Email marketing is one of the oldest tools of the trade. Companies big and small have used it to introduce a new service, provide discounts or promo details, give out freebies and issue announcements. Today, however, there are numerous effective digital marketing tools available to businesses. So is email marketing still relevant? Absolutely!
Here’s why: A survey found that global active email users will touch 4.6 billion by 2025, i.e. a little over 50% of the current global population will be using emails. In 2020, even during the pandemic, 306 billion emails were sent every day. A study found that this number will reach 376 billion by 2025.
Moreover, email marketing provides incredible returns: $42 for every $1 spent. And these results are independent of geography. So it’s easy to understand why 59% of B2B marketers who were surveyed said they used email marketing as their primary lead generation tool. The cherry on the top is that 72% of customers too prefer receiving emails for promotional messages.
In a nutshell, in 2022 and the years that follow, email marketing is going to reign as an all-important digital marketing and lead generation tool. The only question is: Are you equipped to make the most of it? As a leading email marketing agency, we’re sharing 5 tips with you that will help you ensure success.
Email marketing tips to make use of in 2022 and beyond
Create an email marketing calendar
An email marketing calendar helps you plan the content and flow of information in advance so that you can ensure consistency all year round. With a calendar in hand, you can make sure that you are addressing all relevant topics. More importantly, you can design content smartly and create a schedule for delivery. With a calendar in place, you will be able to communicate relevant information periodically. This will serve three objectives.- Firstly, it will build brand awareness and recall.
- Secondly, it will guide your audience through the purchase cycle.
- Lastly, when you follow a calendar, you won’t miss out on communicating important information. What’s more, by providing information periodically, in snackable, bite-sized pieces, you’ll prevent a sensory overload.
Leverage social media
You can boost the efficacy of an email marketing campaign when you combine it with the power of social media. Incidentally, both email and social media marketing help you humanize your brand, increase traffic, and build a rapport with your target or prospective customers. So, even if your strategies for email and social media marketing campaigns are different, you can merge the two cleverly. Here are a few measures that you can take to use social media to fuel email marketing and vice versa.- Collect email IDs from social media handles.
- Use your subscriber list for better ad targeting on social media.
- Invite email subscribers to follow you on social media and vice versa. Incentivize this with a reward.
- Build an exclusive social media community for email subscribers, where you provide extra value.
- Use social media listening to identify your audience’s pain points, wants, needs and wishes, and address them via compelling emailer content.
Personalize your emails
A single member of your target audience is probably receiving hundreds of promotional emails every day. So the need to stand out from the crowd has never been greater. One way of doing this is via hyper-personalization. Personalizing emails increases click rates by 14% and conversions by 10%. You can start by collecting marketing data from various platforms and use it to provide greater value to your prospective clients. Here are some other simple tips that you can implement for greater success.- Segment email lists based on behaviors
- Utilize shopping patterns and triggers
- Send emails on special occasions
- Send updates/actionable information regarding products/services purchased
- Suggest relevant products/services based on existing purchases, or products/services that someone has shown interest in in the past
- Send emails at the right time to improve the click-through rate (CTR)
Prioritize mobile devices
As of 2021, 15 billion mobile devices are used worldwide and this number is likely to reach 18.22 billion by 2025. What does this mean? The days of creating an email for desktop viewing and then optimizing it for mobile devices are gone! Going forward, make sure your email content follows a mobile-first approach. This is crucial, because while the total email open rate for mobiles was 81% in 2020, in a survey, 80% of responders said they would immediately delete an email that is not compatible with their device. So, ensure that any email that you design is responsive and recalibrates regardless of the operating system, size of screen, etc. And, as always, carry out rigorous A/B testing.
Focus on visual appeal
We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again: An email that comprises only long reams of text is a sure-fire way to put off your audience. This sentiment is only going to get stronger in the years to come. In a world where your target audience is most used to consuming visual, video-based content (think Instagram Reels and TikToks), you have to update your approach to email marketing for it to have the intended impact.
While you’ll surely have a lot to say to your audience, resist the urge to do so. Brevity is key. Crisp copy, combined with superlative visuals is the way to go. Use images, GIFs, animations, and short videos to build engagement and interest recipients in taking specific actions. What’s more, following this strategy will also improve the overall customer experience and the click-through rate (CTR).
Once you have an email marketing campaign in place, track it frequently. Analyze performance to get an idea of what is working and what is not, so you can problem-solve and optimize. If you still aren’t getting the results you have envisioned, reach out to Resolute B2B. Our highly-skilled team will fix the problem right away.
