Email Marketing-The Ultimate Guide

Introduction
Email marketing is one of the most effective strategies for generating sales, driving more traffic, retaining your customers, and promoting your brand. Email marketing is 122% more effective as compared to other marketing methods.

To assume that Email marketing has lost its proposition in 2020 is incorrect. Email marketing campaigns fail when they are not meticulously planned and effectively executed. When done in an effective manner, Email marketing can work wonders for your business.

I) Segmenting your customers
The first step for a successful Email marketing campaign is to identify your target audience. You must find out the segment of the population to whom you cater, then you should start gathering detailed information about your target audience, their age, occupation, preferences, habits, tastes, etc. This exercise seems daunting but it is worth the effort and time spent.

Email marketing is not just sending one black & white email copy to the entire mailing list. Sending the right email to the right customer at the right time is the key to successful email marketing. You need to create personalized email copies for different segments of your target customers, mentioning the recipient’s name is very advantageous as it fosters trust and confidence.

When you send emails that sound relevant to the target audience, there are high chances that they shall open your email, read them, enjoy them, and undertake the desired action.

Your target audience begins to understand that you are not simply selling a product or service but you are providing solutions that they are looking for.

Here lies the real effect of segmenting your customers, studying them, offering them what they need, hence when you offer what they need through your emails, they are more than happy to transact with you.

II) Crafting an attractive email copy
It is not essential that you should fill up your emails with visuals, colors, icons, illustrations, and other effects. In fact, customers are looking for value. What they value is how much relevant a particular email is to them.

You need to keep your email copy clean & crisp. Write the message using an economy of words with a clear call to action. Neither be too shy nor too aggressive.

It is for you to clearly convey to the audience what is the objective of a particular email. Do not be elusive. This is called maintaining the cadence of the email copy.

The subject line is the most pivotal part of an email. Most readers do not even open the email after reading the subject line, hence you need to write an extremely relevant and attractive subject line that clearly states what one can expect after opening the email. Do not cheat in the sense that the subject line mentions something and the email is about something else. Readers will be angry.

Adding visuals and even full-length videos are gaining popularity to create engaging emails. It does not however reduce the importance of the neat and freshly written text.

Optimizing for visuals and videos depends upon the nature of business. An email selling clothing may entice its readers with colorful images but this is not the case with emails informing readers about loan facilities.

Sending emails with the same repeated text is not advisable at all. It is an increasing trend that emails are specifically sent when a certain action such as subscription or abandoning a shopping cart is taken, it is estimated such emails have a 102% click-through rate.

III) Automation
In this fast-paced world, you need to send targeted emails to your customers for a variety of purposes. It is estimated that more than 293 billion emails were sent and received each day in 2019 and the number is expected to rise to 347 billion by 2022.

This scenario of Email marketing necessitates for you to use automated tools. Some of the most popular Email marketing automation tools are sendinblue, mailchimp, mailjet, drip, convertkit, infusionsoft.

It is not possible to reach your customers and widen your base without utilizing automated Email marketing tools. You need to be cautious, select a tool, use an email marketing template that suits your business needs.

Using A/B testing is very important. You need to create two completely different email copies, different in layout, text, color, design, however, conveying the same message and send them to the same target customers at different intervals.

Your automated Email marketing tools will collect data for you and tell you which email copy of the two had the highest hit.

Artificial intelligence also helps marketers develop effective and specific content (topics, subject lines etc.) optimize send time, frequency, and predict customer action. This will help you in your future planning.

IV) Optimize for mobile
The use of mobile & smartphones is on a great rise hence it is very essential that your emails load quickly and are well optimized for the mobile screen. More than 55% of emails are opened on mobile devices. If your emails do not appear trendy and attractive when clicked through mobiles you are likely to lose great traffic.

If you include visuals, videos, and other engagement objects in your emails however if they are not optimized for mobiles, it is not worth the effort. Instead using a simple and clean design that loads quickly and conveys the message will prove more profitable. Be sure to design your Email marketing campaign keeping in mind the tremendous increase in the use of mobile phones.

Conclusion
Understand and segment your audience to craft targeted emails for each segment of your customers.

Subject line is the most important. Make it personal and enticing for the customers to open and read your emails.

Optimize your emails for the mobile screen. Use engagement objects like audios, videos, images and create attractive email copies.

Use automated tools for planning and analyzing your email marketing strategy.

Email marketing needs to be done effectively. Emails are powerful tools to generate business however remember your objective should not be sales alone but customer satisfaction.

Once a customer comes to realize that the particular email is geared to satisfy his/her need he/she is most likely to take the call to action, here lies the success of email marketing.