How to Use Email Marketing to Boost Engagement
Email marketing is one of the most popular and efficient digital marketing means that can help you reach your audience. While the open rates of the emails hover around 20% and the click through rates in the range of 2-3%, it can be seen that email outperforms social media in terms of making users take action.
Done effectively, email marketing can increase brand recognition, drive traffic to your website, cultivate leads, and maintain customer loyalty, and sales. Here are some tips on how to use email marketing to boost engagement. Here are some tips on how to use email marketing to boost engagement:
Define Your Goals
The first step is to identify what goals you expect to lose from your email marketing campaigns. Are you looking for leads, direct sales, web traffic or to strengthen existing customer relations? Detailed goals will assist in determining an email approach and building campaigns that are consistent with the goals.
For instance, if your objective is to bring as many visitors as possible to your latest blog entries, your emails will contain a link to those blog entries. Some of the ways through which you may wish to use the leads for marketing purposes include the following lead nurturing campaigns that inform the potential customers.
Segment Your Email List
One of the major blunders that companies commit is sending the same message to all the subscribers of their list. To be able to communicate effectively, you will have to segment your list or your target users based on some parameters like demographic information, interests and past behaviors, among others.
This means that you can make sure that any content that is being relayed to the subscribers is as relevant as possible to their particular interests. For instance, you can want to send promotional link to the previous clients, educational material for the new sign-ups and product updates to active customers. This specific targeting will in return increase the open rate and the click through the rate.
Send Consistent Emails
Although you need to have different segments of the lists, it is essential to have some level of consistency between the campaigns. Determine how often you will email each list – weekly, monthly or quarterly.
The key is being consistent with this cadence as opposed to sending emails to your subscribers some weeks and then completely disappearing for months. Utilize the following editorial calendar to plan the content and arrange the campaign with the right segment timing.
Personalize Email Content
Personalization is one of the greatest ways to enhance the level of user interest when it comes to email marketing. There are several ways to incorporate personalization. There are several ways to incorporate personalization:
– First names should be used in the subject lines and in the rest of the body of the email.
– Target promotions or products and services with location, purchase history, preferences, etc.
– Content that is different every time the message is delivered to a particular subscriber
– Suggest a product based on the type of site a user has been visiting.
Research indicates that emails with targeted offers have 6 times better transaction rates when compared to other emails. Any indication that the subscribers are individual targets adds a level of personalization and drives engagement.
Promote Email Signups
The more subscribers you have in your list, the more engagement possibilities with your campaigns. A good way to do this is to use the pop-ups, web banners, social media posts or anything that may lead users to sign up to the email newsletters. Provide users with an appealing lead magnet, such as an eBook, coupon or entry in a contest, for them to change their behavior.
Ensure that the subscription is easy to perform while at the same time stressing on the fact that the emails you are about to send will be special and unique. It is just not advised to add people who did not subscribe to your list themselves, as this results in more people unsubscribing.
Optimize Subject Lines
Subject line is your first point of contact in the context of the email marketing. You are given only a few seconds to persuade subscribers to engage with your content and open the email. A clear and specific subject is beneficial to the open rates, conversely, a weak or misleading one in the subject line will absolutely deter the subscribers.
Some best practices for optimizing subject lines. Some best practices for optimizing subject lines:
– They should be short, and all the more important information should be in the first few lines for the readers to skim through.
– Use the first name of the recipient
– Questions or numbers may be used to generate curiosity.
– Choose power words that imply added value
– Main points should always refer back to the main headline
Experiment with the subject line to see which are most effective for the audience you are targeting.
Value Exchange is the cornerstone of any marketing strategy
In its essence, email marketing is all about delivering value to subscribers in the form of content and gaining their attention and attention in return. This means every single email should have a clear value proposition related to your larger brand promise.
Stop giving subscribers content they do not care about by focusing on the aspects subscribers consider as valuable, such as coupons, new products, tutorials or fun. It is imperative to deliver more than what you promise in the subject lines to ensure the recipients are always satisfied with each email. If your subscribers stand to benefit in some way from subscribing to your list, then they are likely to anticipate and be more responsive to your emails.
Make Engaging Easy
If you have managed to get your email opened, then it should not be very hard for the subscribers to respond as you desire. Clean email design with clear hierarchical copywriting to inform the readers of what they need to do next. Ensure that your desired conversion goal remains prominent with a compelling CTA button at the site.
Limit links, forms and clicks to those that are absolutely necessary to make the engagement process as easy as possible. When your call-to-action is messy or when you are asking subscribers to click multiple times before converting, you are dead in the water.
The more the audience is compelled to follow the call to action, the more engagement your emails will get.
Analyze and Refine
Just like any marketing campaign, you have to constantly monitor email effectiveness and adaptation to ensure success. Engagement can be measured using open rates, click-through rates, bounce rates, unsubscribe rates, and conversion rates.
Focus on the most successful email types, content and targets. Build on those in the future campaigns. Similarly, it is necessary to determine low-engagement areas and optimize or eliminate them.
This brings the need to conduct tests in subject lines, content type, designs, and timing of the emails, among others, in order to enhance the level of engagement in emails over time. The strength of email marketing is its ability to be measured, so always remain evidence-based when making choices.
Apply the following tips in this email marketing playbook to actively increase the level of engagement of subscribers in every campaign. Go on giving substantive content consistently, segment audiences, increase subscriptions and make calls to action easy. By having a strategic, customer-oriented approach, you will receive more attention and commitment from your audience.