Happy Monday, marketing mavens! Before diving into the workweek, why not check out some recent news from around the wide world of email marketing? Here you go:
For engagement, think strategically about holiday emails
Kristina Knight, writing at BizReport, reports on a study with important findings for email marketers gearing up for the holidays. The study by Yes Lifecycle Marketing determined that while holiday-themed email campaigns increased more than 13% year-over-year in 2015, open rates declined by about five percent. Knight’s takeaway from the findings: “Sending too many of the same or similarly themed emails could sound a death knell for campaign engagement.” Adds Michael Fisher, president of Yes Lifecycle Marketing, “These campaigns can still be highly effective and engaging, but marketers need to be thinking more strategically about how to relate to consumers as individuals, instead of simply latching onto the holiday themes.” Are you ready for the holidays? Make sure by downloading our 2016 Retail Holiday Readiness Report.
Heat-map analysis proves simple is best
Robert Allen, writing at Smart Insights, discusses and shares an infographic developed by Easy SMTP and EyeQuant that evaluates several different email marketing campaigns with heat-map analysis, which uses sophisticated cursor-tracking and eye tracking software to help understand how consumers engage with content. The infographic analyzes five campaigns on the basis of a “clarity score,” an “excitingness score,” and an attention map that indicates the elements of the design serve to draw most of the viewers’ interest. The vivid, colorful heat-maps of each design make a dramatic case for the evaluation’s determination that “simple messaging, clean design and the use of white space to steer the eye are key to effective email designs.”
Give your email-marketing signups a boost
Noting that “customers can begin their journeys with your brand at many different touchpoints, both on and offline,” Kristin Naragon, writing on Adobe’s Digital Marketing Blog, offers seven steps for getting customers to being their journey with your brand via an email subscription. Her tips include using behavioral indicators to dictate a tailored email capture strategy, making it clear to customers what they are signing up for, and keeping sign-up forms simple. “Follow these tips to help guide you through the initial moments of that unknown-visitor-to-known-prospect aspect of the customer journey,” she writes. “Most importantly, deliver a consistent, valuable service, and do your best to build solid relationships with your customers based on exchanges of value for their investments.”
Email marketing continues to prove its value
“For some reason ‘older’ has become synonymous with ‘obsolete,’” writes Callie Hinman at Business 2 Community, who posits that just because email marketing isn’t the latest thing doesn’t detract from its enormous value to marketers. To help make her case, she cites a study indicating that 59% of B2B marketers call email “the most effective channel for revenue generation” and another that named it “the most powerful tool for customer retention.” She lists six specific reasons email is so valuable, which include its ability to create lasting relationships with customers and the fact that marketing emails can be “hyper-personalized and targeted” to recipients. “Email marketing may have been around for a while, but it is constantly evolving, and when used correctly, can engender brand loyalty and generate revenue,” she concludes.