etc. A personalized email makes the subscribers feel special and attended. If you deliver appropriate and relevant content, the customers will look forward to hearing more from you.

7. Use the Preview Text

   After the Subject line, something that works like the Cruithne(second moon) for the Email is the Preview text. A compelling subject line definitely works great for the email performance, and preview text adds more to it.
   Preview text is placed beside the subject line. Though it is not mandatory to mention a previous text, leaving it blank can take away the opportunity to strengthen your impression on your subscribers. In case you do not write a separate preview content, the email content starts appearing in its place.
   The best approach is to craft a powerful preview text that intensifies the urgency of your email’s subject line. For example, if your subject line talks about the last day of the sale. Your preview text can be like- A few hours left to save 50% on your purchase.
   You can also ask a question in your subject line; you can place a teaser of the answer in your preview text. Your preview text can help you to create a curiosity gap among your customers. This tends to motivate them to open your email and go to the content, thereby increasing customer engagement.

8. Keep It Brief and Skimmable

   No one likes to indulge with long and dragged content. The subscribers always prefer to quickly jump to the important part of the content as soon as they open the email. And if they fail to find out some, they will close the email without going through the content.
   This also tends to prevent them from opening your email in the future as well. Hence whether it is the content of the email body or its subject line, it is advisable to use crisp and to-the-point content in your email copy. There are some of the standard practices that you can follow while creating-

   • Keep sentences short that are around 25 words.
   • Break the long paragraphs into short 2-3 sentences, paras.
   • Write crisp subject lines, not more than 25 characters.
   • Only keep the sentences that are relevant to your purpose.

9. Offer Something Valuable

   A great email copy won’t get you desirable offers unless your company offers something valuable to your customer. Before you send an email to your customer asking him to buy your product or subscribe to your service, try to get into the insights of the customers’ interest and your product’s usefulness.
   Please do not send an email copy for the sake of sending it or reminding them about your brand. You need to create quality in your email content. Try to match your email content to the customer’s preferences. In case you are doubtful about this, you can directly ask the customer about the same. This will help you to send more relevant content to them and therefore also so increase customer engagement.

10. Try to Sell Benefits instead of Features.

    People only indulge in something productive for them. You can consider this psychology while crafting your emails as well. Talk about their benefits or problems first. Instead of telling them about the features of your product, mold it differently.
    Tell them about the benefits coming from that feature. For example, you sell a high power coffee blender. A customer will be more interested in its efficiency, i.e., how it saves their time and energy.

11. Check the Relevancy of Your Landing Page

    Imagine you received an email talking about a lucrative offer on your favorite book. You click on the CTA button to immediately place an order. However, to your surprise, you land on the website’s homepage instead of the product offer page. Don’t you feel disappointed and annoyed?
    This kind of event leaves a terrible impression on the customers, preventing their future purchases. To prevent this from happening to you, always make sure your email content matches your landing page.
    For Instance, Codecademy offers 25% off on Black Friday. They send an email about the same to their subscribers.
    
    When the user clicks on the CTA button, he lands on the following page. Hence, they can proceed with further actions.
    

12. Make it Simple to Unsubscribe

    You have made many efforts to get people on your email list, so why on earth should you let them go and unsubscribe. You would instead like to keep them with you and never leave you. Though it is a great thought, you should retain your customers for a longer time. However, bounding them to do so is a bad idea.
    Your unsubscription process should be as simple as your subscription process. Give your subscribers the authority to decide whether they want to stay or leave. This increases the chances of their returning. If a subscriber finds it difficult to unsubscribe, he might choose your competitor over you for their future purchases.

13. Use Mobile-Friendly Design

    Mobile contributes to 50% of the email open rate. Mobiles have been one of the most preferred devices to access the internet across the globe. According to Statista, approximately half of web traffic comes from mobile devices. Hence, neglecting it while designing your email copy can cost you some major losses.
    Subscribers do not entertain the emails if their content does not appear properly on mobile devices. In fact, 52% of the subscribers do not even buy from such brands. Therefore, before you push your emails into your subscriber’s inbox, make sure to optimize it for mobile devices as well.

14. Schedule Your Email at the Best Times

    Along with the design and content, the email schedule is also crucial to the email marketing campaign’s success. You should send your emails at the time and days when it is most likely to be opened. According to WordStream, Saturday and Sundays are the least performing days of the month. Hence, you should avoid sending emails on these days. On the contrary, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursdays are the most performing ones, making it suitable to send your emails.
    
    Source: Wordstream
    A subscriber cannot be available for 24 hrs. Hence, along with the days, it is also important to figure out the most optimal time of sending the emails to get opened by the customer. According to Wordstream, the emails are most likely to be opened after 12 pm, in which 2 pm to 5 pm is the best duration.
    
    Source: Wordstream
    While deciding the schedule of your email marketing campaign, do not forget to consider your email frequency. Always try to maintain a standard frequency of your emails; it should neither be more nor less annoying.

15. Include a Persuasive CTA on Your Email

    You always send an email with a desire that your subscriber takes the next step after this. The only way to achieve this is to include a persuasive CTA in your email copy. CTA(Call to Action) is the most important part of the email, which guides the recipient about their next step. Hence, 90% of recipients that read your email copy also go through the CTA so that they do not get lost in the middle.
    However, merely placing a random or general CTA is not enough. You have to be creative with it. According to Hubspot, CTAs with strong and personalized content can increase conversion rates by over 202%. So, if you want to drive action through your email, always use a compelling CTA in it.

Wrap-up

Email is not going anywhere anytime soon, it is here to stay. Hence, it would help if you leveraged the most-effective tool, i.e., Email marketing, to boost your business. And now that you know the most effective ways to make your emails more productive, you’re all set to take your email marketing to the next level. For any further assistance, Hire our Email Marketing Experts and add wings to your campaign.

Do you really think that closing sales are the only thing that decides the success of your business?

The answer is NO.

Though closing sales contribute to the company’s profit, to make it a successful business you should think beyond this. One of the most important things that could help here is your customer and their journey. The longer the customer stays with you, the better is your business. Always aim at making your customers fall in love with your brand/business, to retain them for a longer period.

According to Neil Patel, every customer whether lost to your competitor or due to any other reason, costs you around 289 USD each year. And you can never make up for this cost by a new customer. Always remember, the cost to acquire new customers is six to seven times higher than that of retaining an existing one. So, you should direct the majority of your effort towards customer retention.

The ascend of 5% in customer retention can raise the profitability of a company by 75%.- Bain & Co estimate

For this, you need to guide them throughout the journey right from discovering brand to promotion. It is very important for you to enhance your customer relationship in order to increase customer retention. And the best way to serve your customer well and prevent them from getting lost in the middle is the Marketing Funnel.

What is the Marketing Funnel?

A marketing funnel is a model representing the customer’s journey based on which you can implement your marketing strategies accordingly. Marketing funnel proves to be a very helpful practice for marketers, helping them in organizing, structuring, and channelizing their marketing process. It guides you through the process of turning leads into customers.

At the initial stage, the marketers try to get as many leads as possible to create brand awareness, just like the broader top of the funnel. As we go down the funnel, it gradually narrows, the same goes for the leads and prospects. Once the leads are created, you need to nurture the prospects through the purchase decisions which narrows with every passing stage. There are 5 stages in the marketing funnel-

1. Awareness
2. Consideration
3. Conversion
4. Loyalty
5. Advocacy

The possibility of a lead becoming a customer increases as he reaches the bottom of the funnel. Not every lead who enters the funnel purchases your product, becoming your customer. Some will get lost in the middle, or lose interest, or likewise may succumb to what you have to bring to the table.

Marketing funnel proves to be extremely useful in Email Marketing as well. You can structure the content of the emails based on the stage of the email your customer is at. The stage gives you an idea about the customer state, his interests, problems, etc. Hence, to enhance the productivity of the funnel, you can accompany it with the emails

Using Marketing Funnel Stages in Email Marketing

The stages of the marketing funnel refer to the degree of how likely the customers are willing to complete a transaction. When prospects reach the bottom of your marketing funnel, the chance of becoming customers increases.

To get more insights, let dig deeper through each stage to understand how to accompany the marketing funnel with email marketing-

• Awareness Stage

The foremost stage of the marketing funnel happens to be the Awareness stage. At this stage, you bring your brand to the prospect’s notice. If they do not know about your brand, how come they are going to buy something from you. Hence, you need to make your brand visible among the customers. Visibility can be created through various sources like- organic searches, Social media marketing, blogs, cross-selling strategies, etc.

Be it any sources, once the customer visits your website, it’s time for capturing the leads. You have to understand that the prospects are yet not ready to buy from you. Hence, first, you need to build a relationship with them.

You can do this through Email Marketing. The best way to generate leads and attract them to your business is to give them some lucrative offers or some useful resources-

• Downloadable PDF file/ ebooks
• Educational resources /blogs
• Coupon/discount
• Webinars

• Consideration

Now that your prospects have become your subscribers, it clearly indicates that they are considering your brand. They want to hear from you and learn more about your brand and offerings. Hence, this is the perfect time to nurture them. Tell them about the best of your offers and services.

The point to consider here is that these offers, services, or materials should be related to your subscriber’s interest. Along with the offerings, you can also know more about your customer at this stage. The more you know about your customer, the more customized services you can deliver.

Once you come to know about the interests of your customer, you can send personalized emails to them. Personalized emails work wonders for businesses. According to a survey, by using personalized emails 82% of marketers observed an increase in email open rates, and 75% yielded higher click-through rates.

Along with personalization, you can also include some more convincing content in your email like-

• Testimonials
• Case studies
• A live consultation session with the customer
• Free podcast episodes, talking about the services they are going to get from your company

• Conversion

This is the very critical stage of the marketing funnel, where the lead can be converted to a customer. Once the customer reaches the bottom of the funnel, they are more likely to make a purchase. Hence, be cautious with the content you use here.

You have already educated them a lot about your product features, giving them social proofs and so more. Now it’s time to directly talk about your uniqueness. Motivate your customers to choose you over the other available options in the market.

Use your knowledge and recommend the most suitable product for your customer. You can tell them about how your product and services can help them. Give them free trials. Create a sense of urgency on the factors like time or stock through the terms like ‘Hurry’, ‘last day/unit’.

As you are at the stage of conversion, make sure your customers do not get lost. Guide them well about the next step to follow. For this, you can include the CTA buttons like-

• Try now
• Join Now
• Buy Now
• Register Now
• Get started
• Start Trial
• Sign In

• Loyalty

Your Loyal customers make up to 65% of your business. Hence, losing them can cost you way too much. You need to nurture them even after the purchase, to retain them longer. Always remember, the purchase is just the beginning of the customer’s journey, not the destination.

Considering the fact, you should shape your actions accordingly. Your approach in this stage decides the fate of your customer relationship- whether it will flourish and grow or deteriorate and die.

At the loyalty stage of the Marketing funnel, you should accompany the email content that can keep them engaged. Your customer should never feel left out, in fact always look forward to hearing from you.

75% of customers say that they mostly prefer companies that offer rewards. Hence, to reward your customers, you can go with the following content ideas-

• Free access to educational resources on related topics.
• Conduct a survey on their experiences or expectations.
• Cross-sell and up-sell techniques
• Exclusive offers

• Advocacy

After crossing all the stages, your customer has finally reached the bottom of the funnel. At this stage, the customer remains no more just a customer, he becomes your fan. This is the time when the customer talks about your brand and recommends it to his friends and family.

Advocacy proves to be extremely beneficial for sales. 92% of customers consider suggestions from friends and family for making purchases. Not only for the sales, but you can take the benefit of their loyalty for improving your business as well.

To do so, you can take feedback from our loyal customers. They can give a better insight into your services, based on which you can make further improvements. To encourage your customers to promote your brand, you can opt for referral marketing. Reward them for referring your brands to their family and friends.

Consider the following tips to include email marketing at this stage-

• List your loyal customers and ask them to refer your brand to their known ones.
• Create a feedback form to take feedback from your customers.
• Delight them with referral rewards.
• Establish a two-way communication by replying to their emails.

Conclusion

Now you know about the marketing funnel and its importance in your business. Despite being a powerful approach, the marketing funnel would do nothing if you don’t nurture your customers effectively at each stage. The ultimate goal of the marketing funnel is to keep the customers moving down the funnel and transforming them from a prospect into your brand advocates.

One of the proven ways to do so is by incorporating the emails into the funnel. Being the most powerful marketing method, email marketing can enhance the performance of your marketing funnel. Emails come out to be the best tool for target marketing, thereby increasing the conversion rate.

Though email has the potential to enhance your marketing journey, a badly crafted email will reverse the effect. The article gives you some extremely effective ways to use email in your marketing funnel and make the best out of the process. However, if it seems complicated, we will help you to build up a viable email funnel. Reach out to our marketing experts, and squeeze the most out of it.

Related Articles

• How to Improve Customer Experience using Transactional Emails?
• How to Improve Customer Retention Using Email Marketing?
• Data-Driven Email Marketing: How to use Customer Data Innovatively

Holidays are the most awaited time for people, creating so much joy and happiness among them. The excitement for the celebration among the people begins weeks before the day. They do the shopping and various other preparations to make their holiday special. Not only for the customers, but the holiday season is quite joyous for the businesses as well.

The holiday season is one of the most lucrative and profitable times for the business. In fact, as per the survey conducted by the National Retail Federation, 20-30% of the annual sales are generated during the holiday season. Considering the fact, companies should prepare well for holiday sales. They can organize various events like festival sales if they have related products to sell.

For this, the most effective tools that can be useful for the business is email marketing. Email tends to target the customer more effectively than any other medium. Hence, it proves to be the best place to promote your business. Promotional emails, if used rightly, have the potential to drive traffic to your business and enhance sales. Check out the most effective ways to drive traffic to your website during the holiday season.

10 Excellent Holiday Email Marketing Tips to Drive Traffic to Your Business

1. Know Your Holidays

The foremost thing to reap the benefits of the holiday season into your business is to be acquainted with all the major holidays specific to the country. You should know each celebrated day of your country which relates to your products/services.

For instance, the holiday season in the US starts from November to January. This proves to be a promotional period that fuels profits for the business for the entire year. Hence, make sure you do not lose this precious opportunity for your business. Integrate your holidays in your email marketing calendar, and automate the campaign.

If you are already into the practice, track the performance of your promotional emails of previous years based on the revenue incurred. According to this, you can make improvements to your campaign and boost profits.

2. Schedule Your Holiday Email Marketing Smartly

Merely scheduling emails like weekly emails or newsletters are not always profitable, especially when it comes to the holiday season. Sending heaps of emails too early can cause email fatigue, and too late might make you lose the opportunity. You need to plan it out smartly, neither sending too early nor late, but at the right time.

Start promoting your business timely, by educating your customers on how your business could be helpful for them. Give them some potential reasons to consider your brand rather than the other available options.

You can help them prepare for their holidays through some valuable recommendations. Guide them on the products and services they might require during their holidays. You can also give some gifting ideas to your customers as Jimmy Choo did in their holiday email

(Image Source: Pinpointe)

3. Design Your Email in the Holiday Theme

Whether it’s a festival or a normal day, email design plays a crucial role in customer engagement. A customer never wishes to engage with an email with poorly placed content and design. Hence, before pushing emails to the customer’s inbox, make sure it is properly designed.

For the holiday season,  you can design your email in a way that conveys your message at a glance. Try to blend the holiday theme with your brand signature. Make sure that along with the festive feel, your email also promotes your brand at its best.

In the following holiday email, Starbucks included elements that instigate the feeling of the holidays to their email. Along with the festive email design theme, the placement of the content grabs the user’s attention as well.

(Image Source: Really Good Emails)

4. Use a Powerful Subject Line

The first thing that appears to the customers when they receive an email, is the subject line. The more compelling is the subject line of your email, the higher is its open rate. The main objective of a subject line should be to create curiosity among the subscribers about the email content. This encourages subscribers to open the email and go through the email content.

When Levi’s sends a Holiday Email Marketing about the end-of-season sale, its subject line directly talks about the sale. Reading this, the interested customers definitely opens the email, check out the details.

Subject line: Our ghastly, ghostly sweater is BACK! 👻

(Image Source: Milled)

5. Offer Loyalty Benefits to Your Customers

The concept of loyalty benefit is not new, it has been there forever. Customers love to be treated in a special way if they regularly buy products from your store. The best way to make them feel special and a part of the family is to offer them loyalty rewards. Loyalty reward is something that always works, resulting in better customer retention.

You can offer loyalty rewards in numerous ways-

• Offer exclusive discounts on their purchases.
• Provide gifts with the purchases.
• Invite your customers to try out your latest products.
• Offer reciprocal discounts for other products.
• Offer gift cards for future purchases.

This approach not only gains customer confidence but also retains them for a longer time. Loyal customers also promote your brand to their friends and relatives, increasing your brand reach.

6. Segment Your Email

Segmentation is one of the most effective ways of Holiday email marketing. Segmented campaigns produce an approximately 760% increase in revenue for the marketers. The same logic applies to the holiday email as well. Segment your holiday emails for better customer engagement and higher sales.

There are various factors that you can consider for the email segmentation for your holiday emails-

• The loyal customers
• The customers who purchased in last 2 years
• New Subscribers
• The Interest of the customer

In the following example, Airbnb uses segmentation in its holiday-themed emails that it sends to its customers. The email includes promotional discounts as well as location recommendations tailored to the customer’s interest.

(Image Source: Really Good Emails)

7. Use a Compelling CTA:

Emails with a single call-to-action increased clicks to 371% and sales 1617%.- WordStream

CTA holds immense importance in the conversion rate of the emails – the ultimate aim of a holiday email marketing campaign. Call-to-Action gives a direction to the subscribers, instead of leaving them clueless. For the holiday emails, along with the holiday theme, it’s important that you also include a compelling CTA.

Birchbox, a New York based monthly subscription service for beauty products, offers a free holiday pouch on each subscription. In the email, it places a compelling CTA just after offer details, guiding them for the next step.

(Image Source: Campaign Monitor)

8. Repurpose Your Email Content for Better performance

The holiday season is a golden time to gain a huge profit and enhance your business. Hence, you need to be cautious about the content that you are sending to your customer.

The companies have been feeding information to their customers for a long time. Some content perform satisfactorily and some fail to achieve the target. You can analyze the performance of your content and plan your future content based on the result. Always make sure you send your best piece of creation to your subscribers at this time, so that they couldn’t resist themselves from considering your offer.

9. Connect with Your Customer

“During the #holidays, don’t always go straight for the sale — emotion beats promotion every time,” says BrennerMichael 

If selling products was only enough, no business would have ever faced losses. Apart from the product quality, the factor that contributes to the success of a company is the customer relationship. The more you connect with your customer,  the better is the customer satisfaction and retention.

Make your customers feel attended to and taken care of. Following are some effective ways that can help you to establish a better connection with your customer and strengthen your customer relationship-

• Address customer queries
• Give them loyalty rewards
• Always abide by their interests in the product recommendations
• Wish them on their special days
• Give them exclusive offers for holidays and festivals

(Image Source: Campaign Monitor)

Here, Velour, along with the sales event, also gives an additional offer to its loyal customers. Velour always updates its loyal members about the offers and new products before the non-loyal ones. This makes the customers feel special, encouraging them to stick to your brand for a longer time.

10. Create a Sense of Urgency in Your Holiday Emails

People become more active in pressure. The urgent situation makes the human brain work faster, helping them to make quick decisions. You can also reap benefits from this human tendency by including urgency in your emails. An email that creates a sense of urgency in its email is more likely to convert a subscriber into a potential buyer.

There are various ways to show urgency to the subscribers-

• Setting a deadline.
• Limited stock.
• Compelling subject lines talking about a problem.
• Early bird offers

For example, Lucky Brand uses a compelling subject line, informing the customers about the last day of the holiday sale. This creates a sense of urgency in the customer’s mind, encouraging them to make a purchase.

(Image Source: Campaign Monitor)

Final Thoughts

Now you know the ways to improve your holiday emails to boost your business. The scope of the profit from the holiday email is massive. All you need to do is to craft your emails strategically. Once you craft your email, review it before you send it. Check out the areas where you can make improvements to create a holiday feel. However, if you feel stuck, get expert guidance, and simplify the process. Reach out to Email Marketing Experts and improve your email marketing campaign during the holiday season.

Related Articles

• Holiday Email Campaigns: 6 ROI Boosting Marketing Strategies
• 140+ Tested Holiday Email Subject Lines & Tips to Boost Open Rates
• Best Calls-to-action (CTA) Ideas/Example In Email That isn’t “Click Here”

Customer– the hero of your business, around whom all of your efforts, strategies, profit, loss the entire marketing journey revolves. The role of marketing has always been acquiring and serving customers effectively in the interest of the business.

The companies consistently work towards attracting new customers and increase their customer base- the most prominent asset for a business. However, the aim of a business should never be restricted to just adding members to the customer base, focusing on retaining the existing ones is equally important.

“Work as hard to keep a customer as you do to find a new one.” – Bill Quiseng

Logically, attracting a new prospect to your business is six times more expensive than that of maintaining an existing customer. To draw a new customer to your business, you need to create a whole new marketing strategy and build the foundation for your business in the customer’s mind.  This gains confidence of the customer in your brand thereby increases customer engagement.

One should always remember that a customer once important is remains important. To make them feel the same, email marketing can be beneficial as it helps you to serve and support the customers at every stage of their life cycle.

Take a closer look at the following ways to incorporate various marketing tactics into your campaign and improve your customer retention.

Email Marketing Strategies to Improve Customer Retention

80% of business professionals believe that email marketing increases customer retention. – Hubspot

 Email marketing itself is a powerful tool, and a regular tuning with creative strategy can make it even better. Unlike various communication and marketing channels, email marketing is a more personal communication channel. The subscribers specifically invite you to their inbox to deliver valuable content to them. Hence, you can utilize Email Marketing to nurture your customer more effectively and make the relationship last longer with them.

Treat your Customers like a Guest

The best way to treat your customers well is to treat them just like a guest in your house. Whenever a guest visits your home, the very first thing you do is to greet them, followed by attending and serving them throughout their stay.

Similarly, a customer should also never feel like being unattended. You should be more vigilant towards the customer’s actions throughout their journey to serve them accordingly. Starting with sending a welcome email right at the moment he subscribes to your website and assisting them at each stage of the customer’s life cycle.

Subscriber-controlled Email Flow

Even though the customer wants to hear from you does not mean to shower an unnecessary bulk of emails now and then. Instead, you should give the subscribers more control over the emails and allow them to regulate the email flow coming from you.

A bulk of irrelevant emails tend to irritate the subscribers, compelling them to unsubscribe from your website. Therefore, your email should have the option to choose from that fits their needs. You can provide the opportunities based on the following criteria-

• Suitable time for sending the email
• Frequency of emails per week/ day
• The type of emails (newsletter, promotional, motivational, etc.)

There are various ways to incorporate the idea in the email, such as – Time-based, Content-based, Unsubscribe preferences.

The Soft Sales Strategy

The ultimate aim of a business is to sell products and gain profit. However, bombarding the promotional emails all the time is not a good idea for your business growth. You should opt for a soft sales strategy.

Soft sales strategy is a way to connect to your subscribers and provide them with valuable content through email. This content not only benefits the subscribers but also gently updates them about your services. The practice, if followed effectively, impresses the subscribers and keeps them stuck to your brand for a longer time.

The point when you can’t utilize email to win the business, you can use it to win the hearts of your subscribers. – The formula proves to be extremely beneficial for a long-lasting customer relationship.

To include the strategy to your business, you can start by talking to your subscribers on the current problems faced by them.  Timejobs- a job portal does the same. They figure out the problem of subscribers and educate them on how the company can help them to get through it. This way, the customer feels attended and cared as well as the promotion sounds more like a solution to them.

Re-engagement email campaigns

The subscribers tend to get bored very soon as their interests keep on changing over time. Slowly and gradually, they start to disengage with your emails – pushing you towards the category of spammers.

Re-engagement emails prove to be a rescue to this problem, increasing the chances of winning your customers back. The are numerous ways to re-engage your subscribers with your emails such as-

Kate Spade, a New York-based online store, opts for a unique approach to bringing the customers back by reminding them softly about the brand, instead of directly discussing the reason for disengagement.

Another way of re-engaging the customer can be telling them about the discounts and offers for them. This approach generally grabs their attention immediately and encourages them to make a visit to your website and place some order.

Segment your Emails

Segmented Email Marketing tends to increase the revenue by 760%.– Hubspot

Email Segmentation is a strategy that empowers you to send the right email to the right person at the right time. Subscribers never prefer to engage with generic emails. However, if you send personalized emails, it drives more traffic and pitches the correct user.

According to a study conducted by eMarketer – 39% of email marketers observed that Email segmentation results in better open rates, and 24% observed increase in sales leads.

Let’s say if you send a promotional/ re-engagement email for the product Harry’s – a discount on shaving blades to someone who has no use of it for now, they will never open such an email.

On the contrary, if you send the same email to men above 17, they will not only engage with your email and buy the product but will also look forward to receiving more appropriate content from your end.

Exit on a positive note

Unsubscribes are never easy to digest. However, instead of getting disheartened, the more convenient thing is to exit on a positive note. You should craft your email in such a manner that it reflects your concern and empathy for the subscribers. This creates a good impression on the subscribers and increases the chances of reconsideration and gives a second thought about unsubscribing.

The approach for this should be – thinking a bit differently. A lead who subscribed to your website and invited you to their inbox to hear from you is willing to unsubscribe. But why? Maybe he was not appropriately nurtured or the distinct vision was the main culprit. The best way to find out the exact reason is to connect to the subscribers directly and request them to ease down the process.

Or just like Moz, you can thank them for giving you a chance and then softly tell them about your new services being introduced, for which they are free to resubscribe as per their convenience.

Loyalty Rewards

You might be aware of the adage of brick and mortar shops; the loyal customers get special discounts and offers.  Loyalty reward is the most effective formula for customer retention that always works. A customer never wants to leave a shop that offers a loyalty reward to them. This works for the online business as well, and a valid email campaign accompanied with it works wonders for the business

All you need to do is-

• Segment the most loyal customers of your business.
• Craft a creative and personalized email with exclusive rewards for their loyalty.
• Finally, send it to the fitted group. That’s it!

Ready to Harness the Power of Email Marketing in Customer Retention?

“Email has an ability many channels don’t: creating valuable, personal touches – at scale.” – David Newman.

Email is the most effective marketing channel, especially for customer retention. Email, if used strategically, has the power to keep the customers intact with your brand, allowing you to connect directly with your targeted customer and nurture them throughout their journey.

Along with customer acquisition, email marketing should also aim at retaining customers for a longer time. For this, you are required to serve them appropriately, so that the subscribers neither feel showered with unwanted emails nor feel unattended.

The process is complicated but essential, deciding the success of your email marketing campaign and the business. Hence, reach out to the experts, who will not only help you make your place in your subscriber’s inbox but also add quality to your campaign.

Also Read

1. Things to Consider while planning an Email Marketing Campaign
2. 5 Common Mistakes You May Face While Designing An Email
3. Marketing Emails Dissected: A Designer’s POV

The number of email users reached 3.9 billion in 2019, which might increase up to 4.48 billion users by 2024.– Statista.

Marketing holds a colossal significance in product sales and its prosperity. As you know, the main concern of a business is to increase ROI, and Marketing is the ultimate channel to achieve it. Indeed, you need to have a quality product, but, Marketing is something that drives deals. If a customer is not aware of the products and services offered by a company then he resists investing in it. Marketing works here by spreading awareness, engaging customers,  and a lot more.

73% of Marketers prefer to integrate Email Marketing with other marketing channels. – Hubspot

The companies know the importance of Marketing. So, they use many approaches such as Website, Search Engine Optimisation, Social Media Marketing, etc. to improve their business. Among these strategies, the practice that has never become outdated is Email Marketing. Email Marketing is a powerful as well as a popular marketing approach and can bring a huge difference in the Return On Investment of your business. Let’s check out how-

How Email Marketing can improve the ROI of your Business?

“Since 2015, businesses have found Emails as the top producer of return on investment.”– Brafton

As you know, each marketing strategy has a different effect on the business. So, if you combine email marketing with the other marketing practices, it can improve the performance of your business in the market.

Let’s dig a little deeper to unveil the advantages of email marketing to a business, leading to an increase in ROI.

 

• Wider Customer Reach

 

Who does not have an Email ID in this digital era?

Whether you are on social media or visiting a website, Email ID  represents your identity over the network. Email ID proves to be a powerful tool for companies to contact a huge number of clients and promote their business through Email marketing. With more than 3 billion users, email has expanded the boundary of Email Marketing by providing a wider customer reach.

 

• Enhanced Customer Engagement

 

According to a survey done by Hubspot in 2019, 78% of marketers observed an impressive rise in email engagement in a year. Email Marketing allows you to engage more customers by updating them about the offers, discount coupons, and new products.

In fact, because of these facilities, many customers prefer Email to be in touch with their brands. Better customer engagements increase the chances of lead conversion as well as customer retention, hence the ROI.

 

• Higher Lead Conversion

 

“Email converts better than SEO, display ads, and social media lead channels.”–  Neil Patel

Email, having a more extensive client reach, increases the chances of lead and sales conversions. There can be many reasons that are limiting your lead conversion, such as lack of information, lack of motivation, unavailability of the product, etc.

Email Marketing can help you here by increasing the interaction with the customers. The appropriate email grows customer confidence and improves their experience, motivating them to visit your website and buy a product.

 

• More Relevant Website Traffic

 

Various marketing strategies like Social Media Marketing and SEO prove to be quite useful in increasing traffic to your website and so is the case with Email Marketing. Email Marketing not only accentuates the website traffic but, targets more relevant users.

Relevant website traffic turns out to be very helpful for the business. A relevant visitor is more likely to get converted into a buyer, contributing to the ROI of your business. You can include various elements in your emails such as an attractive CTA(Call To Action), creative content, etc., that could catch user’s attention and encourage them to make a visit to your website.

 

• Higher Brand Awareness

 

66% of customers generally prefer to buy a product from a familiar brand. Nielsen

Email plays a very important role in expanding the brand awareness of a business, reaching directly to the target customer’s inbox. A session of well-structured emails can help in gaining the user’s confidence and building a strong relationship with them. This leads to customer loyalty and returns, an important factor for businesses.

 

• Cost-effective Marketing Approach

 

Cost-effectiveness is one of the important factors considered while planning the marketing strategy for your business. The more cost-effective is your approach, the better is the business. Email Marketing is a cost-effective marketing approach that requires minimal investment. but, having the potential of generating a higher revenue approximately $42 on every $1.

Conclusion

Do you still think Email is an outdated concept?

Email Marketing has been and will continue to be the evergreen marketing strategy, which is going to live for many more years to come. In fact, 49.5%  of marketers are planning to increase their email marketing budget, indicating its sustenance in the market.

Sticking with the old plain text style would not work, requiring you to adapt to the evolution of Email Marketing strategies such as integration and segmentation. Careful integration of Email Marketing with the other marketing strategies as well as segmenting the emails to target the right audience, work wonders in boosting the Return On Investment(ROI) of a business. So, without further ado, plan out your Email campaign and follow these steps.

1. Segment your Email
2. Select an appropriate Email provider
3. Design the content structure of your Email
4. Decide the frequency of sending Emails

While the above-mentioned article will help you use email marketing in sync with other marketing channels, you may find it difficult in managing your email campaigns and at such times, you can opt for our campaign management services on support level or hands-off.