Monthly Archives - March 2016

MOST ONLINE SHOPPERS PREFER EMAIL FROM THEIR FAVORITE BRANDS
13 Mar

DRIVING CUSTOMER ENGAGEMENT THROUGH EMAIL MARKETING

Optimizing marketing strategies to drive customer engagement is one of the greatest challenges facing businesses today. While decision-makers cannot deny the effectiveness of online marketing as a key tool in exposing customers to new products and keeping them updated on industry news, the digital age has also overwhelmed companies with options. Instead of being frozen in place by the sheer variety of methods used to engage buyers, business leaders need to look to the experts to find which techniques work best to keep customers happy and inspire them to continue remaining loyal to their preferred brands.

Why is email still so effective?
Many digital platforms are dedicated to social networking, personal messaging and other matters that individuals want to keep separate from their engagement with businesses. This trend was reflected in a recent ExactTarget report examining the direction of digital marketing for the coming year. Among the top priorities for businesses across the board were driving conversion rates, increasing and improving brand awareness and collecting user-based data to analyze and measure customer behavior with regard to marketing campaigns. These initiatives were then linked to the fact that 98 percent of marketers are planning to increase or maintain their level of spending in 2014.

Marketers know that they have limitless options when it comes to allocating their funds for marketing efforts, so where is all of this money going over the next 12 months? ExactTarget revealed that behind data, analytics and marketing automation, 58 percent of the companies they analyzed were set on increasing spending on email marketing. This area was prioritized over both social media and content management, which were each set to see more expenditure from 57 percent of surveyed marketers. Although these trends are becoming increasingly important in the arena of digital marketing, email will certainly not be going anywhere according to the data from this report.

Most people check their email several times a day, which is why it is not surprising that ExactTarget said 68 percent of marketers believe that email is core to their businesses as a whole. Social media on the other hand was revealed to be essential to only 46 percent of businesses. This reflects today’s mindset that social media is a better supplementary method of engagement than email in the hierarchy of digital marketing initiatives. In fact, one of the main ways that companies utilize social media platforms is to pique the interest of consumers enough to get them to sign up for email newsletter subscriptions. Mastering this transition from social to email is going to be a defining marker of success in 2014 as companies try to best blend these two powerful tools.

Avoiding the dreaded spam box
After months of content creation, building email marketing lists and A/B testing over a variety of different segments, it can be crushing for email marketers to discover that most of the messages they sent out ended up scrapped by spam filters in consumer inboxes. According to Business 2 Community, billions of emails are sent out per year from companies hoping to reach their customer bases, but some industry analysts estimate only 20 percent of these messages make it to their intended destinations. The source recommended that simplicity on both desktop and mobile devices is key to ensuring that emails get to where they are supposed to be.

Besides making emails clear and easy to read, marketers need to also remember to make the content is relevant they want to make an impact on their subscriber base. This means that messages need calls-to-action, industry news that may affect customers and even a bit of humor to keep the mood light.

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MOST ONLINE SHOPPERS PREFER EMAIL FROM THEIR FAVORITE BRANDS
13 Mar

OPTIMIZING EMAIL MARKETING CAMPAIGNS FOR RECIPIENTS ON THE GO

Smartphones have changed how people interact with one another in many ways, and email remains one of the most powerful features on mobile devices today. Not only are individuals better able to communicate with one another for personal and business-related matters, but brands are seeing much more success with their email marketing campaigns now that people are more likely to open their inboxes anywhere and at any time. An email database is now more powerful than ever due to more responsive and available consumers. This trend has made it imperative for email marketers to make their campaigns more mobile-friendly, what are the best ways to go about doing this?

Short yet specific messages are best
Part of the appeal of checking email on mobile devices is that consumers can check their messages constantly and without delay. However, this presents a challenge for marketers, who need to create emails that are concise and to the point if they want to capture the attention of an easily distracted readership. PowerSports Business recently explained that keeping messages short is one of the best strategies that businesses can employ to make their emails stand out among lengthy newsletters and updates. Because mobile devices have much smaller screens than their desktop counterparts, recipients prefer when they can scroll once or twice and finish a message without getting bored.

Calls-to-action are also main features of the best email marketing campaigns, especially ones that present a clear path for the reader to follow. On a mobile device, readers need to be compelled before they open up an Internet window and are led away from their inbox. A recent article from ClickZ also reminded marketing strategists that not all smartphones are created equal. The best calls-to-action work well across all of the major devices on the market and must have a large enough click box for people with touch-screen phones to easily press. This will require a bit more research on the part of marketers when they craft their campaigns but the results will be well worth it when they see conversion rates spike.

Subject lines must adapt to mobile platforms
One of the most important elements of an email marketing campaign is engineering a subject line that will make recipients want to click instantly without a second thought. When using a mobile device, readers are much more likely to be distracted by the world around them, as well as the many applications and features of their smartphones. ClickZ urged companies to make their intentions clear from the start by making subject lines direct and brief, ensuring that recipients know what they’re getting into before they click. Companies that give their subject lines an exclusive, exciting tone are more likely to get a better response from readers on the go, especially if the line is fewer than 60 characters.

Optimizing email subject lines to coincide with seasons and holidays will also keep customers intrigued and make recipients feel that they need to act now so they don’t miss an important update. Marketers should create a calendar to follow throughout the year so that they can prepare the best subject lines for a given occasion. ClickZ also recommended that marketers will see more success when they target their readership based on location and shopping history. Consumers appreciate when their favorite brands remind them that their preferred products are on sale or are about to see an update. Providing these inside tips can keep a buyer loyal to a company for years to come.

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13 Mar

HOW EMAIL MARKETERS CAN BEST ADDRESS TABBED INBOXES

When Gmail introduced multiple tabs for user inboxes, email marketers shared their anxieties about how the change would effect their marketing campaigns. Would recipients fail to see promotional emails because the messages would not arrive in their main boxes? Would online conversions decline now that consumers had the option to avoid emails from brands altogether? While these concerns are indeed legitimate, marketers should not toss their business email lists quite yet. Consumers are still looking for promotional emails and there are ways to keep campaigns from fizzling out. Here is what email marketers need to know about the tabbed inbox and how best to handle it.

How recipients responded initially
There is no doubt that tabbed inboxes have changed the way that consumers find and open promotional emails from businesses. Just as email marketers feared, fewer and fewer of their messages made it to primary inboxes after Google implemented the tabbed system with a dedicated ‘promotions’ box, according to a study from Return Path. Of the commercial messages tracked in the report, 90 percent went directly to the promotions box while only 0.3 percent found their way into the Primary tab. Nine percent of these emails landed in the social inbox and the remaining 0.7 percent were delivered to other, customized tabs.

Gmail was undoubtedly successful in its efforts to channel commercial emails into tabs other than the primary inbox, but what did this mean for marketing efforts? At first, strategists actively resisted the change with “move-me” campaigns encouraging consumers to move their promotional messages back to the Primary tab. Return Path noted that these efforts were largely ignored, failing to make an impact on Google and quickly forgotten. Of the 65,507 emails sent with the purpose of being sent to the Primary inbox, only 61 actually made it there. At less than 0.1 percent, it was clear that consumers had made the choice to accept this change – marketers would simply have to adjust accordingly.

Where does this leave marketers?
While the primary inbox was effectively rendered a no-fly zone for commercial messages, this shift actually benefited email marketing campaigns in a way that many strategists did not expect. Return Path explained that consumers are now clicking on their promotions tab with the sole intention of looking for offers from their favorite brands. This kind of deliberate search puts recipients in a more receptive position in which they are actively seeking the benefits of marketing campaigns rather than trying to avoid them in their normal inboxes. In addition, the rate of This is Spam (TIS) reports dropped significantly in the Promotions tab as only 0.12 percent of those emails resulted in a complaint. Primary inbox messages saw TIS reports at a rate of 0.26 percent while the Social tab had the most with 0.87 percent.

Spam filters were also less discerning when it came to the Promotional inbox, according to Return Path. An impressive 93 percent of commercial messages managed to avoid the spam folder on their way to recipients while only 77 percent of messages headed for the Primary inbox made it to their destinations. This means that email marketers are actually more likely to reach their intended audiences with the help of the Promotional inbox as it allows more emails to make it through unscathed. Of course, campaigns will meet more competition when they arrive, which is why Business Day reminded strategists to keep messages engaging, interesting and relevant to user preferences. Social media should also play a major role in beefing up email marketing lists.

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