Happy Monday, marketers! Here’s some email marketing news and info to help get your workweek off to a productive start.
Tips for using email automation for engagement
“Automation is a robotic-sounding word, but it really means reaching people with timely messages based on key milestones, like signing up, making a purchase, or even a birthday celebration. It’s stuff that’s actually the opposite of robotic,” writes Cynthia Price at Marketing Land. To prove its effectiveness, she cites stats indicating that automation yields 75% higher open rates and 162% higher click rates.
Price offers five tips to “use advanced automation techniques to win the inbox, big time” that include developing a series of emails to welcome new customers, creating a “compelling customer journey” and using coupons, free samples and guides to celebrate milestones. “When done right, an automated email is like a breath of fresh air in the inbox. It’s relevant, personalized and timely — everything your subscribers want when they sign up for your email list,” she writes.
The benefits of permission-based email marketing
“Permission-based email marketing gets tagged with some bad press, but in reality it’s still the best approach for most brands,” writes Rupert Adam at Business 2 Community. The benefits of permission-based email marketing he cites include fostering a good brand reputation, compliance with anti-spam regulations, providing opportunities for increased personalization, and better engagement.
“By opting in, your recipients have expressed interest in your company,” Adam writes. “This means they are more likely to engage with the emails sent, especially if they are personalized. Wanted emails will receive better quality open rates, click through rates and repeat business.”
Drive immediate action with these four email marketing triggers
“Stop thinking; start buying. That’s the kind of mind-set you want to create with every email marketing campaign you send,” writes John Hayes at LinkedIn. “The moment a subscriber is given the opportunity to think about a purchase is the moment you give them the opportunity to hesitate on your offer.”
The triggers he suggests include creating the perception of scarcity, offering early-bird offers, providing presale opportunities and creating value-added offerings. “People are busy and bombarded with compelling sales messages every day,” he writes. “Making your campaign stand out and demanding immediate action is vital if you don’t want your email marketing sends to leave cash on the table.”
Email marketing tops list of sales-lead generators
At Marketing Profs, Ayaz Nanji looks at a report indicting that email marketing and content marketing are the two most effective digital channels for generating sales leads. The report resulted from a survey of 244 businesspeople in the United States.
45% of the survey’s respondents called email “one of the most effective online tactics for lead generation” and an equal percentage of respondents cited content marketing as one of the most effective tactics for generating sales leads. Other tactics that ranked lower than both email marketing and content marketing in the survey include social media marketing, landing page/webpage optimization, search engine optimization, paid search/online advertising and webinars/virtual events.