When digital marketing tools and technologies advance, email marketers must constantly review their approach with email marketing skills in order to remain ahead of the curve in terms of connecting with subscribers.
Given that there are currently 3.7 billion email users on the planet, email marketing remains the most common method of digital outreach. However, 53% of those consumers say they get so many promotional emails from brands. How do businesses overcome email overload to guarantee that their messages are read and clicked?
Email Marketing – Meaning
The practice of communicating with leads or clients by email for promotions, acquisition, sales, or information sharing is known as email marketing. It helps company owners to communicate with their customers and keep them updated on the latest business deals a company has to deliver.
Email marketing is cost-effective, and you can analyze consumer behavior and streamline the plan to deliver different incentives depending on the customer’s preferences. A working professional reviews his or her email 15 times per day on average. As a result, there’s a good chance of attracting user interest.
Email Marketing – Importance
It can be enticing for advertisers to pursue a digital platform that offers better lead production and conversion rates as technology advances. Email marketing isn’t a novel concept. However, it’s worth noting that email marketing has survived because of its success, while other emerging channels have faded as quickly as they rose to prominence.
So, why is this important to you? Marketers will use email marketing to build one-on-one partnerships with their subscribers and long-term relationships that can continue to convert.
Before you start honing your email marketing skills, keep in mind that the current consumer journey is also changing. Previously, the journey resembled a cone, with a potential buyer learning about the product and moving down the pipeline before they made a decision.
Marketing also has several touchpoints that enable marketers to communicate with and capture leads at every level of the consumer experience, thanks to technological advances. People spend less time on sales, and the majority of them are guided around the funnel on their schedule. Welcome emails, transactional emails, newsletter alerts, and other email marketing touchpoints help provide these touchpoints.
Email Marketing vs Social Media Marketing
Although advertisers continue to pay attention to and invest in social media, it is becoming apparent that this medium is losing favor with customers. In reality, according to a recent Edelman survey, 40% of people said they had removed at least one of their social media profiles because they didn’t trust the sites with their personal information.
The digital audience is aware of how influencers are compensated, how “fake news” is spread, and how retargeted advertisements are sent to their newsfeeds. People are also looking for alternative platforms to engage with brands in a more authentic and less-regulated way, as shown by the latest events around Facebook’s data privacy concerns.
Though social media isn’t going anywhere anytime soon, smart advertisers will know that a social-only digital approach is no longer viable. For email advertisers, this is fantastic news! With social media slowing, email marketing is more critical than ever to offer engaging contact that lets each subscriber feel disconnected from the pay-per-click algorithm they’ve been accustomed to.
Skills to implement in your email marketing strategy
Now that you know how important email marketing is, it’s time to get started on your strategy by using some email marketing hacks. Let’s look at six email marketing skills to prioritize in your next campaign so you can keep on top of the latest developments and enjoy the full benefits of this platform.
1. Automation and Personalization
Personalization and automation remain two of the most effective email marketing strategies. What is the reason for this? Consumers are fed up with sending meaningless newsletters that aren’t tailored to their specific requirements.
Personalization in 2021 extends beyond the use of merge tags to include names in the body text or topic line. The aim of the email marketer, with a wealth of data at their disposal, is to provide subscribers with answers to their problems.
When engaging with your subscribers, use their location data, purchasing history, and other information to create personalized promotions that will pique their attention. You can also set up automated trigger emails to provide a customized experience focused on the behavior of your subscribers. If a customer leaves an item in their cart but does not complete the order, you can send an email to remind them to check out by mentioning the exact product.
Personalization and automation will help you improve commitment and customer satisfaction, which can help you create a trust for your subscribers and keep them out of the spam folder.
2. Interactive Content
Every year, interactive content expands, and 2021 is no different. Marketers will communicate with subscribers in a new way with GIFs, images, forms, feedback, and more thanks to a variety of style options—GIFs, videos, forms, reviews, and more. The best thing is that subscribers will engage with the company without ever leaving the email. In fact, interactive content generates 2x the conversions as passive emails, according to recent studies.
Provide a way for subscribers to leave product reviews without having to open a new browser window, or taking a travel personality questionnaire before booking a hotel room. Your subscribers will be more amused and updated as a result of these contact points and will be more likely to open your emails and make a purchase.
3. Accessibility
Recent technological advances are paving the way for people of all abilities to connect digitally, which opens up new marketing possibilities. This is a big step forward in technical innovation, considering that 285 million individuals have visual disabilities, and color blindness affects one out of every 12 males and one out of every 200 females.
To start developing accessible emails you can maintain a logical reading order of left-to-right and top-to-bottom for all screen sizes, and use a single-column arrangement and choose the complementary text and background colors so that those who are not open to light will see a significant gap between the two.
Also, provide alt text for images that explains what each graphic means, and use heading elements like <h1>, <table>, and <body> to keep the email’s framework and structure intact.
4. Mobile-Optimized
Customers are using their smartphones at every step of the customer experience, from making meetings to studying a brand’s product ratings. Since 54 percent of emails are already read on mobile devices, it’s critical to optimize the email strategies if you want to create brand loyalty and engage with your subscribers on their terms.
Be sure to remember every step of the consumer experience when creating mobile responsive campaigns. Not only should the email interface be sensitive and pleasing to the eye, but so should the icons, landing pages, and any other step you wish your subscribers to take. The experience would be much easier for your subscribers if every step of the journey is streamlined, and they will be more likely to communicate with your future content.
5. Artificial Intelligence
Artificial intelligence (AI) is no longer just a buzzword; it’s a way to speed up the process of processing consumer data and ensuring that the subscribers get valuable information. Data research used to be time-consuming and labour-intensive, but with AI, advertisers can easily learn about the types of content that are being consumed, subscriber fitness, segmentation choices, headline tips, and more.
AI will assist email marketers in improving their new campaigns by giving them information based on their previous behavior. You’ll have a higher retention rate if you use this technology to show your subscribers that you’re paying attention to their needs.
6. Social Media Integration
An email marketer’s KRA isn’t just about sending great emails. They’re still in charge of gradually expanding the list, which leads to further buying orders. Depending solely on the regular emails would not suffice, despite the fact that this is one of the main foundations of an email campaign. As a result, knowing how to persuade people to sign up for newsletters via social media will be a huge plus. You might put a sign-up form on your social media accounts that direct users to your regular updates. This will be accomplished by sharing a story that sets hopes for the future and leads us to our next point.
7. Copywriting
Email marketing jobs necessitate excellent communication skills. The subject line is the first thing people see in their inbox, and it can make or break an email. You must tell them something that they like to hear or something that is exceptionally imaginative and captures their attention. After that, there’s the email body, which should follow a narrative flow. Marketers must be clever in order to make their email’s case as dynamic as possible. As a result, we can deduce that email marketing necessitates exceptional contact abilities.
This is where copywriting enters the picture. The content, expression, vigor, and CTAs should be tailored to the customer’s preferences and stage of the journey. To keep the viewer engaged, carve out the right models and upgrade/experiment with design on a regular basis.
Conclusion
Throughout 2021, email marketing will continue to grow, and it will be critical for advertisers to remain on top of trends and determine which approaches will resonate with their target audiences. You will send more impactful emails to create relationships and loyalty with your subscribers if you learn these email marketing skills and guidance.