UPDATE YOUR EMAIL MARKETING STRATEGY

It’s 2015 and Email Marketing is more important than ever, especially if your business relates to eCommerce. In fact, according to Custora, email marketing accounts for approximately 7 percent of all eCommerce user acquisitions, making it second only to search (15.8 percent). This means your Email Campaign is a key component of your digital marketing strategy. It should also encompass new trends and advances in the field and improve the sales persuasion quotient (SPQ) of your brand.

Lead generation means keeping and attracting prospects and aligning your sales funnel with a highly engaging story of your brand. While the content and quality of your product will dictate a lot of the success of your marketing pitch, here are a few tips to keep in mind:

Level 1: Relevance

• Be Relevant - Segment your Campaigns.
• Make sure to design your content for the device and maintain Responsive Design.
• Use Augmented (non-text) Content more and more (Infographics, Video campaigns, Podcasts). The competition for attention is fierce.

Level 2:  Dynamic 

• Move towards Marketing Automation, discover software tools that utilize predictive analytics to mine your CMR and POS more dynamically, this will reduce churn and help your brand do better all through the customer’s journey and lifecycle.
• Leverage critical customer moments with Triggered Emails (For example, if a visitor seems to be about to pull the trigger on a purchase but abandons the shopping cart, this action can trigger an email that re-engages him. If he doesn’t return and make a purchase after the first reminder, you can add him to your lead nurturing campaign to keep him in the sales funnel)
• Personalize everything, find a way to stand out without sounding inauthentic. Personalized subject-lines and calls-to-action are popular.(CTAs)

Level 3: Funnel Diversification 

• Introduce gamification design skilfully and organically into your Website to create branding identification opportunities.
• Market automation interactions, MAIs are key micro-moments that are common in Ecommerce at least at the following vectors: 1) Shopping cart reminders 2) Reminders based on search history 3) Cross-sell emails. Think about what these might mean in the case of your products/services/industry.
• Short catchy Subject lines, since these are the front line sellers (FIS) of your brand in your eCampaign, pay special attention to which work the best for your in harnesting open rates and click-throughs. They should be segement relevant and short, above all.
• Create an atmosphere for the Customor Journey, this means harnesing imagery, archetypes and narrative and should be primarily visual. Your Email campaign can point to social media that features visual themes like instagram, pinterest and video promotions. Make clickable images as well.
• Use Soundcloud to host podcasts that create further immersion within the Customer Journey and identification with the actors of the brand. Stimulate all the senses, assume extreme bordom and competition for the time of your audience.
• Piggyback on trending social media such as Stream live with Periscope.

Studies of Best Practices: 

In one One study they found that sending segmented, promotional emails to specific list segments increased open rates by 14 percent and improved click-through-rates by approximately 15 percent. Segmentation also reduced bounce rates, spam report rates, and unsubscribe rates.

A site we like very much, Litmus, assures us that a staggering 53 percent of emails are now being opened on a mobile device. This number is only going to rise, making it critical for you to incorporate responsive design into your eCommerce or Digital email marketing strategy. (we’ll have to see how popular these wearble smart watches become).

Experian launched study that demonstrates how emails using responsive design show an increase of up to 63 percent in click-through-rates and 18 percent in transaction rates, you simply can’t afford to ignore it.

Aberdeen Group showed that personalization improves click-through-rates by 14 percent and conversion rates by 10 percent. Personalized subject lines and calls-to-action are especially compelling:

• Subject Lines: Emails with personalized subject lines have 26 percent higher unique open rates than non-personalized emails. (Experian)
• Calls-to-Action: Personalized calls-to-action (CTAs) have a 42 percent higher view-to-submission rate than CTAs that are the same for all website visitors. (HubSpot)

Your Email Campaign can not only showcases your brand but increase the “pop” of your customer interactions and authenticity of your brand. Standing out means doing all these things and doing them well.