Posted on March 15, 2022
There are projected to be over 4.5 Billion email users by 2025. That’s more than half the world’s population. Email can be one of the most effective and affordable channels for sending marketing materials to a target audience. We are constantly working to improve delivery and open rates. We’ve compiled seven strategies you can use to improve your campaigns.
Capturing email addresses with relevant offers is a great way to build your lists. Make sure to avoid buying lists and emailing people without their consent. Email is a permission-based relationship with individuals and sending emails without permission can damage your Brands IP reputation, increase low open rates and result in future emails getting tagged as spam.
Instead, build solid email lists by offering a value proposition to your target audience in exchange for their email address. Be creative, give them something they want and can’t get anywhere else, and you’ll see the email addresses start pouring in.
More is not necessarily better. Best practice is to review your list every 6-12 months and remove the addresses that are not opening emails you send. Open rates directly impact your IP reputation, so you only want to send emails to people that will most likely open them.
In these complicated times, you want to keep things simple and send relevant messages that are easy to absorb. Email boxes are stuffed full every day, so if you want to stand out create contextual messages targeted to a specific audience. For example, if someone just bought vitamins at the pharmacy, they would likely respond to a healthcare email about over-the-counter supplements.
In this data driven world we have an incredible amount of information about people and their habits. To get the most bang for your email buck use that information to personalize your message and hyper-target the email list.
Understanding user preferences and behavior allows you to segment the audience and send personalized information that addresses the users’ needs and issues with solutions and benefits.
Here are some other options for segmenting audiences:
Location Geotargeting has brought the physical and digital world together. You are now able to target digital communications to a physical location. Geotargeting can pinpoint a specific store, attraction, or just about anything and deliver a relevant email message to anyone close by. For instance, as someone passes by visitor center, you can deliver an email with a destination opportunity or discount. Your Brand needs to have a strong omnichannel connection between email, social, in-app, SMS, and push to name a few.
“You need to treat every channel differently and make sure that the consumer enjoys your messaging across each channel.” – Furqan Khan, Apparel Group
Opens & Clicks are by far the most popular metrics but here are some others that you should consider tracking as well:
It’s hard enough to build a great email list but even more difficult to see recipients unsubscribe. Nevertheless, it’s extremely important to have an easy to find and easy to use unsubscribe process. Anything less hurts your Brand and the user experience. It is also one of the easiest ways to keep your email lists healthy and robust.