The most common form of online marketing over the years has been Email Marketing. Even though it has become conventional, it is still one of the most preferred communication channels for marketers.
There has been a huge shift in the way marketing is done, especially with the introduction of social media. But does that mean email marketing is no longer effective?
No! Even today, email marketing is quite effective but just like every other thing that requires improvisation or a change over time, email marketing, too, requires a change in its approach.
In this write-up, I am going to share how to do email marketing the right way in 2020. Let’s begin.
What is Email Marketing?
In the simplest words, making use of emails to promote your products or services is what we call as Email marketing. But it doesn’t just involve promotion.
Email marketing is the beginning of your relationship with your potential customers, and to make that relationship successful, it needs to be given time and effort plus you need to provide some value to your prospects.
It requires regular communication to understand your clients so that you could pitch them your products as per their response.
Email Marketing Best Practices 2020
Follow the below mentioned best practices for email marketing.
1. Let your subject line arouse Curiosity
If you want your email subscribers to pay attention to your emails, the subject line has a major role to play. The email content inside would not even matter if your subject line does not stand out. And that way your email would either remain unopened or land in the spam folder after some time.
To have a high email open rate, make sure the subject line is catchy and arousing curiosity to open it, but at the same time, it should not be vague or misleading like a click-bait.
2. Show a bit of Creativity in the Email Content
The job does not end if you have successfully made your prospects open your emails with a tempting subject line. The email content is equally important. Both of them complement each other. If the content is not interesting, the email subjects can lose their importance over time.
Imagine for a second. Impressed by the subject line, your subscribers opened your email expecting the content to be as amazing as the subject but after a while, they find it too boring.
What would happen? First, you will have low click rates. Second, they might even unsubscribe. Third, they would not fall for the subject line in the future.
But if your content is amazing that keeps them engaged, they will be waiting to receive your email updates. This way, you will have a higher open rate as well as higher click rate.
To write awesome content, keep it as crisp as you can. Write in plain and easy to understand English. Keep a flow and add a bit of humour element in it as well. Yes, you should be professional but too much of it can kill the interest. There should be friendliness.
3. Segment your Audience
It is important that your emails are delivered to the right audience instead of any random subscriber. While it can be useful to some, it can be totally irrelevant to others. This does not leave a good impression and can often lead to your subscribers unsubscribing from your emails.
So what should you do? Segmentation is the answer. Segment your email database into relevant categories and target them accordingly. There is no point sending emails to those prospects for whom the email is not relevant.
4. Do not Spam
A normal user receives a heck of emails every day. And no one has this much time to open every single email. Thus, you should restrict yourself from sending emails too often. Continuous messaging can land your messages in the spam folder.
Understand that people have subscribed to you because they feel it is something valuable. If you bombard them with emails, the value declines. And remember quality always matters over quantity.
Limit your email frequency and maintain the quality.
5. Remove Inactive Subscribers
There will be many in your email subscribers’ list who never respond to your emails. They do not even open your emails, let alone paying attention to the inside content.
So, it would be better if you clean them off your list. I am sure you would have tried many attempts to engage them but got no sign. In such cases where your subscribers have not shown any kind of indication in the past six months or a year maximum, removing them would make more sense.
Email Marketing Trends and Strategy 2020
Let’s check out the email marketing strategies and trends that would help you in your email marketing campaigns in 2020.
1. Go Mobile
The count of mobile phone internet users is exceeding rapidly. Majority of the people today are using hand-held devices to browse the Internet, be it for surfing social media or checking their emails.
So if you have not made your emails mobile-friendly, you can face a downfall in mobile traffic. When you are sending emails, make sure that the text, as well as the visuals, fit well both in desktop and mobile. Sometimes, visuals do not look as appealing on mobile as they look on desktop. They take time to load and do not fit properly with the screen. It often leads to users bouncing off within a fraction of seconds.
Optimize your emails for mobile. It has a higher potential to increase your email open rate.
2. Add testimonials in your Email content
It’s a good move to showcase what your customers think about your products or services in your emails. Whatever you are trying to pitch to your potential customers, try adding some testimonials related to it inside the email. Testimonials are influential and can bring positive results.
You have very limited time to impress your prospects. And within that time, you need to hit your point right. By displaying testimonials, you can develop interest inside them and make them keen to check it out.
3. Personalize your Emails
Adding a personal touch to your emails can deliver much better results than without it. You need to make your subscribers feel that it is them whom you are talking to in personal else it sounds like an automated message that has been set same for all.
For example, if I am receiving an email that says Hey or Dear Customer and there is another email that starts with Hey Manish or Dear Manish, the latter would catch my attention immediately. This is what you need to do as well.
And it does not mean that you need to reach out to every prospect individually. You can make use of your customer data and put a first name tag on your emails. Almost every email marketing tool provides email personalization.
Personalized email marketing has been in the trend for quite some time now and it is here to remain in 2020 as well.
4. A/B Testing
A/B testing always helps when you are running an email marketing campaign. It helps you find out which kind of emails users are finding more helpful. You can know which email at what time is having more open and click rates as compared to the other. It provides you with an opportunity to improvise your approach and make changes accordingly.
5. Set your timing right
Ok, let’s say you have subscribers from all around the world. Will sending emails to all at one time make sense? Definitely No! There would be no point of sending an email to a subscriber who is receiving it at 4 am or 11 pm.
This is why I previously mentioned that it is important to segment your subscribers so that emails are delivered to the right audience at the right time.
The Bottom Line
Email Marketing is not going anywhere. It is here to stay not just even in 2020 but for many upcoming years. Just go with the trend, notice the changes in the approach and try to come up with some creative thoughts every now and then instead of following a mainstream approach every time.
What’s your take on email marketing for the year 2020? Do let me know in the comments below.
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