Exceptional ROI
Of all the digital marketing tools, email marketing generates the most revenue per dollar (for all its popularity, Social Media, is left way behind!).
Presently, $1 invested in Social Media generates an average $12 but $1 invested in email marketing produces… $39!
This probably explains why email marketing is a top budgetary priority of businesses in the United States, right after their website.
A highly effective promotion tool
No less than 77 per cent of people prefer to receive sales promotions by email. (By comparison, only 9 per cent of people prefer to receive sales promotions by snail mail). It is also most effective tool for direct purchases: 66 per cent, compared to 20 per cent for Facebook, for example.
Email marketing: the conditions for success
- Send emails that adapt to the receiver’s screen format
- Customize
- Keep your lists up to date
- Test & measure
- Follow the law – and benefit from it
Success tip #1: Send emails that adapt to smartphones and tablets
- more than 50 per cent of cell phones in Canada are now smartphones
- 78 percent of smartphone owners use their device for email
Problem: less than 1 percent of emails are optimized for mobile screens.
Generally, emails that are not optimized for mobile screen are automatically closed or deleted. And, chances are, an email that has been closed will never be reopened.
In order to be effective and profitable, a marketing email strategy must therefore be optimized for various:
- email software
- devices
- screen sizes (tablets, smartphones and computers)
Your Email communications must designed in a Responsive Design format so that they can be displayed perfectly on mobile devices.
Then there’s the landing page, where users arrive when they click on the link in the email. An effective landing page should also adjust to the operating system and screen size of the device. So ideally, it will actually be a Microsite, also generated in a Responsive Web Design format.
Success tip #2: Customize your emails
Non-customized email can easily be mistaken for spam, which has a major impact on its “deliverability”.
Not surprisingly, personalized email is 2 to 5 times more efficient.
This should provide enough incentive to customize emails, which is far easier to do with the email marketing tools available today.
Success tip # 3: Treat your lists as a garden
This may seem obvious, but it is the most important of all success factors.
Depending on the type of list – subscribers, clients, prospects, contest participants, etc. – up to 25 percent of the data can change every three months.
In order to be effective, a list must therefore be maintained with care: new recipients must be added, and outdated data must be continuously deleted or updated. (The advantage is that your list increasingly becomes like an email marketing CRM.)
Be sure to collect and maintain four types of data:
- Marketing: Which type of product is the recipient interested in? What did he click upon? Which pages did he visit?
- Commercial: Is this person a customer? A prospect? What is the volume and frequency of purchases? When did the person last purchase or order an item?
- Habits: Where does the recipient live? Where and at what time does she check her email?
- Technical information: Which type of device does the person use? What is the screen resolution, the operating system, the email software?
Success tip # 4: Test and measure
In order to do all this correctly, you need to know who you are talking to and direct the conversation accordingly.
Your customer data must be correlated with your overall results, in order to answer questions such as:
- What is the opening rate?
- What is the click-through rate?
- What is the rate of calls, if there are click-to-call links?
- Which approach – advertisement or call to action? – is the most effective with this group?
- Which landing page is the most effective?
Success tip # 5: take into account filters and the anti-spam law
Canada’s anti-spam legislation (CASL) is now a reality. In a nutshell:
- You must get the explicit consent of the recipient, before you send him or her any types of communications that promotes your organization, products or service;
- You must be clear on why you are soliciting this consent;
- You must provide a clear and simple way for the recipient to withdraw this consent at any moment;
- You must indicate clearly the name and address of the sender;
Turn the law to your advantage by seizing this opportunity to renew your business relationship with your customers!
More information on the anti-spam law.
Final hurdle: email filters. To make sure that your emails don’t end up in secondary boxes, send your recipients an invitation to enter your email in their address book.
In other words, your emails must ‘get smart’, in order to avoid being blocked by users, by the law or by access providers!
Conclusion
The future belongs to personalized marketing emails that adapt to each user’s device and habits, and that are part of an overall Responsive Web Design strategy.
