Two New Reasons Email Marketing Is Critical for 2021
Whether business or personal, 99% of email users click into their inbox every day. Email has always been a strong tool, but this year it’s more important than ever. Why?
- Less targeting in digital media. Apple has been rolling out IOS 15 which gives users privacy options that ultimately reduce the number of targeting options for your company’s customer acquisition and retention campaigns. For the details, here is a great article from Forbes. If targeting is more difficult or unavailable, then ROAS (return on ad spend) drops. Instead of having ROAS of 5, your campaigns may drop to 2 or lower.
- Higher digital marketing costs. Digital ad spend, according to eMarketer, is estimated to grow at least 18% this year. To ensure your marketing budget can meet your sales goals, you will need to find less expensive, but effective approaches.
These two reasons mean it’s critical to be smart email marketers. The following tactics can help your team this year.
Capture as many Emails as possible, as early as possible
Consider an offer on your home page, such as a discount in return for an email address. You’ll capture far more emails this way, instead of waiting until checkout. You can also capture emails by offering downloadable content, contest entries, exclusive offers, and more.
Improve your Email effectiveness
The first step is A/B testing. That’s the process of taking your current best email (A) and testing a new version (B) with a segment of your customers. It’s important to test only one thing at a time in each segment, such as a new subject line, new offer, design, or other content. Don’t test all those things at once in the same segment, but if your file is large enough, you can run several segment tests at once. Savvy companies run A/B tests all the time, and seek new ideas from numerous people inside the company, not just the email team.
Ensure you use Email for Retargeting
Retargeting emails go to visitors who abandoned browsing your website or left a cart instead of checking out. A retargeting email the next day reminds consumers they were interested in your company. You can test sending a richer offer to a segment of the cart abandonment group, to see if some return and buy.
Be aware though, it’s possible to overdo retargeting, so have a weekly cap for the number of retargeting emails.
Good Email improves SEO
Smart marketers have a strategy for which site content and keywords they want to rank highly for in SERP (Search Engine Results Page). Interesting topics in email, that feature these keywords, can result in click-throughs to your site, with the hope of visitors sharing your article or content. This sharing and traffic will alert Google of your audiences’ engagement, which can improve your rankings.
Make sure your Email design is “Responsive” for Mobile
Responsive is the term for the design that works well on a laptop, desktop, tablet, or phone. If your email design is not optimized for mobile viewing you could be frustrating customers and losing sales. As mentioned earlier in this article, 99% of users open their emails every day. It’s also a mobile world with 59% of Millennials and 67% of Gen Z using their phones to check their inbox.
Measure your performance
How are you doing this year compared to last? Email performance statistics vary significantly by industry, such as government emails having a stronger open rate than gaming emails. Here you can see what the click-through rate is by Industry, as well as open-rate, bounces, and unsubscribe rates. Plus each of your email campaigns can vary as well, by day of the week, time of day, topic and subject line. So it’s vital to monitor your email performances over time as well as compare them to your specific industry.
What’s your next step to Email excellence?
Consider sending an email to the team at James Ross Advertising today. We have 30+ years of experience not only in design and copy, but also skilled at the technology for email platforms, testing, segmenting, and analytics. Make sure you reach out to get started with us on improving your business.
