Does email marketing still sell?

Email Marketing – Is it still working?

Email marketing lived its golden age in the era before social media advertising. It was a very effective channel in its time and the effects of the campaign were easily measurable. In the following years, mailing advertising grew so popular that the number of messages sent by companies was often perceived by recipients as spam. The GDPR has to some extent minimized the problem of littering recipient inboxes. Not everyone had the appropriate approvals for individual records of their databases, and in the month of the entry into force of the regulation on the protection of personal data, a real madness in the field of obtaining permits began. This process contributed to increasing the awareness of ordinary internet users to the phenomenon of personal data processing. Since then, companies that carry out email marketing must have a transparent policy in this regard, because in the event of violations, they face serious financial penalties. It is important that our communication is carried out on the basis of consent from users, which must be voluntary, informed, specific and unambiguous.

Is a good base and effective advertising mailing the same thing?

There is no need to beat around the bush – a good base is a crucial factor in a successful email campaign. How to collect email addresses and not be limited to the list of clients only? You can implement a widget on your website that will help you collect contacts. A good incentive is, for example, a discount on first purchase or access to special offers. Signing up for the newsletter should not be problematic in terms of usability. Try to adapt the form so that filling in the data is not time consuming. In fact, to create a newsletter database, you only need your name and e-mail address or telephone number, the remaining data is an add-on, which can be a potential obstacle. For example, a user may not want to share a name – remember, one field can effectively deter a potential customer. The user’s email gives us many possibilities – if the same address is used by him to log in to Google or Facebook, we have a chance to easily get more demographic information while implementing campaigns in other channels.

Working with records is a complex process. If you have a database, you are surely aware that only a fraction of them are your real customers. Some of them signed up for some benefits, some are people who have set up an account in an e-shop but have never made purchases. However, everyone has shown interest in your products, services or offer – this is a good start to the next steps. It is worth reminding such inactive contacts of yourself – it is much easier to convince someone who knows us to purchase rather than to acquire a completely new client. Remarketing campaigns of this type should be carried out on segmented databases, which will significantly increase the effectiveness of sending. You should also remember about database hygiene, which allows us to improve the results, because outdated records blur them. Database hygiene includes removing duplicate or ‘’dead’’ addresses, checking their validity, completeness and correctness. Why send emails to mailboxes that no longer exist? When it comes to email marketing, more doesn’t mean better, quality should be the determinant.

Why do you need segmentation?

Greater knowledge about our users means wider possibilities of database segmentation. This enables sending messages customized to the needs of specific groups of recipients. We can segment databases focusing on declarative data (provided by users themselves), as well as taking into account behavioral data. When it comes to declarative data, we can personalize the message (e.g., name, gender, date of birth), which allows for a more careful adjustment of the offer. Whereas behavioral data resulting from individual user behavior allows to organize the list of records on the basis of activities such as e.g., opening a message or clicking on hyperlinks in the creative. The integration of the mailing system with Google Analytics and CRM systems will allow us to extract more data on the behavior of our users.

How to make effective email creations?

If you are wondering where to start creating an effective email creation, the most accurate answer is to set a goal. The goal and target group are the starting point for getting to work on the campaign, ensuring that is as effective as possible. The next move, i.e., designing the creation – a well-designed advertising mailing should contain text and graphics. A creative consisting of one image is a serious mistake, then there is a good chance that the graphic may not be displayed to the recipient, the message may end up in spam or, if opened on a smartphone, it will be unreadable. If we decide on a large number of graphics, it is worth remembering that they should not be too high resolution, because too heavy HTML creation is a guarantee of catching it by our recipients’ spam filters. Copy in the creative should be written in plain and correct language with a clear call to action. The whole thing should be adapted to display on mobile and tested on several devices. Tests are a must; they will allow you to catch potential errors or inactive links. When designing your creative, do not forget about the footer and the link to unsubscribe from the database.

For several years, personalization has been an almost obligatory element in mailing creations. The easiest element to test is personalization of the subject or name, which is already the standard of most e-commerce stores. The subject of the message is to be or not to be – and it depends on it whether the email is opened and read. It should be catchy and intriguing for the recipient, but at the same time consistent with the content of the message. Remember that some words are indexed as spasmogenic, e.g., “opportunity”, “promotion”, “check” – using them in the subject line may reduce the effectiveness of campaign delivery. The same applies to the overuse of capital letters and a large number of punctuation marks expressing emotions (!!!!!!, ?????). Personalizing the topic is a good practice, regardless of whether we send mailing to business or consumer customers. In the case of more advanced methods of personalizing email campaigns, the starting point should be the knowledge of our target group and the analysis of the industry in which we operate. The element that should absolutely be tailored to our recipients is the shipping time – we check business mailboxes at a different time, and private mailboxes at a different time.

Email marketing – what indicators should you pay attention to in campaigns?

1. Open rate – that is the ratio of the number of open e-mails to the total of delivered messages. Most often it is expressed as a percentage and of course the higher it is, the better for our campaign. To improve OR it is worth working on such elements as: message title, sender’s name, sending and delivery time, as well as the history of contacts with the sender.
2. Click-through rate – it is the ratio of the number of clicks on links to the sum of delivered email messages. The structure and appearance of the creation, matching the message to the recipient and the CTA (call to action) button may influence the higher CTR.
3. Click-to-open rate – how many clicks there were in relation to the sum of open emails. Here, too, success is determined by creation, personalization and CTA.
4. Spam rate – the number of e-mail notifications as spam in relation to the total of delivered messages.
5. Unsubscribe rate – ratio of the number of unsubscribes from the database to the total of messages delivered. As you can easily guess, a lower percentage is better for us here. When the rate is high, it is worth considering whether the topic is really interesting for our recipients or whether the shipments are carried out too oftenThe above indicators are mandatory to analyze the effects of the campaign in the email channel, on their basis we can draw conclusions about what works and what needs to be improved. Knowing them is the key to success and maximizing your email marketing results.

Advertising mailing – is it worth it, or not?

Effective mailing advertising is a good solution, regardless of whether we conduct B2C or B2B communication. It is important to know our recipients, know when they are most likely to open messages, whether they read them, and whether they are eager to click on the CTA. Email marketing campaigns are not meant to sell directly, they are designed to get the recipient to move on and make a purchase on the landing page. We cannot overwhelm recipients with a huge amount of messages, because the result will be the loss of contact with the database, or even being marked as spam. Remember that good email campaigns are those that meet the tastes of our recipients, are not spam and are well optimized