A couple of decades ago, email was pretty much the only marketing channel you could use to approach customers on the Internet. Fast forward to 2020 and you can still witness that email marketing is one of the dominant communication platforms in online businesses.
The reasons are many, but we can point out a few highlights of email marketing:
- There are already more than four billion email users worldwide.
- A typical business makes $44 for every dollar spent on email campaigns.
- Nearly 75% of millennials prefer communications from businesses to come via email.
The impact of email campaigns is obviously immense, but how can you approach the oldest digital marketing format in 2021? You can do a whole lot of things, so keep reading to see our guide to crafting an email marketing strategy in 2021.
1. Use the Right Email Automation Tools
Email marketing is getting increasingly complex and you can’t just administer campaigns manually. It takes at least one tool to keep things under control and implement campaigns as planned. Fortunately, you have a lot of options to choose from. Our favorite email automation platforms include:
- MailChimp: The platform is perfect for small businesses eager to expand their subscriber base.
- Sender: This tool is free of charge, but it still offers you every email marketing function you might need.
- Verifalia: The email verification service which allows you to verify a list of emails or integrate API to validate incoming email addresses in real-time.
- Mailerlite: If you need a simple email automation tool, Mailerlite is the right choice for your firm.
2. Keep the Subscribers List Neat and Clean
Do you know that up to 30% of your email addresses may be dead or dying due to a lack of email hygiene? It’s a serious issue that could distract your email marketing efforts and seriously jeopardize the overall productivity of your campaigns.
The only way to deal with the problem is to keep the subscribers list neat and clean. Your email marketing platform will help you analyze subscriber lists and point out users’ malfunctioning addresses and inactive subscribers.
As soon as you refresh the list, you will start noticing a higher open and click-through rate, while the overall deliverability score of your account will continue growing.
3. Segment and Personalize Your Messages
We should not be talking about this tip in 2021, but it turns out that too many marketers still target subscribers with generic campaigns. They are making a big mistake because segmenting leads to 100% higher CTR, whereas personalization boosts transaction rates by up to six times.
You should analyze the entire list of subscribers and divide them into meaningful units of lookalike users based on their interests, purchasing habits, and the sales funnel position. Your email campaigns will become much more efficient this way because you will send the right messages to the right people.
4. Improve Your Copywriting Style
Perhaps you are satisfied with your content writing abilities already, but there is always room for improvement. We encourage you to rethink every detail of email copywriting in order to make it even better. Here are some tips you could use:
- Create appealing subject lines using trigger words, numbers, or humor
- Keep your headlines brief and direct
- Use a well-known brand voice
- Write small paragraphs and highlight keywords
- Use only one CTA per email
5. Include Interactive Elements to Your Emails
The email marketing game is more complex than ever, so you cannot expect to win over subscribers with compelling copywriting only. On the contrary, you have to offer more to get more.
We are talking about interactive elements that make marketing emails more dynamic and engaging. For instance, you are free to send simple surveys via email to encourage recipients to take action. There are also other interactive elements such as animated buttons, image carousels, product catalogs, etc.
6. Take Advantage of Drip Email Campaigns
A drip campaign represents a series of emails tailored specifically to the behavior of a specific subscriber. Such campaigns proved to maximize user engagement, save time, improve CTR, and increase revenue. Creating a drip email campaign requires a fair share of planning, so we’ll only go through the basic steps here:
- Build a unique recipient list
- Design email templates that match the purpose of the campaign
- Set up the start of the email flow
- Add messages to the flow structure
- Launch the campaign
7. Beware of Timing and Sending Frequency
Do you understand the behavior of your subscribers? Are they active early in the morning or later in the evening? What are the best days to send them email messages? All these questions are very important, so you need to find the right answers.
At the same time, you must determine the appropriate frequency because it’s not a good idea to overwhelm subscribers with too many emails. In our opinion, sending a newsletter once a week is ideal because it keeps reminding the audience of your existence, but it doesn’t bother anyone.
8. Optimize Campaigns for Mobile Experiences
A report suggests that as much as 85% of users use smartphones to access email. Checking emails on our mobile devices is probably the first thing we do in the morning, so it’s totally natural to focus on smartphone owners and optimize campaigns for mobile experiences.
First of all, you need to use a scalable and mobile-friendly template. Every message you send should be clear and simple, while a pre-header can help recipients to see a short summary of your email. You should insert images only if really important, while the key tip is to design large and finger-friendly CTA buttons.
9. Ask Recipients for Feedback
Let’s say you’ve taken all the steps we discussed above. Your email campaigns are certainly much better now, but that doesn’t mean that your job is done. There is one more thing you can do here and that is to ask your subscribers for feedback.
After all, they are the ones whose opinions really matter and you should give them the opportunity to help you out. It’s a win-win situation for both parties, so seize the chance to ask for feedback and enhance your email marketing strategy accordingly.
Up to You!
Email newsletters may be the oldest marketing communication tool, but they are still making an incredible impact on customers from all over the world. The only thing that matters is to refresh your email marketing strategy from time to time and keep pace with the latest hacks and automation tools.
In this post, we discussed nine ways to optimize your email marketing plan before 2021. Have you already considered adding some of these features to your strategy?