Good morning, readers! Today, we’ll talk all about email marketing. First, we’ll share an infographic that gives email optimization hacks based on proven email marketing tactics. Then, we’ll talk about fresh ideas that will help enliven even veteran email marketer’s efforts. Next, we’ll tell you exactly how long you have to get shoppers back to the cart before your email conversions start to take a dip, and finally, we’ll help you get ready for the 2018 email holiday season.
Case study-proven email marketing hacks
As a B2B or B2C marketer, there’s no denying that email is still an extremely powerful way to influence potential and current customers. But your customers’ inboxes are crowded with emails, meaning you have to work extremely diligently to ensure your messages are timely, relevant and engaging enough to entice recipients to open (not hit the spam button!) and click through. Taking the opportunity to constantly tweak and optimize your campaigns is key.
Did you know that 69% of recipients report spam based solely on the email’s subject line? Or that using the word “alert” in your subject line can help boost opens by 61.8%? These are just two of the stats covered in the email marketing optimization infographic put together by 99firms.com and presented in AMEinfo. Other case study-backed hacks include tips on everything from preheader text—optimizing it can impact your open rates by up to 45%—to video in email, which has been shown to increase your clickthrough rate by 200-300%. Check out the whole infographic here.
Fresh ideas for your email marketing
It’s happened to all of us at one time or another—the pressure is on to come up with the next clever email marketing campaign for your brand’s customer segment and you’ve got nothing but a blank document staring you in the face—all of the ideas you can think of are topics that you’ve already covered or things that you’ve already done and your well of new ideas has simply run dry. But fear not fellow marketers; an article in Business2Community by Kevin George shares some fresh ideas for email marketing that will help get you out of a rut and back into generating valuable leads.
For example, Kevin suggests adding interactivity to your emails—relevant GIFs, videos and even memes—as a way to help drive engagement and help connect with your customers and potential customers. His lighthearted ToughMudder example may not work for more straightlaced B2B brands, but there is something that even buttoned down brands can take from this: telling a story, building some suspense and remembering that people are humans, not just a job title is always important. See what I mean and then browse through the rest of his recommendations for keeping things fresh here—I think there’s value in what he’s offering, even for seasoned marketers.
The countdown is on to emailing cart abandoners
A customer browses on your e-commerce site, adding items to your shopping cart and then leaving. What is the ideal amount of time within which you should send a re-engagement email, encouraging them to complete their purchase? According to Kristina Knight’s coverage of Campaigner findings in BizReport, email marketers have a three-hour window. Re-engagement emails sent within 180 minutes of the digital cart being abandoned saw a 40% open rate and a 20% clickthrough rate.
However, the quality of the email that you send during that time can also have a huge impact on your success. Kristina suggests a few ways to maximize your chances of improving conversions. First, test the performance of potential subject lines, and ad personalization when possible. And of course, include information about items in the cart, as well as an easy way for customers to access additional information or assistance if they need it. Read all of her tips here.
Email marketing for the holidays
I know, I know—it’s only September, but as marketers, we’ve got to plan ahead—and like it or not, the holidays will be here before we know it. And while our B2C friends may be most impacted by holiday sales, we know that B2B marketers aren’t immune to the shifts in the holiday season.
Ash Read at Business2Community has developed a great Q4 holiday content calendar, along with example content, that will be really helpful for email marketers looking ahead to the 2018 holidays—and like he says, while you may not want to force your business to fit every single holiday, it’s a good thing to take a holistic look at the next few months and get an idea of what’s upcoming. B2B brands, this is an opportunity for you to really shine for your customers; don’t be afraid to be a little creative and let your brand personality really show through in your email campaigns. Check out Ash’s content calendar and ideas here.
