Good Tuesday morning, marketers, and welcome back from the long weekend. Hope it was wonderful and relaxing for you! Let’s get the (short!) workweek started with a few recent news items.
Personalized and triggered emails get results
Media Post’s Email Marketing Daily reports on a study finding that personalized and triggered emails perform significantly higher than traditional email marketing campaigns. The study by Epsilon looked at 8.5 billion emails sent during the first-quarter of 2016 in North America. It determined that personalization increased click-through rates by an average of 250% – and by as much as 500% – and that triggered messages increased clicks by an average of 241.4% and open rates by an average of 67.9%. General email engagement increased in first-quarter of 2016, with open rates jumping from 32.0% to 33.3% year-over-year.
Email as the ‘hub’ of integrated marketing campaigns
Erik Harbison, writing for the Huffington Post, calls email the hub of “a system of distribution that works cohesively with other platforms for efficiency.” He encourages marketers to adopt an integrated approach that provides a “cohesive experience” while reinforcing specific campaign aspects. “With customers at the center (your hub), email can play a key role by leveraging select keywords from SEO and PPC data to ensure your messages, offers and updates demonstrate consistency and will resonate with your customer base. Email can also leverage both in-person engagement (events, in-store) and digital data (clicks, opens, purchases) to deliver the most relevant messages.”
First impressions count
At Business News Daily, Chad Brooks reports on how important it is for email marketers to make a positive first impression on new subscribers. He cites recent research indicating that a timely welcome message is key. “The quick introductory message appears to be paying off. Half of the businesses surveyed said 21 percent or more of new subscribers engage with such welcome emails, such as by opening the email, clicking thru to the website or forwarding it on to others,” he writes. EJ McGowan, general manager of Campaigner, is quoted as saying that “marketers who quickly deliver engaging welcome emails to new subscribers will see greater success in conversions while also building brand reputation.”
Seven ways to grow your list
“It’s no secret that people aren’t giving away their email addresses away as much as they used to,” writes Hana LaRock at Business 2 Community. “Companies are finding it harder and harder to gather emails, thus making it more of an obstacle to bring leads in.” She helpfully provides seven ways to meet that challenge. They include providing sign-up forms on all your site’s pages, developing a vibrant landing page and making it as easy as possible for your current customers to share your content and build your network.