Email marketing has been one of the most common means of online marketing for quite some time now. However, just because it has been popular for years doesn’t mean that it is not changing. On the contrary, it is changing a lot.
Practices that worked like a charm a few years ago are now outdated. New ways of doing email marketing are taking over.
Data-Driven Email Marketing Takes Over
The days are long gone of sending long, boring newsletters to your entire obtained database of email addresses on a weekly or monthly basis. You should be sending shorter and better-targeted emails to the people in your database.
That’s right. I said people, not email addresses. Having just an email address is not enough. It is true that it can suffice, and you will be able to send your regular dose of emails.
But the odds are that your emails will not perform well. Why? People are receiving tons of emails every single day. They don’t want to read boring messages with content they don’t care about.
The idea of data-driven marketing is to send the right message to the right people at the right time.
To do so, you simply MUST have more information about people in your email database. You must know more in order to provide your leads with the information about which they specifically care.
How can you get more information? You can simply try to ask them. If that strategy doesn’t work, you must use their behaviour to gain a certain advantage.
Use their implied and expressed preferences to determine what your users care about and how they want you to present the information to them. Of course, you will need to automate this process.
Eye Tracking Is More Accessible Than Ever
The technology needed for eye tracking has never been cheaper than it is now. People have used it mostly to improve the user interface (UI) of websites, web, and mobile applications.
But you can take advantage of eye tracking even when trying to improve the key performance indicators (KPIs) of your email marketing.
Eye tracking can help you improve the click-through rate of calls to action (CTAs) in your emails. When you know how the human brain “scans” the emails people read, you can use this information to place the important elements of your emails at the best possible locations.
Shorter and Mobile-Friendly Emails Are a Must
We are using mobile devices more and more. While mobile-friendly websites are pretty much a standard nowadays, many business lack mobile-friendliness in their email marketing communication.
If your emails are just plain text, you have nothing to worry about. Just keep your messages short and simple. Keep in mind that in portrait mode, which is the mode we generally use when browsing or reading emails, the subject line is quite short.
If the subject of your message is too long, it will get cropped out in most people’s mobile email. That’s why you should keep your messages short or at least put the important information at the front.
Test Your Options with A/B Testing
A/B Testing is a method people use to determine which of two (or more, depending on the type of A/B testing) options performs better.
When designing a marketing message for delivery through email, you can use A/B testing to try pretty much anything:
- Which of the two subjects will have a better open rate?
- Which of these buttons will bring more customers to your website?
- How does the colour, size, or font of the text influence the click-through rate?
These are just some examples. I am sure you will figure out how to use A/B testing to improve your email marketing communication.
Optimize the Way You Obtain Contact Information
So far, I have focused mostly on the communication itself. But first, you have to actually get people to give you their private (or business) email addresses.
Sure, some people have a separate email address for the sole purpose of signing up for email lists when they don’t want to give out their actual addresses. But still, it might be hard get that email address from them.
A large number of websites use pop-up windows that ask visitors to give them their email addresses or other personal information.
If you use pop-ups, try to use the type of pop-ups that don’t obstruct the entire website. I am sure you find it to be an aggressive marketing method, and so do your visitors.
What’s more, you should also offer your visitors something in return for giving you their personal information. Many websites use ebooks or other kinds of downloadable documents.
Gated content (content that is only available after entering an email address) has to be amazing. It needs to be something for which people will give up their guarded email addresses.
Your visitors must truly love your company in order to hit the “Sign up for our newsletter” button on your website. Offer them something in return, and you will most likely get a higher number of subscriptions.
Track More KPIs and Focus on Their Improvement
Everybody in the email marketing industry knows the two main KPIs: the open rate and click-through rate.
These are the most important ones, and you should definitely focus on improving them. That way, more people will read your emails and more people will click on the CTAs in them.
However, there is much more you can explore when it comes to email marketing. Track the locations of your subscribers and their bounce rate. Then see how your email marketing is influencing different aspects of customer behaviour.
Sophisticated tools can communicate directly with other business applications and help you calculate the actual return on investment (ROI) of your email marketing endeavours.
Latest posts by Viktor Vincej (see all)
- Effective Email Marketing Practices for 2018 - October 19, 2017
No doubt E-mail marketing is one of the biggest marketing strategy nowadays, as it is free, everyone can easily use this strategy for target their relevant audience. Email marketing is free up to a limit but if you want to target a large number of the audience then you have to go for the paid version. Email marketing is one of the best strategy by which you can get a large number of leads by spending a very small amount of money. It is best for those businesses who don’t want to spend a huge amount of money in marketing. I also use this strategy for my Epson printer customer support business and I am getting the best result from it. Thanks for sharing this article. This is really helpful for everyone. Keep sharing.
Hello,
Talking about Eye Tracking is their another possible way to improve its effectiveness?
Great post though……….
cheers
Very good advice Viktor!
And yo are so right, as email marketing in particular and
Internet marketing in general, constantly keeps evolving.
It’s best, we learn how to do the same. You shared several excellent
strategies, especially where you advice us to offer more catered and personally
customized choices to our subscriber base.
This approach definitely makes more sense and pretty soon, the marketers
who continually ignore this critically important aspect of their email marketing
campaigns, will find the subscriber base steadily shrinking along with their
open an click through rates as well.
This write-up was truly useful for my future works. This blog provides a clear idea about email marketing. Thanks
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Really great article about email marketing. and There are many techniques that we need to know and manage them in order to improve the quality of our marketing emails.
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There are many marketing practices that arise based on the structure and level of difficulty of a particular site. One of these practices is email marketing. Up to this time, it is still considered to be really effective if you know how to use it effectively.
Viktor, you have created a wonderful article in regards to email marketing practices. Most people don’t know these practices and haven’t practiced them properly. Thanks for sharing this with us! 🙂
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This is very good post for email marketing.Well done. Thanks alot for it. I don’t read mails which i don’t find interesting.
Hi there Viktor!
I very much agree with your idea for shorter and more mobile-friendly emails. You are completely right when you say that we are using our mobile devices more and more often, in fact some statistics even show that mobile usage for most sites are about tied with the people using PC (sometimes it’s even higher!).
Thanks for the nice read, I’m looking forward to more awesome content from you!
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hi,
your article has useful idea, I personally llike short email and i try read those on my mobile.
its good article
thank you
Hey Viktor,
Thanks a lot for such advanced tips on Email marketing. However, I am stuck at the very first point. I was rejected from several Email marketing service like SendinBlue, MailerLite, SendPulse, TinyLetter etc right after either adding my list or while send the first campaign.
The reason I got is, my list didn’t pass their qualification test. My list was collected via RSS feed not just scraped from somewhere. Would love to get your help regarding this.
Thanks in advance!
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Hi Viktor,
You are absolutely right that we should go for short and mobile-friendly emails. In my opinion, many of the marketers and blogger prefer mobile or tabs for checking the information rather than Traditional computers .
Im currently working on an email marketing campaign. This post will help me a lot.
Really informative post!
Yes having a great marketing email can be tougher as the time goes especially when it gets to the multiple compatibility.
There is a lot more techniques that we need to know and manage them in order to improve the quality of our marketing emails.
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Short email might be work good enough. I don’t even read all the emails whom I don’t interest. Thanks for sharing your experience it’s really helpful.
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Hi Viktor,
You are right that we should go for short and mobile-friendly emails. In my opinion, many of the marketers and blogger prefer mobile or tabs for checking the information through the emails and Even I rely on my mobile.
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Thank you for sharing ideas about email marketing. Email is consistently cited as one of, if not the marketing channel that consistently delivers the highest ROI. Email marketing is utilised by thousands of businesses of all sizes across the globe.
Another thing worth mentioning is the time of the day you would pick when sending out emails.
I did some tests and I saw HUGE differences between morning / noon and night email blasts.
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Good call out on the long emails there Viktor. I personally hate reading long emails that try to hard sell anything to me. It is such a turnoff. I barely open any marketing emails anymore even if I receive the notifications on my phone. Marketers definitely need to be more human about things and go with the flow. Hard selling any products or services these days do not work.
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