Email marketing is one of the most cost-effective online marketing tools. And contrary to what everyone else thinks, email marketing is not yet obsolete – in fact, it has grown even more powerful than ever.
Anyone may argue that compared to social media marketing or mobile marketing, email marketing is less effective. That is not true. Like many other online marketing tools, email marketing can be the easiest, most effective and most successful to promote your brand directly to your target audience, as long as it’s done in the right way.
In fact, email marketing can bring you ROI that is nearly double the ROI that is achieved through other online marketing methods. Of course, email is not the only channel you should use for your Internet marketing campaign, as having several means of reaching out to your audience can be quite beneficial to your business. That is why email marketing is still important and you should include it to your online marketing campaign, because email is still one of the first things that people check each morning. The right implementation can bring you to the results that you have desired.
Having a solid email list can bring a kind of security – no matter what happens to your accounts on Facebook or Twitter, or even to your own blog or website, you will still have your email list. Some people even build their successful businesses entirely from email marketing alone, which is another proof of its effectiveness.
Here are some of the tips on to have a successful email marketing:
1. It’s all about the quality, not the quantity
Say that you boast 100,000 subscribers on your email list, which is still great. Promoting your numbers like this can be advantageous to your marketing drive.
But these numbers can be misleading, because many of those subscribers may not be genuinely interested in what your business is offering. They may not the audience that you’re targeting about.
First of all, you have to analyze your email list: think about why people should want to subscribe to your list in the first place.
On the other hand, you have to be more precise on why people should subscribe to your newsletter: give them a clear and relevant reason for people to sign up. One of them is launching giveaways and contests, which is probably the fastest way to build up your list. However, you’re going to end up with lots of people who signed up to your newsletter just for the contest. When you are eventually trying to get them to open emails, many of them are not likely to be interested in doing it. Why? Because they are not the right people for your business.
Rather than quantity, you should pay more attention to the quality of your list. Know which of your subscribers are actually engaging with your content, and which of them are actually “ghost” subscribers who only signed up just because of the contest.
There are good ways on how to get people to become active subscribers to your newsletter. Read more to find out.
2. Deals and special offers
Provide more engaging incentives so that more people are likely to sign up to your email list. Offer exciting deals and special offers – according to one study, 22.6% of subscribers say that these are the reasons for subscribing to email newsletters. In this way, you are letting people know that they are joining an exclusive group of subscribers who are given special treatment.
3. Contest and giveaways
Contests and giveaways are some of the fastest ways to get people to subscribe to your email newsletter. As long as they’re done in the right way, they provide a big chance to generate leads and gain quality subscribers along the way.
However, some businesses are doing it with the goal of building up their list, other than gaining quality subscribers. For instance, some people like to launch contests by giving popular and generic giveaways such as smartphones and tablets. You can exponentially grow your list this way – even by tens of thousands! But as implied again, when you eventually try to get people to open your emails, they are not likely to engage with you because they signed up primarily for the contest, not because they are interested with what you’re talking about.
The key to getting the right audience is to make sure that the contest is relevant to them and their interests. Many businesses have a success in gaining quality subscribers after running their own contests, as the giveaways they are offering have a targeted audience. They are online almost all the time and are actively participating on your business website by liking and sharing a lot of your content via social media networks. You can further encourage your active participants who share your content by giving them bonuses.
4. Relevant, attractive and valuable content
People recognize good content when they see it. An attractive visual design and a correct, relevant message in your newsletter are sure ways of compelling your subscribers to open their emails again and again.
However, many online marketers fail in reaching to their subscribers’ inboxes or suffer increased unsubscribe rates because of irrelevant content. Another, many people unsubscribe because they think of your newsletters as spam. Of course, no one will be interested in reading a newsletter that is completely irrelevant to their needs and preferences.
Apart from proper and pertinent content, another key to gaining quality subscribers is getting to know your target audience and finding out what are they interested in and what kind of content they are looking for. You can actually do this by sending surveys or questionnaires for people to fill out. Take advantage of the popularity of social media by connecting your newsletter to your Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn accounts.
LinkedIn is especially a very good platform but it is quite under-utilized. There are many advantages to using LinkedIn as a good source of prospects, due to the general business content of the site. For example, if your newsletter is focused on entrepreneurship, you will have a good chance on LinkedIn to find your target audience since it includes other business owners.
Did we say attractive visual design? Aesthetic factors also play a large part in building up your email list. Almost all people own smartphones these days, and they use them to browse and read anything on the go. Make sure your newsletter is optimized for mobile devices for their reading ease and pleasure.
5. Using email list for retargeting
Email retargeting is a simple yet very effective way to boost your online marketing campaign through the use of display advertising.
For those who are not yet familiar with retargeting, it is a marketing method where online advertising is targeted to customers who have previously done a certain action or behavior online. Here’s an example of retargeting:
Someone visits your website. As they come back to check it out again, they will begin to see ads that appear on your site, which brings them back and allows your brand to gain traction. Every time they see those retargeting ads, your brand begins to gain more leverage and recognition. Those high clicks they make on your ads lead to conversions, which is the typical with retargeting campaigns. This emphasizes the value of a reputable branding and frequent exposure.
It is actually easy to implement. Place a single line of code to your website. This creates a list of visitors who check out your website by putting anonymous retargeting “cookies” on their own browsers. In this way, visitors – your potential customers — are tagged, and they are served with ads around the web.
Email retargeting works precisely in the same way, but the difference is that you focus on targeting potential email subscribers rather than website visitors. You put a single line of code in the HTML of your email or your email signature. Once someone opens your email newsletter, later they will be served ads around the web.
Email retargeting is one of the easiest, most convenient and most powerful marketing methods, as it allows your brand to be in front of the email list without having to send more emails, which can risk being labeled as spam or risk unsubscription.