Happy Monday, marketers! Here are a few news items to get your week off to a productive start.
Drive website conversion rates with email marketing
Writing at entrepreneur.com about “the science of high-converting websites_,_” Eric Samson cites effective email marketing campaigns as one of ten critical factors than can help turn website browsers into customers. “Well-timed email marketing campaigns lead to healthy conversion rates, so make sure that your email messaging is precisely targeted to your audience,” he writes, adding that automated emails sent following shopping-cart abandonment have also been found to boost conversions.
**When it comes to mobile, focus on the basics
**In a post on the Striata blog, Sheryl-Lynn Omar urges marketers not to forget the “basics” when it comes to email marketing targeted to mobile devices. “When scanning and scrolling through their mobile inbox, your subscribers don’t really see the awesome design, instead they see the ‘from’ name, the ‘from’ address and subject line. It is therefore imperative that you get these elements right before you work on responsive design and the rest of your mobile campaign.” Omar suggests that “from” names and addresses should convey trust and authenticity, as well as being recognizable and familiar, and that “reply” addresses be monitored, managed and support two-way communication.
**Success starts with accurate addresses
**Over at the Experian Marketing Services blog, Spencer Kollas equates accurate email addresses with actionable insights. “Without an accurate email address, your chances of linking your customers’ cross-channel behaviors are vastly slimmer, leaving you in the dark about both their behaviors and their preferences. That’s why it’s so important that organizations collect the right email address as early as possible in the customer lifecycle,” he writes. He goes on to offer several do’s and don’ts to ensure the accuracy of the addresses on your lists.
**Leverage data to drive ROI with personalization
**“The return of investment on email marketing skyrockets when marketers successfully leverage data to understand and market to consumers in a more holistic and engaging manner,” writes Jess Nelson at Media Post’s Email Marketing Daily. Nelson reports that personalized email marketing messages deliver a 600-percent boost to overall transaction rates and notes that 74 percent of marketers recently surveyed asserted that email personalization leads to increased customer engagement. The bottom line: “The batch-and-blast campaigns of yesteryear no longer prove fruitful in today’s personalized email marketing economy and marketers who utilize contextual and behavioral data in their messaging perform more successfully than their peers.”