How to Keep Your Email Marketing Strategy Effective

How to Keep Your Email Marketing Strategy Effective

Email marketing is a great way to reach consumers, but it’s not always an easy strategy to maintain. Fortunately, there are several steps you can take to ensure that your email marketing stays effective and continues to bring in new customers.

The goal is to have a continuous lifeline of communication between you and your clients so they stay engaged with your brand at all times. A few essential tips to ensure your email marketing strategy is on point include:

 

1. Personalization

Personalizing your emails is the most effective way to build relationships with your customers. If you want your message to get opened and clicked, then it needs to be relevant to those who receive it. By tracking user behavior and collecting data about the recipient, you can create personalized campaigns that are more likely than generic messages to get opened.

 

Emails with personalized subject lines get a 26% boost in open rates.

 

2. Short Targeted Subject Lines

When writing your subject line, keep it short and sweet. The longer your subject line gets, the less likely someone will click on it. A good rule of thumb is to keep your email subject lines between 12 and 15 words.

 

3. Send at the Best Times

You want to make sure you’re sending emails at the right time. This is especially important if you’re sending a lot of marketing emails, as it impacts how your customers perceive your brand.

This seems obvious enough, but it’s actually one of the most common mistakes brands make when they’re trying to increase their open rates and click-through rates. If your client is a working professional with a 9-5, then sending an email at 10:30 am in the morning may not be helpful.

 

99% of email users check their email every day, some as much as 20 times a day!

 

4. Use Freebies

Give away something valuable, something your customers are interested in, and something that will help them. Your freebie should be something you can use to promote your business and build trust. This could be a discount code, training opportunity, or digital download.

 

5. Make Everything Mobile Friendly

You can reduce your bounce rate by ensuring your emails are readable on mobile devices. Be sure to use a responsive email template so your email marketing strategy will automatically adjust to fit the screen size of the device they’re being viewed on.

42.3% of people will delete an email if it’s not optimized for mobile. So, if your email marketing campaigns aren’t mobile-friendly, all of your hard work will go to waste.

6. Differentiate Your Subscribers

Segmentation divides your subscribers into groups that are more likely to respond to a particular message. For example, if you’re targeting people in different countries, it would be helpful to know what language they speak and where they live. This allows you to target those with their own interests and preferences for receiving emails from businesses like yours.

 

7. Don’t Forget Inactive Leads

You should also use email to re-engage with inactive customers. This can be a great way of reminding them about your brand or offering them a discount or freebie. For example, you can send an email that offers 10% off as a promotional offer.

 

8. Use Metrics and Analytics

Analytics are essential to succeeding in today’s marketplace. For example, Apple recently released a new Mail Privacy Protection system that allows users to hide their IP addresses. This can negatively affect your email marketing strategy because it makes it harder to see the demographics of your readers.

However, if you use up-to-date analytics and email metrics, you can still get enough segmentation to work around these new tools.

Shoppers spend 138% more when marketed through email, as compared to those who do not receive email offers.

 

Wrapping it Up

The best way to keep your email marketing strategy effective is to always look for ways to improve it. This means staying up to date on what your customers want and need, testing different approaches, and then figuring out what works best for your business.

Don’t forget that even though the internet has changed so much in recent years, people still respond well when they feel like they are being spoken directly to by someone who cares about them as an individual.

That is precisely what our team at Griffon Webstudios does to help. We design email marketing strategies that speak directly to your high-value target markets so you can get the highest ROI from your messaging. Schedule a consultation with our team today, and let’s help improve your email marketing.

7-cost-effective-ways-to-market-your-business-online

7 Cost-Effective Ways To Market Your Business Online

When you run a business, every dollar counts! It’s not easy being a business owner, given the amount of responsibility needed to make it successful – not to mention all the money needed to get it off the ground, too.

So saving any money you can save is always appreciated, which is why you’ll definitely need these cost-effective ways to market your business online:

1. Learn the ins and outs of social media

Social media is a great way to gain tons of exposure for your business, but the best part is that it’s free! You can set up your business profiles for nothing and then create ads for however much you can afford to spend. Plus, social media is practically a necessity for all business.

But if you’re going to market your business on social media, learn the ins and outs of the platform to take advantage of all it has to offer.

94% of B2B marketers use LinkedIn as part of their content strategy. Other popular platforms include Twitter (87%), Facebook (84%), YouTube (74%) and Google+ (62%).

2. Create a blog

Another cost-effective way to market your business online is to create a blog. You’ll be able to incorporate keywords, which will get you organic traffic if done properly. This costs nothing, just a bit of time and hard work to create quality content people will want to read.

3. Use SEO for your website

Besides a blog, you’ll want to incorporate SEO into your entire website so that it ranks higher on search engines. By making sure your website is primed for what search engines want, you’ll be able to better market your business.

4. Put out press releases

When your business does something that’s newsworthy, put out a press release. You never know who might be interested and pick up the new! There are also tons of websites out there that you can use to distribute your press release for cheap.

5. Join an online community

Whatever your niche is, find an online community and get involved. By posting on forums, you’ll be able to spread the word about your business.

6. Email marketing

Email marketing is a low-cost way to spread the word about what you’re doing, any promotions and anything else you feel your customers will want to know. By creating a weekly schedule, your customers will anticipate seeing your email in their inbox!

7. Referral Marketing

If your customers find value in what you offer, then they’ll have no problem in referring you to their family and friends. It’s a cheap and effective way to take your online business offline!

ecommerce-marketing-ideas

5 Effective eCommerce Marketing Ideas.

Regardless if you are a start-up or an established company, it is highly important that you are updated with the latest marketing strategy and trends. Structuring, developing and finally launching your eCommerce website is a single step towards your company’s goal. You will then have to develop an effective web structure and effective marketing plan that will contribute to your company’s success.

Top 5 eCommerce Marketing Tactics This 2017

Read on if you are interested to find out the latest and effective marketing strategy this 2017. Here are some of them.

1. Content Marketing

content-mAfter you launched your online shopping portal, it is time for you to create original and high-quality content. Make sure that your content resonates with your targeted customer that will encourage them to interact with you. Your content may also help you build an active community that is ready to be converted into a purchasing customer. Some people choose to use Adobe Photoshop to alter and re-engineer images. Unfortunately, duplicated or even altered content can affect your branding. You should invest and purchase only the original graphic content. The same thing can be said about text and articles.

2. Personalized Marketing

Personalized MarketingConsumers will serve as the driving force of your eCommerce business. This means that you need to stand out and be unique if you want to capture the interest of the consumers. Most companies will provide them with the latest technologies, allowing the consumers to browse the list of products and purchase any time they want. It is important that you will provide them with personalized UX (User Experience) that will address the needs of your consumers. Customers will be here to stay when they feel that they are valued.

3. Social Media Marketing

newyork social media marketingSocial media is a powerful platform which allows you to interact with your customers, digital influencers, and possible business partners. Social media can be used to generate organic traffic, develop a community and encourage interaction. Social media can help your online shopping business develop trust, authority and brand recognition. We also recommend using analytical tools in order to measure how your marketing strategy is affecting your company’s bottom line.

4. Email Marketing

email-marketingEmail marketing is still the most effective way to reach out to your audience this 2017. However, you need to be careful when executing your email marketing strategy. Most people are tired of receiving junk and spam email and will no longer pay attention to these messages. You need to offer your audience some value when sending emails. You can provide them with the latest updates, coupons or discount codes, informative content and others.

5. SEO (Search Engine Optimization)

SEO-Marketing

This is a manual and crucial method of your marketing strategy. With the increasing standard in the SEO this 2017, you need to make sure that your eCommerce website is in compliance and constantly updated to avoid getting penalized by the search engine sites. You may seek the help of a professional developer to perform a diagnosis on your online shopping website and find errors and issues in your codes.

Stay up to date with the latest marketing strategies as it is essential for the success of your business. With the right marketing ideas, you will be able to attract your prospective customers and boost your company’s conversion rate.

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10 tips to create a successful email marketing campaign

Is your e-mail marketing campaign facing a massive challenge with open rates and clicks? Here are 10 tips to create a successful email marketing campaign. This will help your email campaign grow more effectively and bring success to all your email marketing initiatives.

In this article, We’ll learn how to handle the email recipients and distribution of newsletters along with some tips to design campaigns and trigger emails.

1. Optimizing your subscriber list

Having a huge email database of clients/subscribers will not change the game, It’s the quality that matters. Obviously, There’s no point when your email campaign has 5,000 subscribers but only 300 opens the email. Right? If you have a large number of inactive subscribers, mailing them over and over again will be the worst thing to do. In order to optimize the process, it is very important to generate relevant data from your previous email campaigns.

How to find your inactive subscribers: The first step is to look at the subscribers who have neither opened the mail nor carried out any action. In the second step, Sit back and carefully analyze the behavior of these inactive subscribers. Check their status in the last 30 days or a period of 3 months and understand the pattern on the timeline the users became inactive. It could be because of the frequency of your email broadcasts. Whatever the reason is, Always remember that you DO NOT delete the inactive subscribers.

2. Reactivate the subscribers

After thorough research on your subscribers’ list, you might now know which contacts are inactive on your mailing list. Now the aim is to create a campaign that mainly targets to transform them back to interested readers or customers. Before starting with the reactivation campaign, you can suspend the regular emails for some time to the inactive recipients and surprise them with some unusual way to promote your brand, offers, newsletters.

unusual-emails

The surprise effect has a much higher response than the boring conventional “We missed you” emails. Here are 4 unusual campaigns that are quirky and memorable which could restore interest in your product/service.

  • Brand Stories
  • Say Happy Birthday.
  • Ask for opinion
  • Mark a customer Anniversary

 

Brand Stories– Who doesn’t like secrets? We get so intrigued to know the conversation Neil Amstrong had with his partner before stepping foot on the surface of the moon. We wait eagerly to hear what happened inside the dressing room during the super bowl game. Don’t we?

brand-storytelling-1A story communicates a lot more about your product/service than just the conventional way of communication. You end up becoming more transparent to the customer by sharing every bit of the occurrence while creating your awesome brand.

A few brands have been successful in doing this like Apple- which is a cult for its customers and “Transfarency” by Southwest Airlines which has a loyal bunch of customers.

Say Happy Birthday – Surprise! Your customer might not be expecting you to wish on his/her birthday. A small gesture like this would naturally make them remember you.

birthday-surprise_thumb1The same subscribers might also be in your competitors’ mailing list and they’d probably get generic emails and newsletters, coming at it in an unusual way would make them remember your product/brand over the others.

You still need to follow a rule and add value to your emails. Follow the Dos and Don’ts of the birthday mail campaign. 

Ask for opinionAccording to a survey conducted by PwC, 62% say that they trust brands less today so the traditional form of advertisement may not be as effective as it used to be. You need to connect with the customers and ask for their opinion. A lot of companies are aware of it and they are in the game of collecting feedback by asking way too many questions.

Keep your customer survey/feedback form as short and simple as possible for a better completion rate.

Mark a Customer Anniversary: Yes, A customer anniversary. A lot of companies these days are pro-active in maintaining a record of birthdays and other important dates for their customers. You could take this to the next level by remembering the date when they first purchased your product or signed up for the newsletter and celebrate the date.

customer-anniversaryYou could offer some anniversary discount or special offers which they would definitely not be expecting.

3. Winning your email subscribers

This part needs a lot of creativity as the subscriber should feel the worth of receiving your emails. Let’s first understand how to win email subscribers.

Winning email subscribers– How it works?

Building a perfect follow-up/email sequence is one of the biggest challenges in email marketing. Most companies are indifferent towards setting up a proper email sequence in their campaigns as they find it to be time-consuming. Yes, This cannot be done overnight as it requires you to understand the buyer’s mindset and slowly build interest in your product/service. But it is worth every bit of the effort you put in. A personalized email offers a great potential for wider coverage and more interest.

Why create your own email list?

There are plenty of reasons why you should create your own email list. Most of the emails IDs are captured in pop-up/ contact form on your website or from your social media pages. It means that the subscriber has already shown interest and agreed to receive your newsletter, which marks them to be of good quality.

These recipients are partially or fully aware of your brand or services so it obviously makes it worthwhile for you to spend enough time nurturing these leads. Also by creating your own list of emails, you clearly know the exact stage they are at and it helps you to determine what happens to the data and how often the recipients are to be contacted.

Why not just buy email addresses?

We often hear this question. “Where can we buy email addresses?”. Let me give you the answer: “JUST DON’T DO THAT!”

no-unsolicited-emailsFirst of all, Purchasing email addresses will not make any good to your business. You might get offers from different companies like “100,000 e-mail addresses for $300” which might sound lucrative but In reality, these are mostly illegally collected data, which are sold to the business that lacks marketing capabilities.

Unsurprisingly, The quality of these purchased records is extremely poor. In addition, relevant e-mail addresses are often sold several times, so the recipients will already be receiving tons of spam emails from different vendors and you’d only end up damaging your brand with these tactics.

What should I consider when building an email campaign?

It is very important to first determine your target audience. It brings your business usually a little or nothing if you have addresses in your mailing list which are not looking for your service. You should always follow the legal framework while adding new emails to your list. Follow the double opt-in process and always provide a choice for your recipients to unsubscribe anytime from the newsletter.

4. Check the lead generation/landing page

A landing page is a page where your visitors “land” to know more about your product/service.

This is exactly where the visitors transform to become a subscriber. Therefore, you should devote a lot of attention to this page. Do not overload this page with unnecessary distractions such as banners, advertisements, or information about some events. These do not belong here. The focus has to be on the benefits they get by subscribing to your newsletter. Place the incentive in a prominent place in the form of vouchers/Freebies that they could avail by registering for your newsletter. See how people view your website. 

5. Placing the newsletter sign

Is the registration form for your newsletter easy to find on the website? In principle, it is advantageous to place the newsletter subscription at several places on the site. Clearly visible, because no one wants to search for it. The ideal place should be on the sidebar or header.

newsletter-popup

6.Keep Consistent Design

Is the color and design of your brand updated on your newsletter? Has anything changed on the front-end design on your website? The new design should always be used in the newsletter. webdesignA unified design across all channels will help the customers recall your brand and differentiate yours from other players in the market.

These days most of the newsletters are read on smartphones or tablets which require all your newsletters to be optimized to display on mobile devices.

7. Install Tracking code:

The email campaign is all set and your reactivation campaign is in the starting blocks. Have you thought of tracking the emails? Tag everything you use in the newsletter like images, Call to Actions buttons (CTA), download buttons, and links so that you can follow exactly in the wake of what works in your newsletter and what does not.analytics

In your tracking strategy, Remember to track all the measurable objectives like clicks on images, links and track your conversions. You can integrate your email tool with Google Analytics if you want to track the number of visits your newsletter generated for your website. And always make sure that your emails comply with the current privacy policy.

8. Improve your email campaigns

Filter the email campaigns of last year and note down the tracking results and other key performance indicators. Analyze what went well and what needs improvement. Get regular customer feedback in the form of surveys and find out what your customers like and don’t like. With this information, you will be able to easily improve your campaigns.

You can try some online survey tools like Survey Monkey, WebEngage, Engageform.

9. Triggering automatic emails

Triggering auto e-mails are made in various stages of contacting the customer. Automation is a great advantage for your business as it keeps reminding the recipient about your offerings constantly but it also carries the risk of annoying the recipient with frequent e-mails.

auto-emails-jpgAnalyze the open rate and responses from the recipient and create a cheat sheet to get more insights on the following.

  1. What worked in the past?
  2. Which design makes good impressions (CPM) and generates more clicks?
  3. What revisions should you do on the email content? etc.

 

When you keep your email content updated, it would be more effective and rewarding. You can use some of the best free email marketing tools like MailChimp, Mailerlite, Hubspot, Zoho.

10. Timeline for e-mail campaigns

Create an annual overview of your e-mail marketing plan. You don’t have to strictly follow the same plan throughout the entire year. But it is to give a clear direction on when and how to increase the frequency of emails. An annual plan will help you to keep track of the daily businesses and get some space for creative campaigns like Seasonal events such as Thanksgiving, Halloween, Super Bowl which is the best time for targeted marketing.

Now it’s your turn! With these 10 tips, you have a checklist in hand and this should bring more success to your email campaigns.