Greetings marketers! We scoured the interwebs for news about email marketing for you – here’s some good stuff:
Personalized subject lines will maximize holiday email marketing success
“Email marketing campaigns with personalized subject lines generated 50-percent higher open rates, almost 2.5 times the unique click rates and 58 percent higher click-to-open rates than their non-personalized counterparts,” writes Kyle Henderick, in a Marketing Land article that looks at how important subject lines will be to email marketing success during the holidays.
Henderick suggests that personalized subject lines can have a big impact on the conversions driven by triggered messages: “An easy example is when a subscriber signs up for brand emails. To save subject line character real estate, send them a message with “Welcome to ” as the subject line and add in a complementary preheader (with an offer. if it’s applicable). This is short, to-the-point and can be effective in driving clicks and opens.”
Regarding the length of subject lines, Henderick says it’s a good rule of thumb to keep them as short as possible, but adds that if you are going to go long, it might not hurt to go really long.
“Even if the subject line trails off in an ellipse on someone’s phone, it still can drive opens if the subscriber gets enough information from what’s listed at the beginning,” he writes. An example of a longer successful subject line is, ‘For a Limited Time Save Over $874 on a Bowflex TreadClimber Machine’ at 69 characters. The amount of savings listed here is key to enticing subscribers to open the email. “
Accurate data key to effective personalization
The last thing an email marketer wants to do is irritate the people who receive their messages – and the key ensuring that doesn’t happen is to make sure the customer data behind the personalization is accurate, writes Maria Minsker at eMarketer.
“Personalization is only as effective as the data that powers it, and when that data is wrong, consumers can find the missives downright irritating,” she writes, citing a June survey that indicated that almost a quarter of respondents had been annoyed by email marketing messages driven by inaccurate data.
Examples cited by respondents included companies urging them to purchase products they had already bought and recommending products that didn’t match their stated preferences.
The good news, Minsker writes, is that other studies indicate that most marketers understand that using dynamic and real-time data can ensure accuracy (and result in happy, rather than annoyed, recipients).
“An April 2017 survey of US marketing executives by The Relevancy Group for OneSpot found that 65 percent of respondents thought using dynamic content in email marketing was an effective way to drive relevancy,” she writes.” In addition, 60 percent said the same about using real-time data to personalize email content.”
The power of video in email marketing
“The use of captivating videos can help retain your audience’s attention and create a great impression of your product or service offering,” advises Paroma Sen, in a MarTech Advisor article specifically addressing email marketers.
Sen cites statistics from eMarketer that show that half of marketers who use video in email campaigns see increased click-through rates, increased time spent reading the email, and increased sharing and forwarding.
“Email delivers, when done right,” Sen writes, but she adds that emails that contain videos “can improve that performance exponentially and contribute toward better open rates, click-through rates and enabling conversations. Those results are why half of B2B marketers are now using videos for email marketing and 73 percent say that video positively impacts their ROI.”
Sen’s tips for success with video include focusing on customization and personalization, keeping a close eye on analytics, not stopping if your first attempt doesn’t meet your expectations and avoid force-fitting video into every message. “An email marketing campaign needs a good mix of formats like text, video, GiFs, memes and illustrations depending on the audience, the message and where the prospect is in terms of the sales funnel,” she writes.
Email marketing to top $22 billion in 2025
“The total dollar volume of email marketing will hit roughly $22.2 billion by the end of 2025, for a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 19.60 percent,” writes Ray Schultz at Email Marketing Daily, citing a recent study by Transparency Market Research.
“Email has global reach — the primary regional markets are North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, the Middle East, Africa and South America, Schultz writes. “Asia-Pacific will grow the most quickly, with a CAGR of 22.80 percent between now and 2025. This is due to the increasing number of Internet users. And going forward, the channel will benefit from growing awareness of the fact that email has a higher ROI than other forms of digital media.”