5 ways to improve your email marketing campaigns

As we head into winter – a peak trading time for most of our clients – it’s important to know that your email marketing is hitting the spot.

Over the last few years, we estimate that we’ve designed, coded and broadcast over 1,500 email campaigns for our clients. What have we learned in that time? What works and doesn’t work, and how has the email campaign landscape changed?

We’ve taken our experience and distilled it into our top 5 ways to improve your email marketing campaigns this winter…

Less is more

The major change in the last few years when it comes to email marketing is volume – we’re receiving far more marketing emails than before.

On a daily basis, the average UK consumer receives a whopping 4,000 to 10,000 marketing messages per day across digital, TV advertising and outdoor media. And the biggest turn off for a consumer? Receiving too many.

So, the lesson here is to aim to find the optimum level of frequency for your customers, on average this is generally thought to be around 2 a month.

Get granular

When building your email marketing strategy it’s worth bearing in mind that segmentation is your friend. You many only want to send your customers 2 emails a month – but you’re going to make them count. How are you going to do that? With lists!

By breaking down your email lists into segments you’ll get better returns because you’ll be delivering a message that is in tune with that particular customer type. If you’re a retailer, for example, the chances are that you have a core audience of fans who open and click most of your emails – these are your VIP’s – send them your ‘new in messages’ first, and offer them exclusive offers so that they know you value them. Do you have a list who only open your campaigns semi-regularly? Or always in Sale? Consider only sending them offer messages, or specific discounts to entice them back – rather than lots of regular campaigns.

In essence, speak to them about what they engage with and you’ll get better responses to your campaigns – with better open rates, better click throughs, and less unsubscribes.

Keep it short

One thing we’ve learned over the years is that your email is essentially a big HELLO.
You want to tell the customer about your exciting new service/product/piece of news, but you don’t want to tell them everything. Why? Because ultimately you want them to click to the website and engage with you.

When designing, think about this – how brief, intriguing and click-worthy can you make your message? Keep it short, keep it sweet and keep it exciting.

Make it responsive

Customers hate, hate, hate, not being able to interact with your content on mobile. Over 50% of people on average open your email on a mobile device. If they can’t read it properly – if the buttons are tiny – if the copy is overlong and not punchy – they will not engage with you. Worse still? They’ll probably unsubscribe.

Make sure you build your campaigns in a mobile responsive template, or failing that at least make the design mobile friendly – with easy to read copy and large, clickable buttons.

Automation is a winner

The best news is – you don’t have to be designing and sending emails all day everyday and you can still reap their rewards. The arrival of automated emails over the last few years can help take some of the burden away from you. Companies who send automated emails are 133% more likely to send relevant messages that correspond with a customer’s purchase cycle, nice right?

A huge 75% of email revenue is generated by triggered campaigns, rather than one-size-fits-all campaigns and in 2015 automated email campaigns accounted for 21% of email marketing revenue.

Think ahead and design campaigns to target people who perhaps left items in their basket, just signed up to your email campaigns, or made a purchase in store – the possibilities are endless and it’s a no-brainer.

Need help with your email marketing? Chat with us anytime on Twitter or better still, send us an email?