A short article on simple ways to improve email marketing. Like this article, your emails should be concise, informative and useful.
*This article takes into account a familiarity with automated email marketing and average engagement metrics.
Automated email marketing campaigns are an essential part of every marketing strategy. Emails are designed to be tracked and monitored so that campaigns are constantly adjusted as needed for the best impact. But Without understanding what to adjust and how, improved engagement may not happen. Email marketing can either be a great tool or it can annoy people. Automated marketing still requires some customization. Just like with everything else happening in fashion and fashion tech space, customization is still needed to improve engagement.
Let's face it: a large majority of people will not open your emails even if they are loyal current customers. but don't take it personally. The newly added "unsubscribe" button has made it even easier to avoid unwanted/unimportant emails. Not everyone is immediately deleting your email (across all industries at least 25% of email are are opened). For those who do open the email, why not craft an experience that is worth their time and leaves them wondering when the next notification pops up in their phone from you.
Two things that can improve your email marketing efforts:
Customization/ Localization and Usefulness.
In this context, localization deals with creating content that resonates with the intended target group based on geography and other environmental attributes. Customization deals with creating customized content for a specific group based on their preferences. Different jobs, ages and locations all have different ways of absorbing content, so understanding how to categorize them is important.
A detail specific grouping of customers is essential for better engagement. It may take more time to further define each group and customize their content, but the value is obvious. I can not tell you how many companies send emails without understanding the language, recent events or even regional formats of the intended reader. As a result, companies miss their opportunity to introduce a solution that may have been needed. Having better content customization efforts can help you to make a great impression and earn the interest and respect of your intended audience.
Your probably assuming you already have this downpact, perhaps, but if you aren't seeing a CTR of at least 4.5% (The average across industries), then you need to keep reading..
To further customize and localize, companies can implement the use of their "personas" or archetype customers. Smaller companies can do a bit of research and develop their own. ( see below for example archetype I created based on a denim study I conducted). Maintaining detailed and updated personas are most important when seeking to customize and localize content for a specific category. Personas will differ by country, region, role, age, sex, interests and occupation. These personas must work hand in hand with all marketing efforts,so having them correct, detailed and specific is super important. Sending out generic emails across hundreds of people will not result in the metrics needed for increased engagement and readers may find them to be useLESS.
The second part of increased engagement has to do with usefulness: Whatever your product or service is, the usefulness of your product or service should be obvious at every touch point for the customer. Usefulness creates excitement and anticipation around your emails because they add value. Your customer will know how VALUABLE your information is and will always want to open your emails. For businesses, there are three main things that are useful to focus on and no, it's not your thought provoking observations on the industry:
1. Solve a problem- Nothing is more helpful than a solution to a problem. Do some research and find out what problems the customers in your particular industry has and use emails to demonstrate how you can solve them. You don't have to give a full-on demo of your product. Solving your consumers everyday problems are also helpful (tips and tricks!). Simply pick and choose a problem you know you can solve and offer that information. Couple this with a call to engagement so that interested readers can follow up for more.
2. Make it faster- I'm not sure about everyone else but as a millennial, work life balance is super essential. Everyone ( should) want to make their jobs easier by being able to achieve the same goals at faster rates. If you can show how you can save time, then lead with that! Everyone loves efficiency. We live in the Information Age and people are quite savvy with gathering information now. Position your product as a time saving solution, so that your customers will trust and engage with you as often as possible.
3. Save money- money matters on every level of the business. If you can help businesses shave off a few dollars here and there then they need to know that immediately! Avoid sales-like pitches and instead focus on the needs you know your particular customer personas have regarding money and appeal to those needs. Keep it short, simple and to the point!
Creating content around these three focuses are an easy strategy for generating more engagement. But these categories still have to be customized based on the personas. This may be a daunting task at first, because it is so detailed oriented, but once you have a clear understanding of each persona, a talented content developer can mold your messages into a more persona based campaign.
Detailed personas and customized content will separate average email marketing performance from superior marketing performance. Helping you get above and beyond the average email marketing engagements. Be creative and have fun. For some awesome examples of creative specific content check out this article from hubspot.
For more information, email me!