Get the Most from Your Automated Marketing Email Strategy
One of the most effective tools for online marketing is an eCRM strategy. We’ve outlined 6 tips to help you make the most of your automated marketing platform investment and get maximum results for your efforts.
1. Build Your Opt-In Mailing List
One of the best ways to get the most from an eCRM program is to make sure that you are marketing toward a group of customers who want to be marketed to. If you spend a lot of time and money creating email campaigns and initiatives for an audience who doesn't want to hear from you and you can’t understand why your email marketing programs are unsuccessful, you might want to evaluate who you’re sending out emails to in the first place. One of the best ways to ensure you’re speaking to the right audience at the right time, is to organically grow your email lists by creating a form on your website that allows users to opt-in for more information. Be sure that your signup field is directly following useful and engaging content on your website, such as a video or infographic, to make sure they want to come back for more.
2. Provide Users with Useful Content
No one likes a hard sell—people want the option to buy. But a lot of companies create email campaigns designed solely around selling and this minimizes consumer engagement. What you want to do is provide customers with a compelling reason to open your email in the first place. If all you have to show them is a list of items or services for sale, chances are they will quickly skim your email to see if anything catches their eye and delete your email if it doesn't. However, if your eCRM campaign includes providing your customers with valuable content (ebooks, infographics, videos, how-to guides) the likelihood of your target engaging with your email for a longer period of time and taking the desired action greatly increases your chances of success.
3. Offer Incentives in Your Emails
Incentives can be anything from a promotion to a discount code, but the offer must be compelling for the user to want to engage with your email and take the desired action. That could be a click on a link, signing up for a new service or product, or simply requesting more information. But by offering something in exchange for the customer’s interaction with your company, you’re increasing your odds of success.
4. Use Effective Subject Lines to Increase Open Rate
Email subject lines should be engaging, friendly and somewhat teasing to the material in the email it is accompanying. Subject lines should never be written in promotion or sales speak. Make sure you’re familiar with terms and phrases that can increase the chances of your email ending up in SPAM folders. Terms like “Free” and email subject lines with a lot of punctuation tend to get flagged by email service providers looking to help their users cut down on the amount of junk mail they receive. For a better understanding of how to comply with the FTC’s CAN-SPAM Act, click here.
5. Optimize for Mobile
These days more and more people are accessing their email from their smart phones and tablets. If you’re not using email templates designed for mobile as well as desktop, you’re essentially eliminating almost half of your potential customer base from viewing your content in optimal format. According to Adestra, 45% of email opens occurred on mobile, 36% on desktop and 19% in a webmail client. (March 2015). Make sure your email campaigns are viewable in mobile.
6. Prune Your Email Lists
If an email subscriber has failed to take action or engage with any of your email communications over time, remove them from your primary mailing list and place their contact info on another email list in your eCRM program for you to remarket to at another time. This can be whenever you decide—you might have a big announcement to make or have devised a customer win-back strategy. But don’t waste precious resources like time and money marketing to a customer who isn’t interested in hearing from you. Pruning your email lists can not only help you save time and money, but analyze your success rate more accurately.