What to Know About Email Marketing
These days, social media is universally considered the humble beginnings for everything worth knowing, whether they be buzzwords, trends or new venues and businesses. So, with an ever-growing number of platforms and even larger audience, it’s no wonder that must businesses turn to social media for their marketing needs. Yet, 94% of adults still utilise their email on a daily basis as a prevalent platform for checking the news, connecting with others and to follow updates and insights from their favourite brands. So, while social media can be effective, don’t forget that an effective email marketing strategy can be a huge asset for your business!
The purpose of an email marketing, or electronic direct mail (EDM), strategy is to grow your audience database and trigger traffic to your links, products or website. When marketed correctly, EDMs can be used to develop customer relationship management (CRM) for both existing and new customers. It also helps to maximise the value of your customers by offering deals, unique happenings or exclusive updates. Since EDM is all online with very little restriction to what you can do as a business, it’s cost-effective, highly targeted and is super measurable for ROI and CRM growth.
So just how can you make the most out of an email marketing strategy? Here are our top 3 tips:
1. Database Building
The first step to putting together a successful EDM campaign is to build a database of customers. You may start out small, but over time you’ll collect more contacts whether through customer subscriptions, any competitions you run or other connections you make. What’s important is to make sure that everyone whose contact details enter your database knows that they’ll be sent regular emails. Depending on what kind of EDMs you’ll be sending out, you may also want to group your database so that you can filter accordingly and make sure that each EDM hits your target audience to get the right reception.
2. The EDM
When composing your EDM, make sure that it’s succinct and visually appealing for your audiences. Again, based on which group of customers you want to send this out too, you want to ensure that you’ll pique their interest from the subject line. Also, make sure the EDM is mobile-friendly! After all, it’s so common for all of us nowadays to be checking our emails when we’re on the go. You’ll also have to consider how often you want to be mailing out an EDM. Base this decision on what your business is offering, how often this changes and how your audiences react to what you’re sending them.
3. Managing Results
No two EDMs are the same, nor should they be! Each EDM should be part of a uniquely tailored email marketing strategy for its audiences and, based on the results acquired after send out, this strategy can be moulded and changed to suit your needs. Depending on the mailing service you choose, you’ll most likely have the option to measure your results by tracking how well EDMs are performing. This can be based on factors such as how many people opened the emails, clicked on certain links or even unsubscribed. Take the time to analyse these results, as they will help you to constantly improve your strategy. By comparing different EDMs that have been sent out, a business can gauge what their audience likes to see or read.
If you’re interested in seeing how you can utilise email marketing for your business but aren’t sure where to start, MBP is here to help! Get in touch today to see how can optimise your first EDM campaign.