How to Delight your Customers using Effective Email Marketing Campaigns?
Advertising by email, also known as newsletter marketing or email marketing, is a fast, effective and inexpensive way of online marketing.
Use the informative newsletter to address new or existing customers online! Important for the success of a newsletter: Offer your customers added value. The newsletters can contain guidelines, news, recommendations, announcements and much more.
Email is an important means of communication
Although sceptic suspects that e-mails are becoming increasingly unattractive due to the increasing use of social media as a means of communication and therefore also as a marketing medium, the opposite is rather the case: According to the Research Department, there are 244.5 million email users only within the united states. 63% of American email users have only 1 email account. Additionally, over 1/2 United States respondents check their personal accounts over 10 times each day.
Major reasons to do email marketing:
Direct contact with potential customers – by email
In principle, newsletter marketing is suitable for any company, regardless of size and industry. Because the goals of newsletter marketing are diverse:
- Inspire potential prospects for a product or service.
- Reach and win new customers.
- Inform existing customers and consolidate these customer contacts.
- Reactivate inactive users
The target groups are regularly informed about news from your company, such as events, sales and promotions, but also about useful tips and more.
Companies and newsletter recipients
Depending on the industry, there are different requirements and advantages for customer contact via email:
Ecommerce store:
Operators of ecommerce store usually have a very large number of addresses. You have the option to make individual recommendations based on existing data or to refer to products and promotions. Visit the guide To know more about Email Marketing for Ecommerce Store.
Press and media:
Because of the diverse information and the different interests of the users, media companies especially benefit from automation. A large number of recipients can thus be reached within a short time.
Banks and insurance companies:
Especially in this area providers must handle recipient data with extreme sensitivity. A high level of legal certainty is also assumed by the users – and appreciated!
Tourism:
Newsletter subscribers in the tourism sector are very grateful clientele. Whether new travel destinations, individual tips, offers or suggestions based on previous bookings – the spectrum of possible content is extensive.
The main advantages of newsletter marketing
Regardless of whether you want to spark customer interest, attract new customers, retain existing customers or reactivate them – newsletter marketing is suitable for all phases of the customer life cycle. Use newsletter marketing to target your customers and benefit from numerous advantages:
Automation:
Has a user registered for the newsletter and should it be welcomed? Do you want to inform him about the frequency of the newsletter? Is it the user’s birthday or is there another, defined event? Communication with email marketing can then be automated to a large extent, which means less work for the sender.
Segmentation:
Newsletter marketing should always be tailored to your company and the target group you want to address. As a rule, the users or customers are divided into different groups according to demographic and geographic characteristics and the click behaviour, i.e. segmented. The appropriate newsletter is assigned to each recipient.
Personalization and Emotionalization:
Nobody wants to receive standard cover letters anymore. It doesn’t have to be, after all, newsletters are now very easy to personalize – and not just in terms of how users address them, but often almost completely. In addition, personalization can arouse emotions in your target group.
Measurability:
The success of your newsletter marketing can be measured easily and also quite up-to-date. Opening and click rates, bounces and more can be statistically recorded and analysed. The expected performance can be tested in advance in a small group before sending newsletters to a large group of customers (so-called “A / B testing”).
Newsletter that people like to read
The wording makes the difference. According to a current study, only one in four e-mails was opened last year on average in the industry. This proves: Even the first impression decides whether the recipient finds the newsletter worth reading or lets it go straight to the virtual wastebasket.
Formulate an appealing subject line. This should briefly and briefly outline the content or concern of the newsletter. Is it a special offer, a local campaign or a valuable tip? Then you should mention this in the subject line as specifically as possible. Since many e-mail programs also give a short preview of the first sentence, it should be worded excitingly and summarize the most important things. It is essential to address the recipient personally. If you don’t do that, you create a distance between the company and the customer. In principle, it makes sense to make the text as personalized as possible. This is not only possible on the basis of the available data, but also based on previous user behaviour.
In the best case, the sender of the newsletter should not be a company’s office address, but a direct contact person.
Newsletter layout: score with design
For the newsletter to generate follow-up clicks, it is important to observe some design rules It first makes sense for the newsletter consistently reflect your company’s corporate identity. It is also important that the essential information display in the direct area of the screen; thus, perceived without the user having to scroll. Ideally, this applies not only to the desktop but also to the mobile view. The “call to action”, i.e. the explicit request for action for the reader, must be eye-catching. For example, by displaying it with the help of a button. Such a design tool also helps to structure the newsletter optically. Even short text passages, subheadings, lists, pictures, graphics or the like create clarity and make reading easy.
Choose the optimal delivery time
The time of dispatch is just as crucial as the design of the newsletter. The newsletter can be very interesting – if it is sent at an unfavourable time, it will be read much less frequently.
To determine the optimal shipping time, you should first ask yourself the question: Which target group do I want to reach? If this is answered, the recipients should be analysed in more detail. About when you are most likely to use your PC or smartphone and are open to my newsletter.
In the B2B, i.e. business-to-business area, the recipients are best reached during working hours, i.e. between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. On Monday, ideally in the afternoon and Friday in the morning.
For companies in the B2C, i.e. business-to-consumer sector (also: business-to-client sector), the best newsletter time in the evening is between 6 p.m. and 9 p.m. on working days and throughout the weekend.
However, the experts are often at odds in this regard and numerous studies advise different times for sending newsletters. You can determine the optimal time yourself with the help of tests: Send your newsletter on different days of the week and at different times. Check when you can achieve the highest opening and click rates and determine the best shipping time for your company.
More than “just” sending e-mails
Send a newsletter? Doesn’t sound complicated at first. But behind successful newsletter marketing there is detailed planning, error-free and appealing implementation and then a thorough analysis.
An Email Marketing Campaign takes place in several steps:
First of all, it is important to define target groups for online marketing. The recipient groups are segmented based on existing data (demographic/geographical etc.), the focus of interest and the activity of the users. For this purpose, data should be maintained regularly.
Name your goals! Do you want to retain your customers, win new customers or thank your regular customers? Should the newsletter be sent once or are you planning a series, for example with interesting tips for your recipients on a certain topic? Also, keep an eye on possible occasions/events.
Then it goes to the design of the newsletter. It is important to adapt the layout and style of the mailing to the occasion and the target group.
Before your newsletter is sent out, it is important to personalize it and take anti-spam measures so that it reaches as many recipients as possible and is opened by them. Please also note the data protection guidelines.
Anyone who advertises with newsletters cannot avoid a subsequent evaluation of the success rate of the mailing. It is important to take a look at the so-called key performance indicators (KPI for short).
Legal requirements and data protection
The topic of data protection is extremely important in newsletter marketing. If the data protection guidelines are not observed, the worst-case scenario is a costly warning.
Conclude a contract for order data processing with your newsletter service provider before you enter address data in the newsletter system. It is advisable to refer to the newsletter and its scope in the data protection declaration. If you want to build a high level of trust with your recipients, you should also make it clear that the email addresses of the users are not sold to other companies.
Registration and double opt-in procedure
It is so-called double opt-in procedure is currently required to register for a newsletter. If a user signs up for a newsletter – by the way, only the email address is required as a mandatory field – User will then receive an email with a confirmation link. The User must click on this before it can be included in the distribution list.
It is important to note that the confirmation emails for the newsletter registration must not receive advertising, although they enjoy very high opening rates and therefore seem particularly attractive for advertising. A maximum of the company logo may be displayed in the confirmation email.
Deregistration and legal notice
Every commercial newsletter must contain a link that offers the option to unsubscribe from the mailing. Usually, this works with a simple click; in some cases, feedback is also requested. An imprint is also essential in the newsletter. The sender of the newsletter must therefore be specified here, ideally in the lowest area of the newsletter.
Success indicators in email marketing
The newsletter has been designed, sent and is the job done? Not at all. After all, successful newsletter marketing also includes analysing key performance indicators. The main ones to examine are:
1. Deliverability rate / bounce rate / spam rate
If the address database is not properly maintained and contains incorrect email addresses, the newsletters do not even arrive. The proportion of newsletters that are not delivered is referred to as the bounce rate. This should go to zero if possible. The counterpart to the bounce rate is the deliverability rate. The spam rate, however, describes the proportion of emails that are classified as spam by email clients or the recipients themselves. One way to avoid this is to avoid using typical spam words or phrases.
2. Opening rate
Dozens of emails end up in some mailboxes every day. It is all the more important that your newsletter subject encourages the recipient to read it. On average, however, only every fourth email is opened today. However, counting is also important here – is each individual opening and thus possibly the reloading of the newsletter recorded or is it really only the number of recipients who clicked on the mail that is registered? It therefore makes sense to compare its opening rate over a certain period of time. In this way you can identify trends and optimize the newsletter marketing strategy if necessary.
3. Clickthrough rate
Once the email has been opened, the first hurdle has been overcome, but the click rate, i.e. the recipient’s further clicks on links in the newsletter, are also decisive. Of course, the content is convincing here, but also the visual and stylistic design of the newsletter.
4. Conversion rate
The conversion rate is an important key figure in online marketing and describes the ratio of the conversion. Specifically, how many of the recipients of a newsletter? Following are some of below:
- Bought a product or
- Have registered for an action or
- Have subscribed to a blog etc.
With the conversion rate, it is important to define the goal of the campaign beforehand. What do you want to achieve and how many of the subscribers have you been able to encourage with your newsletter to take the desired action?
5. Logout rate
In view of the large number of newsletters that are sent out every day, it is not surprising that there are unsubscriptions from time to time.
There will always be unsubscriptions. The campaign should only be reconsidered if the rate is constantly high or rising rapidly. The best reason to unsubscribe is to request a feedback on the unsubscription.
Evaluation of the data
Basically, it makes sense to look at your key figures on average and to analyse a longer-term development. This shows how successful or not the newsletter marketing is.
In addition, you should always keep an eye on the goals of the campaign and consider the key figures in this context. Should customers buy something, do you just want to inform them about something, or should new newsletter registrations be the goal? All of these factors need to be considered in the analysis.
The email marketing as an integral part of the marketing mix
Newsletter marketing should play a central role in the marketing mix of a modern company, since it is an important means of communication policy, which is one of the four pillars of the marketing mix alongside the product itself, price and distribution policy.
Social media have indeed gained immense importance in product advertising in recent years; however, companies should not forget that “followers” or “friends” in networks do not belong to the company. In contrast to legitimately collected email addresses. Therefore, this is valuable data that forms part of the company’s capital.
In addition, an email newsletter is more sustainable than communication in social media. Because in most cases a newsletter is read more carefully than postings on Facebook or Twitter.
Emails are generally less promising than print advertising, for example; but they are much faster and more flexible and, above all, inexpensive! The sending time of a mail newsletter also only takes a few seconds; while mailing takes at least one day.
One of best advantage is that email marketing offers great opportunities for synergies.
Some examples:
- In the newsletters, attention can be drawn to the company’s social media channels, which serve PR or image advertising.
- Banner advertising on a homepage can lead to newsletter subscriptions.
- In addition to printed catalogues that appear twice a year, a newsletter offers current trends and campaigns.
- Users can create a profile on a website and are provided with personalized offers based on this data.
- Anyone who purchases a product can, for example, receive a reference to a suitable newsletter in the description, which regularly either presents similar products or addresses exciting topics related to the product.
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