Yes, Email Marketing Still Works – You Just Need to Do it the Right Way
Sure, the average person receives more than 100 emails a day but email still works. Email marketing works 40 times better at finding customers than Facebook and Twitter, and compared to social media, it offers 17 percent higher conversion.
Email marketing is in fact one of the highest converting digital marketing channels, as long as you know what you're doing. Check out our best practices for email marketing the right way.
Despite what you might have heard, it’s still important to have an email list. List building was all the rage ten years ago and companies had to develop opt-in and double-opt-in systems in order to protect themselves from spam accusations. Every entrepreneur and business under the sun offered a newsletter of sorts, and many of them were not put together very well.
And then the social media boom happened.
Many businesses then shifted their focus toward social media strategies rather than email marketing.
What is the state of email marketing today? Is it still worth building a list and creating newsletters?
Yes - when done correctly, it offers personalization and segmentation benefits, as it allows you to specifically target your intended audience. And better targeting leads to higher conversions. According to McKinsey, email is 40 times more effective at acquiring new customers than Facebook or Twitter.
Here are some tips for doing email marketing correctly in 2016 and 2017:
Add your email forms to high-converting places - According to Social Triggers, some of those places include the feature box, the footer of the landing page, and after a single post. Another high-converting place some experts recommend is the splash page. You get the chance to highlight the sign up form with the design of the splash page. Make it one of the first things visitors see when they visit your site.
Utilize omnichannel technology - Make sure your sign up forms and any emails you send will be viewable from mobile devices as well as PC monitors. This can be done with test automation tools, which allow you to do a variety of tests across multiple channels at the same time. One of the main differences between email marketing from 10 years ago and email marketing today is that most internet users check read their emails on small mobile screens instead of computers. If you want it to work now, you must make the emails easy to view and read on all screen sizes.
Optimize subject lines - It does not matter how great your email message or newsletter is - nobody is going to view it if they don’t even bother to open it up. If you don’t come up with a VERY ENTICING subject line, chances are that recipients won’t notice it or care to click on it. Some may even mark it as spam and forget all about it - even if they did sign up willingly and confirm their registration. The only way to avoid this is to put a lot of thought into subject line creation and use keywords that you know your intended audience will take notice of.
Be strategic with send times - Yes, timing is important in email marketing. WordStream warns against sending out email blasts on Mondays, when people are already flooded with work-related emails sent over the weekend. You’ll also want to avoid sending out emails in the middle of the night when people will likely be asleep.
It’s still viable to give something away - One email marketing tactic that has never changed and likely never will change is to give people an incentive to give you their email voluntarily. As long as people love getting free stuff, you have an opportunity to get them to join your mailing list. Free tools and templates in particular are popular incentives. Even after they join your list, you must still fight to keep them. It’s helpful to offer freebies on a regular basis; make sure you use words like “free” in the subject line.
Developing and implementing a good email marketing strategy this day and age requires some research, mobile testing, and creation of free tools and content to offer subscribers. However, as long as you do everything correctly, the investment is worth making.