The power of email marketing and why it’s NOT dead!

Believe it or not, email marketing started over 40 years ago back in 1978!

It’s evolved a lot since then, but the premise has stayed the same; email marketing helps businesses to get in front of the right audience.

But it’s not always as simple as pressing the send button and waiting for the conversions to roll in; there are many things to consider before you find that sweet spot. In this article, we share some wise words about the power of email marketing from our wiz-kids that help Halo deliver first-class emails on the daily!

A survey from Hubspot said that 51% of marketers say email marketing is the most effective marketing channel!*

Email marketing ‒ the must haves

We all understand the overwhelm of a full inbox ‒ it all becomes a blur unless something catches your eye. So, you want to do everything you can to improve your email’s chances of getting noticed, and opened. Here are just a few best practices we follow:

• Write engaging subject lines and pre-headers that reflect the content of your emails 
• Don’t just use clickbait to improve the open rate 
• Create an engaging and consistent brand tone, look and feel for your emails 
• Mix up the content for each send
• A/B test your messaging and imagery 
• Include clear call to actions throughout your email sends

“Proactive email campaigns have really shaped many of my clients’ marketing strategies and allowed their audiences to be nurtured through their journey to becoming a customer. Post-customer comms have also helped with repeat business and customer retention.”

Tiffany Hibberd, Account Manager at Halo

What are the best email marketing platforms?

If you’re starting from scratch and unsure which platform you should invest in, here are a few of our favourites: 

Mailchimp – a solid choice, Mailchimp is used by a lot of businesses in a range of industries and is typically the first one that will spring to mind. It does, however, have its limitations and definitely isn’t a CRM system. This means that customer journeys and audience personalisation can be a bit hard work. The interface, however, is super easy to use and building emails is relatively straightforward.

Klaviyo – this is a great choice for e-commerce businesses in particular. As you build your audience, each person’s journey will be tracked, so you can see their purchase history, email open and click path and what pages on your website they’re looking at, etc. It will also give you an estimated re-purchase date, so you can target them at the best possible time. The email builder is fairly simple to get your head around if you have some previous email experience. 

There are a ton of options when it comes to choosing which platform you use, and they all have their pros and cons, you’ll want to consider the following: 

• What is the platform cost per send?
• Does it work on a subscription basis?
• Are you provided with pre-build templates?
• What automation functionality is available? 
• Can you carry out A/B tests? 
• What data security is in place?

Do your research, or, even better, get in touch with us and we can help you make the right choice.

Building your mailing list with quality data

(this is super important!)

Quality data = quality leads…fact! One question we get asked a lot is, “Where’s the best place to buy data?” In truth, buying data isn’t something we’d recommend. You want your data to be full of people that have shown some kind of interest in your business, or at least the subject of your service or product. Here are some tips on building your mailing list… 

Make sure your website is set up correctly for data collection – this could be anything from a pop-up to a footer sign-up form to a tick box on your main contact form.

Reach out to your social media followers – if you’ve managed to build a successful social media following, then this audience is a brilliant place to go to to build your mailing list. 

Engage potential customers with enticing competitions and giveaways – this is a highly effective tool for data collection. Potential customers trade their data for the chance to win something; everyone loves a competition and it really can work wonders!         

Should I consider automation?

Yep, 100%.

Automation is a no-brainer. As we start marketing to a generation that has AI at their fingertips and spend a considerable amount of time on their phone, they expect more from their marketing comms. 

In fact, Generation Z (those born between 1997 – 2012), consume an average of 10.6 hours of online content every day compared to Millennials (those born between 1981 – 1996), who consume an average of 8.5 hours a day.* 

The more personalised and specific your email comms are, the better, so using data segmentation can work wonders for your marketing strategy. Other automations such as ‘abandoned cart’ emails also have huge pros, with the average click through rate of these campaigns being over 40%.

How do I know if my email marketing is performing well?

Reporting should be carefully monitored and any good email platform should include analytics for each of your email sends. Here are some email marketing benchmarks that are good to be aware of: 

• Average open rate (across all industries) – 21.33%* 
• Average click through rate (across all industries) – 2.62% 
• Did you know? The best performing industry for click rates is hobby related marketing communications

How much does email marketing cost and how long will it take?

It’s tricky to pinpoint a specific cost for your email marketing, as it depends how you manage the process. Some platforms are free to use, whereas others have a monthly subscription fee based on how many emails you send or the size of your audience. 

If you’re following our recommended best practices, you’ll want to take into consideration time for copywriting, designing and building the emails. You also want to make sure you have sufficient time to review the performance of your campaigns, as this can help to refine them next time.

Ready to improve your email marketing?

As a full-service marketing agency that designs and builds hundreds of emails for our clients each year, we’ve had our fair share of success when it comes to open rates, click through rates and conversions through email.

If your business is looking to up its email game, get in touch with our team. We can carry out an email audit email audit so we’re in a better place to advise on the next steps, this includes, but is not limited to:Reviewing what’s worked

• Understanding what’s not worked
• Reviewing your performance and results
• Looking at the copy and imagery you’re using
• Understanding if its setup correctly
• Reviewing your database
  

Alternatively, if you’ve not delved into the world of email marketing yet, let’s help you get started!

References

*https://wearearise.com/generation-z-spend-10-6-hours-a-day-engaging-with-online-content-every-day#:~:text=The%20UK%2Dfocussed%20report%20revealed,with%20online%20content%20every%20day

** https://mailchimp.com/resources/email-marketing-benchmarks