Did you know email marketing can do wonders for your Business? Have you ever tried email marketing software’s at your marketing campaign? Are you implementing email marketing strategies for the very first time?
If you are a first-timer, you have a lot to learn from. Well if you aren’t, you still have your portion to recollect and implement.
The purpose of email marketing software goes beyond your imagination. The strategy here is not just about sending emails; it’s rather about building customer loyalty, brand awareness, nurturing leads and increasing direct sales. Email has its value for business owners, integrating it with email marketing software is one of the easiest yet ideal way to start reaching customers.
As the author, Jay Conrad Levinson says, “Behind every great company is a great marketing plan.” And within every great marketing plan, there are highly effective marketing services. So here let’s discuss the quizzical ways to keep up with times, while you adapt to new changes. Read on these 7 tips and trends for creating effective email marketing strategies.
1. Know Your Market Segments & Target Them:
Dig into your existing customer base and understand where they come from and why they want to buy from you. Look for common interests and characteristics, and this is very likely that other prospects like them could benefit from your products or services.
Consider choosing specific demographic, geographic, psychographic, behavioral parameters, so that you re-evaluate and segment your target audience.
One of the very new approaches that complement the modern marketing world is positioning, along with segmentation and targeting. This strategic advent called STP (Segmentation, Targeting, and Positioning) has been so familiar that businesses today are fully exploiting the opportunities these offers.
This STP model works based on the following steps:
Step 1: Segment your market
Step 2: Target your best customers
Step 3: Position your offering
So always start by thoroughly understanding your target market, properly segmenting and positioning based on their interests. The more specific you are, the better will be your marketing plan.
2. Understand Your Unique Selling Proposition (USP):
This is one of its kind which makes your business stand out from the rest. A strong USP is something which customers are very keen on. A well-communicated one will help your prospects to understand your products or services better. If you are looking to stand out in your marketplace and actively focus on creating things that cater to your ideal target, then this is the key.
Levitt, Americas’s famous real estate developer once said: “Differentiation is one of the most important strategic and tactical activities in which companies must constantly engage.”
In fact, Amazon’s motto to be the earth’s most customer-centric company, its A-to-Z concept, claim conditions, timely delivery is widely credited and is a reason for company’s success. USP distinguishes your product or service from your fellow competitors and is fairly commoditized.
3. Focus On Retention & Referral Strategies:
In the B2B market, a good Retention Marketing Strategy is encouraging existing customers to refer your products or services to other potential customers. This requires you to wisely understand your customer while at the same time analyse your client’s buying behavior, support needs, demographics, marketing and many more.
As per smallbiztrends, an increase of just 5% in customer retention can increase your profits from 28% to 90%. While you are working on your retention and referral strategies, it is very much necessary that your brand inspires loyalty. You want to ensure strong relationship with your customers to bring in new clients and provide an overall boon to the business.
Whether you should focus more on referral or retention depends on the type of your business. At the same time, marketing is equally important in order to balance between referral and retention offers.
4. Stimulate Your Customers To Review Your Product That They Bought Via Email:
Your loyal customers play a crucial part in promoting your products as they are likely to buy your products first. And when you are an online retailer, you know your customer’s reviews are very influential. As per McKinsey, positive reviews increase chances of your customer buying your product by 6 to 7 times more.
If you are wondering the best ways to increase the number of reviews at your business, just ask. Your happy customers understand how vital their reviews are for your business. Some of the other ways of stimulating more reviews for your product is to set up profiles on multiple review sites and make your site user-friendly so that it becomes easy for your customers to leave your company feedback.
5. Use A/B Testing To Optimize Open & Click-Through Rates:
As we know, marketing is the combination of art and science, the ones who master this are sure to be successful. The best marketing campaigns are the ones who try different aspects, and that requires plenty of creativity. A/B testing is one of the strategies that marketers today are using in their email campaigns. This is a way of proving that determines what approach works better for a particular product/service.
Here are a list of elements or aspects tested on each group (Group A and Group B):
- Call-To-Action
- Subject Line
- Personalisation
- Time of the day and week
“Never stop testing, and your advertising will never stop improving.” – David Ogilvy
Let’s consider an example where a training institute is trying to promote their online courses. In test A an online institute uses the Subject line: “Complimentary online DBMS courses.” Whereas in test group B, an online institute puts it like this: “Free online DBM courses.” The winner here is: Subject line A with 10% more open rates. The simple yet the right synonyms can make a big difference. So it is necessary to keep in mind that the good scientific test organized and executed in a better way can fetch you greater success.
6. Choose The Right & The Appropriate Marketing Software Suitable For Your Business:
The ideal marketing software or a platform for your company depends on many things. Like your business type, company size, CRM, your database size, and many others. The solution that you pick is a thing that grows with you, and perhaps, this will drive your business forward. Whatever may be your business, your objectives need to be aligned with your goals. Following a synergy with your intentions will help determine that you use the right platform for the right job.
As per the recent survey, 6 of 10 marketers stated that email marketing is producing a significant ROI and the rest 2 to 3 marketers say that it will eventually will. Which means that choosing the right marketing software is crucial for any business. Some of the best email marketing software to note are MailChimp, GetResponse, HootSuite, ReventTools, ActiveCampaigns and more.
7. Setup Cart Abandonment Emails Campaigns:
Applied to the online environment, it’s vital for a marketer to set up a campaign that can connect with customers by reminding them about the product that they left in the cart and did not make a purchase. It is quite possible to persuade cart-abandoners to go through checkout and double your sales. Some of them may not even have had the intention to purchase in the first place, but it’s certainly worth putting your effort.
Some reasons users abandon their carts could be because of issues like time out or website crash, lack of time, high shipping costs, pricing, lack of payment options, technical problems, internet connection cut off and many. Identifying the bugs, understanding and helping out customers with what they need will undoubtedly improve the conversion rate.
Takeaway: Regardless of the open marketing strategies and practices available in the market today, you won’t see results if your marketing efforts aren’t effective. Be the buzz that you would like to spot, adopt right email practices at the right time so that your sales and profits will skyrocket. The market is run by smart players, and they are marketers. Increase the potential market and help yourself a position in the global market, thus establishing greater long-term success.