…Is Still the Best When Business Results Matter
By Ed Pierce, Fleet Industry Marketing Consultant
June 12, 2022
With the hyperbole and hype about digital marketing activities such as social media, content marketing, SEO, and PPC, the first digital marketing tool, email, is still one of the best.
It’s important to nurture leads, convert prospects, and reward repeat customers. Using tested email marketing best practices will help you do just that. These tips can also help you make the most of your email marketing strategy.
Targeted Email Must Be Part of Your Marketing Mix
When setting up a digital marketing campaign, targeted email is a key component. It enables you to reach out directly to customers, while at the same time enabling you to test different variations of the same email. Among other things, a well-crafted email campaign requires clear target audience definition, an optimized mailing list, and timed content distribution.
Furthermore, email campaigns must have comprehensive testing capabilities to help you monetize success and make improvements for the next campaign. Let’s break down the three essential stages of targeted email marketing campaign.
First, you must understand the benefits of targeted email as a digital marketing tool. It helps you to target a specific segment of customers and gives you the opportunity to personalize your communications. Email campaigns are also useful for data analysis, A/B testing, and targeting the public. Finally, email campaigns are an effective way to increase company awareness. Unlike other digital marketing strategies, they are comparatively cheap, so it is important to invest in them.
A Few Simple Rules
In order to be successful with targeted email marketing, you must follow a few simple rules. Make sure to follow the secrets and principles of marketing. Personalization is an important marketing step, and emails that are personalized benefit from 50% higher open rates. Also, ensure that your emails have vibrant graphics and catchy text. By following these rules, you can make your email stand out from the crowd and generate consumer interest. However, personalized emails require a lot of time and effort.
You must measure the effectiveness of the emails sent through targeted email. Targeted email marketing is effective because you can measure how many people took an action after seeing an ad. This helps you justify the money and resources spent on marketing. As you can see, it is also effective in fostering relationships and maintaining customer engagement between purchases. Therefore, you should not ignore this marketing channel. In addition to being an effective marketing channel, targeted email can also be integrated into your marketing automation efforts.
Facts to Support Email Effectiveness
The success of an email marketing campaign can be evaluated through a number of different benchmarks, including open rates, click-through rates, bounce rates, and unsubscribe rates. With the rise in popularity of email as a marketing tool, there is no reason to ignore it. In fact, more marketers are discovering how important email marketing is for their businesses. Here are important facts and statistics about email marketing that can help you make an informed decision about whether or not to use this channel.
Adding the recipient’s name increases the open rate to 76 percent. Personalizing an email with a personalized subject line improves that number. Non-personalized emails have an OR of just 19 percent. According to Optimove, businesses that segment their email lists see an average uplift of $0.90 per email opened compared to those that do not. Emails that contain relevant content are more likely to be opened and clicked.
According to Litmus, more than half of email recipients open emails on mobile devices. Considering the fact that people use mobile devices to read more than their desktop computers, this is a very significant number. Likewise, emails sent with well-designed content receive higher open rates on mobile. It is a good idea to send promotional emails at the appropriate time to encourage subscribers to open them. Most email users do not read emails from unknown sources, and a well-designed email is much more likely to be opened by recipients.
Studies show that 61% of adults prefer to receive emails from brands rather than newspapers. Furthermore, more than half of email users check their email every day, some even twenty times. Moreover, most people check their email before Facebook and Twitter, while 40% of them check their email on their phones while watching TV. Even on vacation, people check their email on their mobile phones. If you are a brand looking to improve your business’s bottom line, consider email marketing as an investment in your business’ success.
Strengths of Email Marketing
One of the strengths of email marketing is its ability to provide personalized value to your customers. The ability to create targeted content and customize your campaign allows you to send personalized emails that your subscribers will be more likely to open and read. Personalization can be as simple as the contact’s first name in the subject line of your email. Studies show that emails with first names in the subject line receive a higher click-through rate than emails without them.
Email marketing can be time sensitive, too. Depending on the intended audience, optimal time to send out marketing emails may vary. A B2B brand will likely want to send emails during working hours, while a consumer-oriented brand will probably target emails during leisure time. However, the link between time and audience can be complicated. For example, a product like hearing aids may be better marketed during the day, as there are more senior consumers who may be interested in them.
Proven Email Creation Process
The best way to build an effective email campaign is to segment your subscribers according to their behavior. Segmenting by first-time subscribers, lapsed subscribers, and inactive subscribers will allow you to create emails that are relevant to each segment. Segmentation will help you track and analyze email performance. Your email sequence will have more success if it includes information that your subscribers actually want to hear. Here are some tips to help you build a highly targeted email campaign:
- Email segmentation: Email service providers help you segment your subscribers into different groups based on their behavior. This makes it easier to tailor your content for each segment.
- Personalized content: Today’s email users expect personalized content, tailored to their preferences and experiences. Fortunately, technology has made email marketing easier than ever. Automation makes email marketing easy and affordable without requiring countless hours of work. Despite the numerous benefits of automation, it is still important to tailor the content to your subscribers. After all, you want to build trust with your audience.
- Highly customizable templates: Email marketers should use email templates that can be customized to match the personality of each audience segment. This is especially useful for email campaigns, as you don’t need to be a graphic designer to create one. Email templates help marketers personalize their content for each segment and help them buy products directly from their inbox. Additionally, some email services allow subscribers to leave reviews on products. In order to maximize the effectiveness of email marketing, email templates should be customizable and easy to use.
- Dynamic content: The most effective email campaigns can be customized by incorporating dynamic content. It should render well on mobile devices. If the recipient cannot read the email content, they will most likely delete it. Dynamic content improves conversions. Personalized content is the future of email marketing. However, it must be integrated seamlessly with other technologies and practices. If you’re not sure what to do, start with an email marketing service today.
Feel free to call me at 484-957-1246 or send an email to me at [email protected] to share your experiences, ideas, and other comments about fleet marketing.