The Power Of Email Marketing is Still Here
www.humanisethebrand.com
You are getting a bad open rate, you are getting bad CTR, Users
started opting out from your list. These events force you to think
that “email marketing is dead ?”
It is a reality that business results from your mailers are going
down but it is not true that email marketing is dead.
Email is still most effective interface between you and your
customers. Every medium gets matured with time. So you require
to learn and modify your strategy accordingly.
Data suggests mailers are still most consumed communication.
“More than 34% of the people worldwide use email. That’s about
2.5 billion people.”
“91% of Internet users between the ages of 18 and 64 send or
read email.”
“The world sends about 196 billion emails daily. Out of this 196
billion emails the majority, 109 billion, is business email.”
The Power Of Email Marketing is Still Here
www.humanisethebrand.com
Email marketing is still your one of the main marketing channel
here is reason ….
A) The easiest way to connect: It is direct; It is between you
and your customer/prospects. You directly send a message and
directly receive responses. There are no intermediaries like
google, facebook, twitter, LinkedIn etc involve.
B) Very Personal: We are living in multi-screen/platform world
where getting undivided attention is the biggest challenge for
marketers. Your customers or prospects email inbox is still
extremely personal space where you can gather undivided
attention of your prospect/ customers
C) Cost Effective: Sending emails are easy and inexpensive. You
send emails to a large number of people on nearly no cost per
mail.
D) Freedom from Algorithm: You are always trying to break
the Google/Facebook algorithm. You invest huge money to get
your rank up on the search engine.
You boost the facebook posts to get through edge rank algorithm.
I am not saying that is a bad idea. They are very good channels
but when you compare it with Email marketing it’s you and your
The Power Of Email Marketing is Still Here
www.humanisethebrand.com
customer’s direct relation, no algorithmic filter stopping your
communication.
E) Hyper-personalised and action oriented: Most attractive
part of email marketing is its ability to get hyper-personalised.
You can personalise your mail according to the various stage of
your customers buying cycle. You can make your personalisation
in a way to invoke the action from your prospects.
F) 100% automation possibility: We are living in a complex
digital environment where doing everything manually is not
possible. The level of automation you enjoy with email marketing,
it is not possible with other platforms. From creating awareness
to nurturing to getting buying process done to building post-
purchase relationship. Everything can be automated successfully.
G) Measurable: Like any other online channels, it is measurable
too.
These aforementioned factors are still surviving and still no other
channel can match the benefits.
The success of your email marketing depends on the quality of
your email list. You should know the fact that every year around
22 % email IDs become obsolete.
So you should keep your list clean by removing obsolete IDs and
adding the fresh list.
The Power Of Email Marketing is Still Here
www.humanisethebrand.com
HOW TO BUILD EMAIL LIST?
Getting email Ids from customer/prospect is an exchange. It is
not free. You have to deliver something for getting precious email
ID of your prospect.
There are multiple ways to get an Email ID from users.
A) Create Awesome Content on Your website: This is the
most common but toughest technique to build a list. Create
content that brings wow factor or thank you factor then, readers
will start feeling that they should not leave any new update or
content on your site. This will motivate them to push subscribe
button.
B) Ask to subscribe: Your user won’t bother to navigate a
subscribe button. You will have to guide them or ask them to
subscribe. There are multiple techniques to ask for the
subscription.
1. Simple Subscribe button on sidebar/header/footer
2. Subscribe Pop-up with close button option
3. Email Gateway – Here user has to enter his/her email id to
see the content
4. Scroll format – Here subscribe form scroll up or down when
user reading your content, screen is dynamic and users
The Power Of Email Marketing is Still Here
www.humanisethebrand.com
don’t have to click the close button. they simply scroll up or
down to get back on their content.
There is no full proof way that tells you that you should choose
any specific technique. Your technique depends on the bargaining
power of your content.
If your content is like no one would want to miss, you can use
any technique. People will simply love to give their Ids.
I think you should first do multi-variety testing and then take the
decision.
C) Gated Content: This is the popular way to collect Ids. You
have to create a quality content PDF (Eg: Guide, White Paper,
Industry Report, Case Study etc.) and offer your visitors to
download it free in just exchange of an Email Id.
You should use social platform to get more & more downloads.
D) Create Online Contest: Create an online contest on the
website and your social channels where participants would have
to enter their email IDs to take participation.
E) Leverage the power of social: Run a sign-up campaign on
the social channel. I would like to mention here that facebook is a
The Power Of Email Marketing is Still Here
www.humanisethebrand.com
very powerful place to do sign up campaign. Facebook offer pre-
filled options where just three clicks enable the user to sign up.
F) Ask people to sign up in your Youtube Video: Every
content which you are promoting on youtube can give you Email
Ids in exchange. Use sign up call to action button. Give a shout
out to sign up at the end of your video.
G) Organise Webinar: Organise a webinar or co-host with well
know organisers. People will sign up for it and hence you will
receive email ids.
H) PPC Campaign: Use PPC campaign to bring users on the
landing page where they can share their contacts.
H) Integrate Your List building program with offline
activities: There are many offline activities you must be doing. If
you are a blogger or doing something completely online then also
you are meeting up with hundreds of people every month, take
their consent and collect their ids.
If you are working professional then integrate list building with
every activity your company is doing offline. You can collect email
IDs from exhibitions, conferences, road shows, activation events.
The Power Of Email Marketing is Still Here
www.humanisethebrand.com
You can use QR code on marketing materials (Brochure, Flyers,
leaflets etc) to bring them subscribe for newsletter pages.
So these are the simplest techniques you can use to build the
email list.
My suggestion is please don’t purchase email ids from any
source. Nobody likes to see strangers in their email inbox. You
can get blacklisted or marked as spam.
BEST PRACTICES
A) Avoid Bulk Email: Don’t send the same email to everyone.
Your prospects might be on the different stage of buying cycle.
So seeing useless mail can irritate some of them.
The second type of bulk mailing is, you bought a list from
somewhere and just shot an email. This is more dangerous.
There is a chance of getting blacklisted or mark as a spam.
B) Personalize the communication: Design your mail
communication in a way that user feel that you wrote the mail
The Power Of Email Marketing is Still Here
www.humanisethebrand.com
specially for him/her. For personalizing, you will have to do lots of
segmentation and classification. You can automate all that later.
There are hyper-personalisation options available in many tools
eg: How is the weather in [CITY] (Here you can do mail merge of
geo-tagging of user location and automation tool will insert the
same)
Use personalized auto responder when anyone opt-in.
C) Respect Persons Time and Add Value: Most precious thing
in this world is time. If I spent the time to read your mail then
you should deliver appropriate value which makes me better me.
Simple !
D) Write compelling Subject Line: Subject line is the opener
of your mail, a user first read your subject line and then decide to
open your mail or send that in the trash folder.
E) Humanise Your Mail: Human does business with human
only. Your mail should not sound like a machine, who is talking
on behalf of you to your customer/user. Give human touch in
your mail. Use human emotions in your communication.
The Power Of Email Marketing is Still Here
www.humanisethebrand.com
F) Landing page should be sync with mailer: It is very
important that your landing page should look like a further
extension of your mailer. So avoid using common landing pages.
Develop special landing pages with every mail campaign.
G) Must have “unsubscribe link”: There is n number of
reasons when your users can take a decision to stop getting mail
from you and you should respect their decision and facilitate
them with unsubscribe button to do so.
H) HTML Vs Text: This is a big debate that which email format
is best. In many cases, HTML mailer fails to cross security wall of
mail inbox. But still there is no right answer; you should have A/B
testing.
In generally when you have some promotional messages like sale
or discount, there HTML format works better. Text mailers are
reverse engineering of email marketing. It works greats when
you are doing very personalized mail campaigns. It works well
also when your HTML emails open and CTR rate is going down.
Keep agnostic view upon the format use which is working best for
you or you can use a good mix of them also.
The Power Of Email Marketing is Still Here
www.humanisethebrand.com
I) Test Your Mail Before Pushing Send Button: You can
choose focus group to test your mail first. You can do the famous
5-second test as well (Send a copy of the email to a friend or
business associate. Can they quickly tell what your call-to-action
is? If so, you’re golden. If not, keep working.)
J) Sustain The Relationship: Sustaining a relationship with old
one gives you better ROI than acquiring the new one. Sustaining
the relationship is very simple, just understand, engage and solve
the problems of your prospect.
FUTURE OF EMAIL MARKETING
So now when we talk about future of Email marketing then
definitely it is not dead now and won’t get dead in coming future
also.
A) Mail will remain primary source of personal
communication of users
B) Email Blast will have to die. Day by day email service
provider becoming better and better in filtering out spams.
The Power Of Email Marketing is Still Here
www.humanisethebrand.com
C) Personalisation is reality, hyper-personalisation is
future
D) Rich media (GIF ) is going to be more and more in the
content
E) Advanced Remarketing will be a game changer, Eg:
Person who opens your mail will be retargeted on social
and through banner or video ads on network sites. You can
retarget people on facebook who open your mail.
D) Data-driven triggered mail will continue to grow in size
and sophistication.
E) Email ROI will be still best.
F) Embedded Video Play inside the mail will be a reality.
Right now no major player is able to play.
G) Fluid and hybrid mail design will be normal.
H) How to get the attention of user in his/her inbox will be
still the most asked question.
Top Related